Why Innovation Should Be Decentralized In Every Large Organization

Organizations face structural headwinds and changes that require new waves of innovation to keep up. However, a fully centralized approach to ideation and innovation often proves problematic because of its day-to-day administrative workload that can lead to bottlenecks, lack of context, and a one-size-fits-all approach. Decentralization enables business units to take ownership for their own innovation and ideation work, including control over the processes they choose to use in their own work. This results in better decisions, speed, creating a pro-innovation culture, and a result orientation. Decentralized teams understand the context better and it’s much easier for each team to find the metrics that help them make sure they’re moving in the right direction. The role of a centralized innovation team should be enabling innovation, aligning with company strategy, providing support, sharing best practices, mentoring innovators across the organization, being the voice of innovation, building a network, and troubleshooting issues.