5 tips for establishing a successful innovation team

As organizations look to embrace emerging technologies such as generative AI, it is increasingly critical to establish teams that have the core purpose of leveraging new technology to generate value. Innovation teams drive the development of new ideas, products, and processes, fostering growth and competitive advantage. By focusing on creative problem-solving and future trends, these teams help companies stay relevant and adapt to changing market conditions. However, upwards of 95% of corporate innovation fails (link resides outside ibm.com). So, how can we set innovation teams up to succeed?

Innovation teams are unique within an enterprise because they must achieve multiple distinct goals, including research and development, education and project delivery. They require flexibility to test new things, while being able to deliver impact in a mature way. Three foundational elements can help set innovation teams up for success-a unique team structure, partnership with the business, and innovation-specific processes-using the IBM Garage™ methodology for innovation as a blueprint.

Team structure

1. Define an organizational structure:

Innovation teams are often structured to support various shifting goals, which requires a flexible and diverse team structure. Often, innovation teams are tasked with fulfilling the functions of both R&D and implementation, each with its unique responsibilities and workflows. This approach necessitates distinct functional groups with their own supporting teams, which work toward different goals:

• The R&D function is focused on research, experimentation and prototyping, which requires increased flexibility, a continuous experimentation flow and adaptability.
• The execution function is typically structured around agile scrum methodologies, which organizes itself into product squads. Each squad is composed of a product owner (PO) and a development or engineering team. This structure helps ensure that the team can efficiently deliver business value by iterating on its product increments. Typically, IBM Garage leverages "T-shape" talent. T-shaped practitioners have a knowledge of hybrid disciplines with deep core expertise relevant to their products.

These distinct structures allow the innovation team to simultaneously explore new ideas and then bring them to market effectively.

2. Educate your organization:

In addition to the two core functions (execution and R&D), innovation teams must also engage in education and activation efforts, partnering closely with the business side. Planned events, such as hackathons, and the creation of educational tools, are essential for fostering a culture of innovation and organizational change. These initiatives require coordination between the R&D and execution functions, along with collaboration with business stakeholders to ensure the activations are relevant and impactful. As innovation teams grow, the need for scalable structures and processes becomes critical, ensuring that both the exploratory and delivery aspects of the team can expand without losing effectiveness. This dual-function approach allows innovation teams to stay responsive to both market demands and internal opportunities for growth.

Partnering with the business

3. Create governance and standardized processes:

Effectively partnering with business units requires a well-defined operating model where a central function, such as an innovation team, sets strategic direction and best practices. This model empowers other parts of the business to operate independently while adhering to the established guidelines. Governance plays a crucial role in this collaboration by setting standards, ensuring alignment with organizational goals, and orchestrating value across units. The governance or PMO team can implement stage gating to monitor progress and manage risk, while also overseeing funding to ensure resources are allocated to initiatives that align with the company's strategic objectives. This structured yet flexible approach fosters innovation, drives efficiency, and maintains consistency across the organization.

IBM Garage™ demonstrates how the three steps of co-create, co-execute and co-operate drive innovation and value through structured collaboration. Learn more about how you can leverage the IBM Garage methodology under "Our method" section!

Processes specific to innovation

4. Establish an intake process:

Innovation teams are often faced with an endless stream of potential opportunities, making it crucial to establish a framework for work intake. This structured approach allows for the efficient and effective management of inbound requests, ensuring that the team can focus on the most promising initiatives while maintaining the flexibility needed to adapt to changing priorities.

An intake process can cover a lot of bases, including new idea submission, t-shirt sizing, prioritization, product development and go-to-market activities, all the way through launch. This process should be paired with appropriate governance structures encompassing relevant functional business leaders from across the firm, including product, legal, marketing and finance. At identified stage gates, hold reviews by the governing body to provide approval for moving forward. By taking in demand in a structured way, innovation teams can help ensure a smooth flow between R&D and execution teams, minimizing the risk of misalignment and maximizing the potential for successful outcomes. This framework is particularly important given the breadth of touch points innovation teams have with the business, as it enables them to prioritize projects that align with the company's overall strategy and goals.

5. Nurture a culture of feedback:

Failing fast and iterating quickly is a critical component of the innovation process. As evident from the image above, the Garage methodology relies on quick and frequent iteration to deliver value. Innovation teams need to cultivate a strong culture of collaboration and a strong feedback culture that encourages open and honest communication. To achieve this, leaders need to make these processes the norm within their teams:

• Establish a high level of psychological safety within the team. Team leaders play a critical role in creating this environment by fostering an atmosphere of trust, empathy and support, where team members feel comfortable taking risks and learning from their mistakes. This can include informal gatherings with the team, encouraging members to share their life outside work, and team building activities.
• Provide guidance and set team norms around feedback. For example, you can encourage people to share feedback using the Stanford method: "I like; I wish; what if … ?". Set team norms around when and how to provide feedback.
• Create varied opportunities and channels for feedback, including one-on-one check-ins, regular retrospectives and unplanned just-in-time feedback sessions.

By prioritizing psychological safety and feedback, innovation teams can turn failure into a valuable learning experience that drives growth and improvement over time.

The IBM Garage framework enables enterprises to generate innovative ideas and equips clients with the practices and technologies to turn those ideas into value on an accelerated timeline. IBM Garage has helped clients generate tenfold more innovative ideas and achieve outcomes 67% faster. Learn more about Garage practices and how Garage can supercharge innovation for you.