Several years ago I attended a conference where the Head of Innovation for a company gave a presentation that blew me away. What stuck with me the most from that presentation was the formula he presented for innovation: Innovation = Idea + Execution, which he credited someone for and for the life of me I have not been able to find who came up with this so please feel free to comment if you know. Anyway, the great thing about this formula, other than being simple, is that it emphasizes that innovation is not just about coming up with ideas; you have to take action on those ideas and execute them, get them implemented, to be able to be innovative. After all, would an iPhone be innovative if it would have just stayed as an idea in someone’s head without Steve Jobs executing on that idea?

The notion of having to execute on ideas to be innovative is very popular. It’s easy to understand and it’s very tangible. You have an idea, you do something with it, and you become innovative. But as attractive as this formula is, to me there was a main piece missing. By the time I attended this conference I had several years of engineering experience under my belt. Part of that experience included a Six Sigma Black Belt. I won’t go into too many details here, but this is basically a certification on a tool used by some of today’s top manufacturers’ to continue to make process improvements, mostly focused on quality. In that certification and training I learned about a different formula for what they call Change Acceleration Process (CAP). Within CAP they defined a formula for success which is E = Q x A, or Effectiveness = Quality x Acceptance. This basically says that in order to execute something successfully, or to have an effective solution, it must be at the right quality level, or in other words it has to work as intended, and also it must be accepted. I won’t dive into the quality portion here, but before putting it aside, if I go back to the iPhone example, if the iPhone did not work per the idea that it came from, it would not be effective and therefore not be innovative. Although getting there can be a long and difficult journey, the concept itself is simple. What I do want to go deeper on is the acceptance part.

Acceptance of an idea is something that often gets overlooked, even though without it there can be no innovation unless you are creating something only you will use. Think about it, what would an iPhone be if no one bought it because they didn’t like it? Think of Microsoft’s Zune that was created to compete against the iPod. The Zune probably doesn’t come to mind when thinking about innovative products, that’s if you’re even able to recall this product. So how do you make sure you gain the acceptance required to achieve innovation? This is something I’ve spent a lot of time on as I would look back at some of my projects that failed. There are many ways to approach this, but I’ll share what I think are the most effective and practical methods.

1. Identify who you need to get acceptance from (the stakeholders): Without knowing this you will not be able to go very far. These are basically your stakeholders which are your users of your idea of course, but also anyone else that needs to buy into your idea such as anyone that you might need to fund your project, anyone you will need support from to execute the idea, any potential suppliers, and anyone else that you think will be needed to make your idea come to fruition.
2. Involve your stakeholders from the beginning: If you get them involved from the beginning your probability of getting their acceptance will increase significantly. They’ll form some attachment to your idea since they saw it from birth vs seeing it for the first time once it’s complete.
3. Explain the “Why”: As Simon Sinek mentions in his book Start With Why, you have to start with explaining why you’re doing what you’re doing to get people to believe what you believe.  Don’t rush this, take the time to explain the purpose of your idea and make sure everyone has a clear understanding of it.  If you’re limited on how many stakeholders you can get in a room at one time to explain this and have to split them into several groups, make sure each group will have several open minded people that can challenge you.  And don’t be discouraged when being challenged, this is typically a good sign that they care and are trying to understand.  Conflict here is usually a healthy thing, it might help you improve your idea, and of course will help you gain acceptance.
4. Allow the stakeholders to shape the idea: When you allow them to shape your idea then it becomes their idea as well and therefore becomes their baby. Now they are completely attached to it and have a larger stake in seeing it be successful. This is a big benefit to you as well as you’ll be receiving very valuable feedback that will in turn bring more value to your idea. In the case of end users being a large number, you can get input from a sample of users as this will be some of the most valuable input you’ll receive.
5. Guide the stakeholders with questions, don’t just give answers: This one is more of a compliment to the one above. If you’re just going to tell everyone how things should be because you have it all figured out, you will then not be allowing them to shape the idea. Instead, ask key questions to get their input, even if you think you already know the answer. You might be surprised to find out that you’ll receive a better answer than the one you had in mind. This is called the Socratic method by the way, and even though it’s meant as a teaching tool, it can be very effective in getting acceptance on an idea.

You can easily write an entire book on getting acceptance and it’s certainly critical enough to learn more about it. But the items above will give you a good start to gain the acceptance you need to be innovative. Now comes the fun part, explaining the human behavior part of all this.  Keep in mind that innovation is change and it’s in our human nature to resist change. This is because the primitive part of our brain sees change as a threat because it sees danger in unpredictability. We can take this back to the caveman days, if there was a change in the conditions we saw when we’re about to step out of that cave, we would simply go back in to avoid being chewed up by a sabertooth.

To summarize, think about this, lets say every morning you get up and make yourself a cup of coffee with creamer, but one day you go reach for the creamer and find a different brand of creamer in its place, what would be your initial response?  You probably wouldn’t be too happy about it and will end up staying away from it and start digging around for your usual creamer.  But what if your spouse lets you know that she/he was going to buy another brand of creamer.  You would probably not be as upset as it’s not going to be a surprise on what you find when you go looking for the creamer.  And if she/he would have explained why they decided to change brand, you would probably be even less upset about it.  Lastly, what if your spouse asked you to go with them to the supermarket so you all can decide together on a better creamer than the one you have been using?  At this point you would be looking forward to starting your day with a better cup of coffee than yesterday because you helped pick out the new creamer.  This is why it’s so important to involve the stakeholders from the beginning and keep them very involved; this reduces the unpredictability and therefore reduce the risk of resistance. And make sure you continually check the pulse of acceptance along the way by asking your stakeholders what they think about things or how they think things going so you’re not surprised by a resistance at the end and instead make adjustments along the way.

The Innovation Formula: Innovation = Idea + (Quality of Execution x Acceptance of Execution)