BITE Guest Trend | Your Chief Innovation Officer is now your Chief Growth Officer

The razzle dazzle must deliver. So set KPIs across the full scope of activity – clear, measurable goals as part of the client SOW, department deliverables and partner agreements. Stunts, those award-worthy and press darling campaigns, must all be shown to serve a greater good. Even creative thought leadership should be included, proving that their forward thinking is delivering results.

It’s also vital to roadmap all offerings – how will they impact the business now? What about in six months, a year, three years? In fact, these roadmaps should look ahead for a minimum of five years.

And always remember the importance of productising. In creative work, strategic understanding and tech development, we must productise everything – for ease of use, for widespread adoption and eventual profitability.

A good innovation practice recognises that innovation means pushing new ideas into old systems and the importance of selling these ideas in internally at scale. Without knowing how this impacts on the bottom line and being able to clearly demonstrate that to our colleagues, that job is going to be so much harder.

I’d argue, as well, that owning your own bottom line is not a risk – it actually provides stability for your team during a period where business cost cutting is going to be rampant.

At a time when everyone is being called on to innovate there’s a risk of the whole concept becoming meaningless. What innovation leadership brings to an organisation is the practice of the work. It’s time for your Chief Innovation Officer to act as a Chief Growth Officer as we continue unlocking into a world where “new” will be “normal” from here on out.