S T R AT E G Y I N N O VAT I O N T R A N S F O R M AT I O N

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July 7th, 2010

Idris Mootee and Morgan Gerard

The Seven Roles Of An Innovation Team

Companies often struggle to expand their innovation capabilities at the project-team level. One reason
they struggle is that they don’t understand the different roles that they have already – and will need – on
the team and each role’s importance in the ideation and activation stages. Thus, instead of assessing the
talent and the roles on the team already, they add personnel on the fly, without knowing what role each
addition will play. The result is usually confusion.

Idea Couture recently conducted research on innovation practices among executives in five industries
including consumer products, consumer electronics, retail, pharmaceutical and financial services. We
analyzed data from 352 self-reported surveys. One of our main goals was to gain insights on innovation
project-team management practices, specifically team-role building, team-role selection and design. Prior
to conducting the surveys, we gathered qualitative data through field observation and interviews to
determine how companies chose people to participate in innovation projects, and how they assign specific
roles to the participants.

While our research produced new insights, it also confirmed that a long-standing problem still exists
in and among organizations innovation is typically misunderstood. Many business leaders believe that
innovation is a rare gift that exists mainly in people who are in leadership roles or gifted creatively. For
example, just think of how often you hear people saying, “That’s why I get paid the big bucks because I am
the big idea guy.” Such thinking is not healthy as it usually means that organizations are overlooking other,
much better sources of potential innovation. An idea, even a big idea, is not the same as an innovation.
Only when an idea is turned into a product, a service or a business that creates new value can it be
considered an innovation.

Whether the innovative idea is radical, substitutive, incremental, or complementary, it still needs to fit
into the stages of a value chain within an industry. For example, take biotechnology in the pharmaceutical
industry. A certain, new discovery may be radical, thereby creating entirely new therapies. It may replace
another treatment, or it may be used in specific cases or in conjunction with another drug. This requires a
very different kind of creative thinking.

Before we discuss the findings of our research, it is essential to point out how we structured it. If our
research was to have value we knew that each and every finding would have to have a high degree of
utility. That is, any observation or insight would have no absolute value; only if it could be applied, to a
large or small extent, at a specific stage or sub-stage of the innovation process, and to an existing or latent
market need, could an insight have value. It would be necessary to translate a half-formed idea into

This teaching note was authored by Professor Idris Mootee and Dr. Morgan Gerard solely as the basis for executive education and class
discussion. Teaching notes and cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective
management.

Copyright © 2010 Idea Couture inc. Idea Couture is a global strategic innovation, customer insights and experience design firm that brings together
the power of D-School + B-School™ thinking. The firm engages in strategic innovation, ethnographic research and design programs that identify
and fulfill unmet, unknown and unarticulated customer needs to transform brands and organizations.

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an actionable idea. To achieve this goal, we first developed criteria to screen the potential market-
worthiness of a finding or idea. We then applied our knowledge of markets, buyer behavior and multi-
disciplinary approach to distill that half-formed idea into an actionable idea that innovation professionals
could develop fully.

Four Steps in the Innovation Process

In our research, we identified four, key and distinct steps in the innovation process.

Create

Everything starts with an idea, and there is no question that every organization needs new ideas to remain
competitive in a rapidly changing world. There are people who can come up with ideas without really
working at them; they see possibilities everywhere. There are also others who, by looking at data and
making sense of even disparate data, come up with new ideas. Creating is more than being creative. It’s
about seeing beyond, about seeing the possibilities.

Mobilize

Many great ideas have died on the vine because they weren’t picked up or never gathered enough
momentum to push them forward. Perhaps the person championing the idea couldn’t convince others.
On the other hand, some people are good at making things happen; they have developed the ability to
sell others on an idea and to get their support for the idea’s implementation. They tell great stories and
understand organizational dynamics. They can mobilize.

Refine

Refiners often play the devil’s advocate role, asking the challenging “What if?” questions. Refiners’ talents
for analysis and attention to detail are often undervalued because they tend to challenge both the Creator
and Mobilizer. But those responsible for developing an innovation further should beware: Don’t implement
a new idea until you have listened to what the Refiners have to say.

Execute

The dustbin of business history is filled with great ideas - but they’re in the dustbin because they were
poorly executed. Whether it was due to a lack of follow through or a lack of team cohesion, the execution
failed - and execution is important because it is the difference between being successful and not. Individuals
must execute – on their assigned roles, and the team must execute by bringing the innovation to market
exactly as planned. In the end it’s all in the execution.

The Seven Innovation Roles

Based on our survey results, we determined that people involved in innovation play one of seven roles:

Innovation Champion (36%)

This is the team member who radiates the most passion for a project and acts as a beacon: Everyone looks
at the champion and wants to be at their best and do their best. Tirelessly pushing the process forward,
this individual, like the archetypal hero, has to continually wave the flag, exert the most effort to overcome
obstacles and, occasionally, take a stray bullet for the team.

