It’s pretty clear by now that smart CMO’s are seeking ways to accelerate growth by looking at digital products and platforms to energize their product mix and boost their marketing. As they ask their team to explore faster, both CMO’s and CTO’s need to be ready for the bumps ahead as the innovations go from “experiments” to “core business”.

Often, the leaders who are being asked to lead innovation are explicitly tasked with finding new ways to work in addition to defining new product/service offerings. They might be leading Innovation, New Products, New Ventures or Business Development. So, they are expected to explore new tools, new technology, new partners or new methods for working with a goal of injecting innovation into the organization while defining new revenue streams.

But, while there is a growing set of best practices on how to invent and launch new products inside the enterprise, there aren’t as many best practices for the transition period when those products go from “innovation” into “run the core business”. Worse, few innovation leaders have a clear plan for enlisting the support of the functional leaders (IT, Product management, sales, etc.) who have to maintain and manage an innovative product once it’s launched and proven.

As a result, one of the biggest threats to capturing the benefit from innovation activities is the slow death that comes when the original strategic intent is second guessed, re-thought, and challenged by the core business.

For example, imagine a scenario where the VP of Innovation for Enormicon Inc saw a legitimate market opportunity for a new product with a different business model. Over the course of a year, his “Enormicom Labs” team moved quickly, working like an agile startup to create the first iteration of the product including customer growth, market traction, press awareness and lots of insights into how the product could succeed. But, to scale the product, Enormicon would have to move the product from the “Labs” team into the core business.

As the product moves from the “Labs” team to the mainline business, the strategic intent of the innovation project will probably clash with the functional strategies that support the business. The tech choices that were made to enable speed and quality in the “innovation” phase will probably run counter to tech strategies that guide the main business (i.e. repeatability, cost reduction, leverage core technologies, scale efficiencies). The marketing approach used to quickly gain new customers for the innovative product will probably not be supportable by the “core” marketing team’s strategies.

To successfully grow businesses via innovation, Enormicon will need support in launching innovative products, but also in re-integrating those products into the business once the new product is proven.

Innovation leaders will need strong support as they think through the start up process AND the phase of introducing their new products and services into the main business. Change leaders will need to develop stronger support for:

• Tech Strategy – Choosing tech (the software, the programming language, the development methodology, the support model) that will work for both the start up phase (agile, fast, easy and cheap to build and support) and the re-entry phase (software that’s scaleable, supportable by the corporation, bullet-proof and fits into the rest of the company’s architecture)
• Maintaining Strategic Support – Building the strategic rationale and the  business case for doing things differently, so functional leaders will invest the extra effort and time and money to support the experimental efforts (tech, marketing, etc.