Cross-pollination

Sharing of ideas and insight within an organisation is one of the easiest and quickest ways to create additional value through corporate innovation. This applies to sharing within the business unit, but truly comes to the fore when sharing between the business units. In fact, I have observed that the greater the distance between two sides, the more value is realised through sharing.

Why is that so?

Validated and trustworthy insight is the most immediate output of the corporate innovation process. The innovation team might need years to monetise it. Existing teams focused on core business usually don't have time nor resources to explore new opportunities.

Sometimes innovation teams learn something they deem irrelevant for their specific situation. But this same insight might be invaluable to other parts of the organisation. The problem---or rather a missed opportunity---resides in the simple fact that innovation teams rarely have direct contact with core teams, and conversely core teams are rarely aware of insight generated by the innovation teams.

Connecting them is the first step towards fruitful cross-pollination.