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Sponsor (14%)

Part broker, part diplomat and part hostage negotiator, this individual is usually a senior person who
has the power, position and personality to translate the benefits of an idea. This person is the critical
component when it comes to communicating with and between fellow senior executives. Little to nothing
gets achieved without his or her stamp of approval.

Idea Generator (86%)

They can stumble on ideas in research, design, or ideation on the couch, with a glass of wine. They can
imagine them as big or small, incremental or disruptive. They can focus on marketing, category, product,
packaging or branding - and they can have little regard for achieving a business goal right away. Either
way, the team members responsible for that first idea are the ones who spark the engine of innovation.

Plumber (54%)

These are the people who have the skills and the tools needed to connect the pipes that make innovative
ideas flow from start to finish. They are technical thinkers who sometimes balance an eye for precision
with some creative flourish. Their expertise in programming, packaging, engineering, the sciences and
other fields is critical to preventing leaks in the system.

Idea Assembler (37%)

This is the master tactician, the one key team member who can connect the pieces, mesh the ideas and see
an idea and its potential in the most holistic way. Equal parts B-school and D-school, he or she understands,
appreciates and designs the flow of new systems around business requirements, research insights, design
constraints and implementation obstacles.

Facilitator (29%)

Every project needs an experienced guide, someone to navigate the complex maze of organizational silos,
competing agendas and rampaging egos that can turn a great idea into just another dusty deliverable.
Helping to elicit new ideas from every stakeholder and fostering collaboration, this is the team member
who guarantees that a project will steer clear of the dangers ahead.

Problem Solver (14%)

When people are faced with a problem, they try to solve it by doing things in a pragmatic way. While this
may solve some problems, it will not solve others. For example, what will you do in a situation where
the problem that you are trying to solve has not been previously considered? That’s when you need the
Problem Solver - people that are good at solving problems that are not well defined. As experts in the
problem-solving process, they are the stars and subjects of the show. These are the team members who
are always searching for ideas that will solve a particular business problem. Day or night, work or home,
business or design, their drive to crack the code of any challenge borders on the obsessive, but inspires
their teams to be more compulsive.

Summary

It’s common today to associate creativity with innovation. The difference however, is significant. For the
most part, creativity is an idea, whether it’s about a new way to market soap or to streamline a supply
chain. Innovation begins where an idea ends. Innovation takes an idea, in many cases a half-formed idea,

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and tries to turn it into a product or service that can create new value for the customer and the company.

Moreover, the process of innovation is a highly structured one and requires different roles during different
stages of the innovation process. There are four distinct stages in the process and there are different roles
on an innovation team. Each role performs a specific function, and at each stage, different activities move
the innovation forward, closer to the market. Much more than “brainstorming” that tries to segment a
market or extend a brand, innovation is a highly structured, disciplined process that can be several years
in the making. Ideally innovation leaves a legacy that can be leveraged repeatedly to transform other ideas
or insights into actionable ideas that create or add value to products or services.

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Other published teaching notes and cases from the same series that are complimentary to this one:

5-027-5001 An Innovation Primer

5-027-5007 Strategic Innovation and Competitive Strategy
5-027-5008 Strategic Foresights and Innovation
5-027-5012 Managing the Adoption of Innovative Products
5-207-5013 Social Technologies and Open Innovation
5-027-5015 Strategic Innovation And The Fuzzy Front End
5-027-5016 Mastering the Innovation Process
5-027-5018 Strategic Creativity and Innovation
5-027-5019 Organizing for Innovation
5-027-5022 The Seven Roles of an Innovation Team
5-027-5023 Business Models Innovation Vs. Business Strategy
5-027-5031 Lead-User Driven Innovation
5-027-5038 Social Innovation and Social Enterprise
5-027-5039 Building an Innovation Culture
5-027-5042 Opportunity Mapping in Innovation
5-027-5043 How to Look for Breakthrough Ideas
5-027-5047 Research Design to Support Innovation
5-027-5048 Building an Innovation Business Case
5-027-5050 Design Thinking and Innovation
5-027-5056 Assessing Your Organization’s Innovation Capability
5-027-5058 Strategic Framing
5-027-5062 Rapid Prototyping and Innovation
5-027-5063 Social Responsibility and Innovation
5-027-5067 Service Design and Innovation
5-027-5068 Developing An Innovation Roadmap
5-027-5073 Managing Strategic Creativity
5-027-5075 Innovation for the Bottom of the Pyramid
5-027-5076 Lessons from the World’s Best Innovators
5-027-5080 Innovation and Value Creation