Does Innovation Have to Be Rocket Science?

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Mitra Best for the PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) Innovation blog. To read the complete article, check out other resources, and sign up for email updates, please click here.

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I spent a good portion of my youth imagining galactic travel, robots on other planets, and space habitats. (And yes, I watched every episode of Star Trek – a remarkable source of new inventions.)  So, when Marty Waszak, Strategic Relations Officer at NASA Langley Research Center, a kindred spirit and fellow crusader of innovation, invited me to speak to a group of senior scientists and engineers about the creative process, I was over the moon!

While thrilled with the invitation, I wondered what a lecture from me could possibly contribute to innovation at NASA — the pioneering leader in research, development and design… and an organization filled with rocket scientists.

Then, it occurred to me that PwC and NASA might have a few challenges and opportunities in common.  We are both heavily regulated organizations, obligated to deliver projects on budget and on time, staffed with highly technical people, and expected to continuously think creatively to provide clients with competitive advantage.

This realization helped me focus on lessons I’ve learned as the Innovation Leader at PwC and what I could share with NASA.

[Here are the first two of five "lessons.]

Lesson #1: Innovation can come from anyone, anywhere

Innovation is the introduction of anything new or different.  Anything new or different implies innovation can happen anywhere, not just in labs or R&D centers, and by anyone, not only scientists and researchers. At PwC, we have simplified our innovation mission into one question that is relevant to every member of our organization: “What can I do differently today to deliver more value to my client?”

Lesson # 2: People want to be engaged and empowered

At a time when user-generated content rules the web, everyone wants to be empowered to develop strategies previously limited to boardrooms in the executive suite. Employees want to be part of something meaningful and big, and they often surprise if given the opportunity.  NASA and PwC, hire some of the brightest people. Let’s give them a virtual seat in the boardroom and empower them to cultivate their own vision and contribute to the success of the organization.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Mitra M. Best is the U.S. Innovation Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, leading the disciplined approach to inspire, evaluate and implement innovative ideas across the organization with the critical mission to support the development of new services and market opportunities across industries. Mitra influences and advises PwC senior leaders on new ideas and approaches to organizational strategy, works with clients and third parties to foster open innovation, and promotes the PwC brand as an innovative leader in the marketplace. She joined PricewaterhouseCoopers in April 1999 in the Office of Global CIO, as marketer, technologist and strategist. Before being appointed as the Innovation Leader for the U.S firm, Mitra served at the Technology Leader for the PwC Knowledge Services Organization and Business Strategy Leader for the PwC Center for Advanced Research.

Prior to joining PwC, Mitra’s professional roles included Vice President, Business Development at BookMark Communications, and Founding Partner at Syntext, managing technology clients for a creative agency. She began her career as a software engineer and quickly moved into product and marketing strategy. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science & Linguistics from UCLA and a Graduate Management Certificate in Innovation & Strategy from MIT.

How to Get the Corporate Antibodies on Your Side

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Mitra Best for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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People often ask me why it’s so hard for big companies to be innovative. My answer is “corporate antibodies” — the people and processes that extinguish a new idea as soon as it begins to course through the organization.

Corporate antibodies are not just naysayers; they are necessary to protect the company from risk. When they attack an idea, it’s because they perceive that idea to be a foreign object trying to harm the stability of the organization. But that doesn’t mean innovation can’t happen, even in the biggest, most entrenched firm. It simply means that senior leaders need to prepare their antibody system not only to identify ideas that are too risky but to recognize the ones that will strengthen and grow the company.

Easy to say, of course.

At PwC, we learned a powerful lesson in how to engage our corporate antibodies. We learned it through our experience with an internal contest — “PowerPitch” — in which we challenged everyone in the firm to submit a business brief proposing our next $100 million opportunity. It was fun to bring our finalists to New York as if they were American Idol contestants ready for their close-ups. In the end though, the competition wasn’t about the flash and dazzle. It was a lesson in how to prime the organization to become an optimal environment for innovation to thrive — an effort that started a full year before the competition was held.

How did we do it? We began by lining up the biggest sponsor to champion the project, identifying the most powerful naysayers to help us mitigate the risks we were about to introduce, and then systematically recruiting our general management structure to do the real legwork.

[Here are the first two of several initiatives Mitra discusses.]

Getting the Big Gun on Board

We started at the top — by convincing PwC chairman Bob Moritz that he needed to lead the charge in a high-profile way. He manifested his support with two of the most potent weapons a chief executive has — empowerment and sponsorship.

By establishing the Innovation Office, and empowering me with resources to run it, he sent a crucial signal to the organization that innovation is on top of his agenda. By explicitly sponsoring the contest, he put his weight behind the initiative. He launched the contest through a companywide Webcast and reinforced the importance of innovation to the future of the organization through a series of e-mail communications. He was relying, he said, on absolutely every single person to participate. That got people going.

Getting the Naysayers to Join Us

It wasn’t hard to identify the most powerful corporate antibodies. They were the people whose job it is to worry about risks to the on-going organization — legal, risk management, finance, IT, and the brand team. To make them into allies, we held a series of highly personalized meetings in which we asked each person to use his or her core area of expertise to help us plan out the details of our PowerPitch initiative. For example, we sought the Office of General Counsel’s help in developing terms and conditions for the contest. We collaborated with our CFO to think through the budget and prize strategy. We engaged our brand team to help us increase the impact of the project through our newly launched visual identity.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

To check out Mitra’s other articles, please click here.

Mitra M. Best is the U.S. Innovation Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, leading the disciplined approach to inspire, evaluate and implement innovative ideas across the organization with the critical mission to support the development of new services and market opportunities across industries. Mitra influences and advises PwC senior leaders on new ideas and approaches to organizational strategy, works with clients and third parties to foster open innovation, and promotes the PwC brand as an innovative leader in the marketplace.