Innovation Perspectives - Trench Innovation

The article examines the question of where innovation should reside in an organization and who should 'own' or manage innovation. The author argues that innovation cannot solely reside in research facilities or globally distributed research teams any longer. Innovation should reside in the corporate trenches, where employees are motivated to innovate and operate with a sense of urgency that maximizes productivity. The article suggests that line managers should be regularly asking their employees about what they're working on and encouraging them to pursue answers to pressing customer needs through researching creative solutions in a skunkworks fashion. Ownership of innovation should be loosely coupled, with a central monitoring entity typically in the office of the corporate CTO. The final piece of corporate ownership is a strong social media strategy that enables collaboration between corporate intrapreneurs, academia, industry, and customers.