Innovation is an organizational process that has been expanding over the past few decades, gradually occupying substantial and increasingly strategic spaces within companies. Innovating has become a profession that requires versatile experts with a holistic vision. To innovate, you need creative and systematic individuals. Surprisingly, we are all creative; we all have inherent creativity, even if we don't practice it (it's often stifled by corporate culture). Just think about how ideas flow when we are relaxed (driving, walking, swimming). The leader of innovation harnesses creativity and systematically and deliberately seeks new ideas both inside and outside the core business (by collecting data, diving into analyses and reports, tracking the environment, or through specific tasks).
A social and open process
The profession of innovating requires interactive people. Innovation is a social and open process, enriched by external information. Innovating solely with internal people leads to incrementalism. You need to talk to outsiders, people from other sectors, groups, ages, backgrounds, and lifestyles to gain different perspectives. True disruptive ideas rarely come from processes and people immersed in the daily grind.
Strategic vision
The innovation professional has a strategic vision. They can accurately diagnose reality, propose a differential value proposition (where innovation lies), and create a consistent and coherent action plan. The innovator must identify the organization's strengths and compare them with external opportunities to discover sources for new projects.
Anticipate technological change
The innovation professional must anticipate technological change. Today, technology is the main driving force behind innovation. No other variable creates barriers to competition like technology. We are immersed in a world of technological overflow. Never underestimate the transformative power of technology, nor believe that its waves of creative destruction won't affect us. We should leverage environmental forces to our advantage: be the first to explore, use, and, if possible, generate emerging technologies. Whoever controls the technology controls the business.
Venture capital mindset
The innovation professional must have a venture capital mindset. An innovative company explores and scales new business opportunities quickly. The initial phases of innovation require primarily time and talent. It's about filtering ideas, evaluating them, and experimenting with them (e.g., through prototypes) to test market hypotheses. In the early stages, innovating is a cognitive process: it's not about allocating large budgets but about reducing the uncertainty that accompanies novelty. Like venture capital experts, the innovator doses resources and scales investments as market certainty increases. An idea becomes an opportunity when it is confirmed to be technically feasible, economically viable, and desirable by a collective.
Advanced innovation management methodologies
The innovation professional must know advanced innovation management methodologies. Conventional management fails in analyzing embryonic opportunities. We cannot demand a long-term financial plan for an idea that still needs to mature, be tested, and validated against an initial group of customers. In tech startups, a five-year business plan is pure science fiction. It serves to contemplate possible scenarios, but we must pivot to new models when forecasts fail. While classic management relies on planning (analyzing first and acting later), disruptive innovation advances through experimentation (acting first and analyzing later). Act to collect data and decide. It's like being in a dark room. Where is the exit door? Where is the market? We move blindly, carefully, to find the wall. Touching the wall is information, not a failure. We get an idea of the space and, by trial and error, we finally find the exit. We need to experiment quickly and cheaply. And be tenacious. Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream,” not “I have a business plan.”
Project management skills
The innovation professional must be an extraordinary project manager. In fact, a manager of a portfolio of projects. Like a professional investor, they must know that a diversified portfolio of projects dilutes risk. Projects are corporate experiments. If living organisms evolve and adapt through random changes (mutations in DNA, some of which are selected by the environment), companies do so through intelligent changes (innovations), with competitive intelligence. Interestingly, natural evolution is a form of progress without planning (through experimentation), just like corporate innovation.
The importance of the ecosystem
The innovation professional must be well-versed in the support ecosystem. We must establish connections with leading user segments, experts, universities, and technological centers; and identify and access sources of knowledge and innovation funding. At times, R&D in Spain could be practically free (I've known true masters in this), combining tax deductions and direct aid. We must know the institutional intricacies, financing processes, and seek mechanisms for legal guarantees. It's not easy, but leveraging financial resources is one of the great fields of specialization for innovation professionals.
Leadership, leadership, leadership
Finally, the innovation professional must be a leader. There is no innovation without leadership: nothing changes without initiative and action. Nor is there leadership without innovation: you cannot lead what is immovable. All of this, in the end, requires a set of specific capabilities, increasingly in demand, that make innovation not just a passion, but an emerging profession with a very promising future.
Expert in innovation management, leadership, disruptive technologies, technological strategy, and innovation ecosystems. Researcher, educator, and speaker on topics related to innovation in the era of artificial intelligence, competitiveness, exponential technologies, and the geopolitics of innovation.
Associate Professor of Operations Management, Innovation, and Data Sciences at Esade Business School. Associate Dean for Executive MBAs.
- PhD in Management Sciences, Universitat de Barcelona
- MBA, Esade Business School
- Degree in Telecommunications Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya
