Innovation Governance How Top Management Organizes and Mobilizes for Innovation

The business leader's guide to encouraging continuous innovation in any organization

Innovation governance is a hot topic in the business world. In a fast-paced business environment, the ability of corporate leaders to build purpose, direction, and focus for innovation is more important than ever. In this book, the authors provide a framework for encouraging and focusing innovation by explaining what innovation governance is, the various models for governance and their advantages and disadvantages, how to assess and improve governance practices, and behavioral tactics for maximizing the effectiveness of governance. It offers guidance for everyone from the boardroom through senior management, illustrating effective governance models with real case studies from a range of companies in the United States and Europe.

• Addresses an important yet underappreciated skill for CEOs, board members, and top management
• Features real-world examples and case studies from a variety of business from around the world
• Written by an author team with hands-on experience in the subjects of innovation management, organizational learning, innovation leadership, organizational behavior, and individual leadership and teamwork

FOREWORD ix

PREFACE: WHY SHOULD WE PAY ATTENTION TO INNOVATION GOVERNANCE? xvii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxv

PART I: ADDRESSING THE INNOVATION GOVERNANCE CHALLENGE 1

1 WHAT IS INNOVATION GOVERNANCE? 3

2 GOVERNING INNOVATION IN PRACTICE: THE ROLE OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS 31

3 GOVERNING INNOVATION IN PRACTICE: THE ROLE OF THE TOP MANAGEMENT TEAM 49

PART II: CHOOSING BETWEEN ALTERNATIVE GOVERNANCE MODELS 85

4 WHY FOCUS ON INNOVATION GOVERNANCE MODELS? 87

5 INNOVATION GOVERNANCE MODELS 107

6 WHICH MODELS SEEM TO WORK AND WHY? 135

PART III: LEARNING FROM THE FIELD 151

7 LEADING FROM THE TOP 153

Example 1 – IBM’s Innovation Governance Model: A Succession of CEOs Oversees “Continuous Transformation”

8 LEADING FROM THE TOP 173

Example 2 – Corning’s Innovation Governance Model: Two Executive Councils Execute Hands-on Governance

9 APPOINTING INDIVIDUAL INNOVATION CHAMPIONS 193

Example 1 – Nestlé’s Innovation Governance Model: CTO in Partnership with Business Heads

10 APPOINTING INDIVIDUAL INNOVATION CHAMPIONS 223

Example 2 – DSM’s Innovation Governance Model: The Entrepreneurial CIO

11 SETTING UP A COLLECTIVE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM 247

Example – Tetra Pak’s Innovation Governance Model: High-level Cross-functional Steering Groups

PART IV: DESIGNING YOUR OWN GOVERNANCE SYSTEM AND MAKING IT WORK 269

12 GETTING STARTED 271

How Michelin has Rethought its Governance Model

13 RECOGNIZING THE IMPERATIVES FOR AN EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE SYSTEM 299

14 ALIGNING INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE INNOVATION LEADERSHIP 321

APPENDIX: EXAMPLES OF TASKS AND INITIATIVES TO SUPPORT INNOVATION 345

INDEX 351

Jean-Philippe Deschamps is an innovation management practitioner with 40 years of international consulting experience. At IMD, which he joined in 1996 as professor of technology and innovation management, he focuses his research, teaching and consulting activities on the management and governance of innovation and on the profile and focus of innovation leaders. Before IMD, he was a vice president and practice leader with consulting firm Arthur D. Little.

He is the author of numerous cases, articles and book chapters, and Product Juggernauts: How Companies Mobilize to Generate Streams of Market Winners co-authoredwith P. Ranganath Nayak (Harvard Business School Press, 1995) and Innovation Leaders: How Senior Executives Stimulate, Steer and Sustain Innovation (Wiley/Jossey-Bass, 2008).

He has given conferences and lectures throughout the world, including the prestigious 2010 Millenium Prize in Helsinki, the equivalent of the “Nobel prize” for technology and twice as a speaker at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

He lives near Lausanne and is married to a practicing psychoanalyst and author

Beebe Nelson has worked as an innovation and product development consultant and facilitator for the past 25 years.  As co-director and then director of the IAPD (International Association for Product Development) she helped leading innovation companies refine and improve their innovation practices. Her articles on innovation and product development have appeared in publications of the PDMA (Product Development and Management Association) as well as other professional publications, and she has given lectures and seminars on innovation topics.  She holds a doctorate in philosophy from Harvard University and has taught philosophy and management at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and at Lowell. 

The publication of New Product Development for Dummies (co-authored with Robin Karol, Wiley, 2007) marked the mat