Winning Executive Support & Funding for Radical Innovation | Sopheon

Change is a constant in the corporate world. The average length of a company’s tenure in today’s Dow Jones Industrial Average is only 15 to 20 years, far shorter than was in the decades preceding the development of microprocessors in the 1970s. It’s the same story at the S&P 500, where there’s “a steady churn rate of companies dropping off the index as new entrants join the list, and corporate lifespans continue their downward trajectory.” Successful companies that stop innovating end up in the rearview mirror.

Innovation entails a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand, you have ongoing innovation and improvements to the existing products and lines of business that are the lifeblood of the company. This is often called core or incremental innovation. Incremental innovation builds on what you already know and do.

On the other hand, you have ideas that are considered new, different, or radical. These have the potential to transform your business—and perhaps even create new markets and business models. Innovation of this type is often called radical innovation.

Ideas around core innovation are more easily funded than ideas around radical innovation. The progress of core innovation ideas to the market involves selection (among all the core ideas), prioritization, and execution. Radical innovation is different. Most ideas that fall into the radical innovation bucket will never make it to market. Some would say that such ideas “failed,”— but that’s an inaccurate and damaging label. We need to expect that radical innovation ideas won’t make it and learn from them.

To keep innovating and moving the business forward, executives need to invest in both types of innovation. But getting the investment for radical innovation is often easier said than done.

Here are three essential steps you should consider to earn support and funding sources for radical innovation: