Create Three Distinct Career Paths for Innovators
• Gina Colarelli O’Connor
• Andrew Corbett

• Ron Pierantozzi
https://hbr.org/2009/12/create-three-distinct-career-paths-for-innovators?autocomplete=true


Remember our work at Kellogg and MDG—we need the right skills along the growth journey

Big companies are much better at incremental innovation than they are at radical innovation. That’s as true now as it was 20 years ago, despite countless programs aimed at strengthening innovation capabilities. To understand why, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute studied 21 large companies’ efforts to build a capability for breakthrough innovations over several years. They found that even though companies pay lip service to innovation, most fail to provide the formal structure and support that programs need to succeed, such as an autonomous organization, processes tailored for highly uncertain work, and well-designed metrics. 

What’s more, the research reveals that companies fundamentally mismanage their innovation talent. Typically, large companies rotate high-potential managers in and out of the innovation leadership role on a regular basis. That may give the rising stars broad experience, but it deprives the company of any real innovation expertise at a senior level. Even more damaging, companies don’t provide meaningful growth opportunities for their innovation professionals. So although there are plenty of great jobs in innovation, there are no careers. One member of an innovation hub in a large consumer products company explains, “I could help launch $4, $5, $6 billion businesses over the next five years, and I won’t get promoted into leadership for this company.” 

To remedy that problem, companies must first understand that breakthrough innovation consists of three phases: 

Discovery: Creating or identifying high-impact market opportunities.Incubation: Experimenting with technology and business concepts to design a viable model for a new business.Acceleration: Developing a business until it can stand on its own.

Consider the unique competencies each phase requires. During discovery, employees often do bench science or technological experimentation as they think about how an innovation might satisfy a marketplace need. During incubation, employees experiment recursively with technology and market opportunities and try to anticipate the impact the breakthrough business may have on the company’s strategy. During acceleration, established-business capabilities such as scaling up processes, imposing discipline, and specialization are needed. Each phase lends itself to distinct career paths, as well. The bench scientist, for instance, may eventually want to be involved in policy discussions about emerging technologies and how they may influence the company’s future. The incubator may want to pursue a technical path—managing larger, longer-term projects—or to manage a portfolio of emerging businesses. And the accelerating manager may want to stay with the business as it grows, take on a leadership role in a functional specialty, or move into other general-management roles in the corporation. 

Rather than develop those paths, however, many firms assume that an individual will be promoted along with a project as it grows from discovery through to acceleration. In reality, individuals with that breadth of skill sets are extremely rare. In other words, companies have essentially been setting their innovators up to fail. Imagine how much a company might improve its innovation if it allowed workers who excelled in, say, the discovery phase to focus on emerging innovation opportunities rather than forcing them to acquire the skills needed for incubation or acceleration. The accompanying exhibit can serve as a guide for executives who are ready to build career paths for their company’s innovators—and to reap the rewards of a sustainable innovation function.