Who is this guide for?
Your corporate suits will experience the thrill to work in multidisciplinary internal startup teams, and we’ll guide you from idea to investment pitch.
- Innovation initiatives are scattered in our organization.
- Our entrepreneurial people get no real support from us.
- Innovation should not only start from R&D projects.
- We need a structured process to guide our innovation teams.
This guide provides a full program & tools to launch your own corporate innovation accelerator.
Typical challenges to tackle:
5 must-know insights from this playbook
1. A 4-6 months journey to guide in-house startups from idea to executive pitch.
The goal of our corporate innovation accelerator program (or startup accelerator program) is to embrace innovation in a structural way within your business strategy. We aim to help companies by creating and supporting corporate venture teams (corporate startups) that are developing new business concepts outside of the core business, within a short period of time.
The biggest difference with shorter innovation programs is the fact that you give teams the chance to structurally incorporate a new mindset and methodology to execute radically new ideas.
2. Scope your accelerator program.
A business accelerator program should focus on mid- to long-term opportunities. The long-term goals of an organization are generally more ‘high level’ in comparison to the shorter term objectives. To make sure the results of the accelerator meet the long-term goals, all relevant decision-makers should be aligned on what (not) to expect as a potential result.
3. Start building on your first ideas after diverse out of the box creativity rounds.
In our diverse creativity rounds, we opt for exercises that perfectly play upon participants out-of-the-box mindset and activities that get the creative juices flowing without embarrassing or making the people involved feel silly.
Afterward, it’s the challenge to build further on first ideas. Don’t be afraid to smart copy innovative ideas, 80% of the ‘new ideas’ come from analogy thinking. You’ll find some tips & tricks on how to further elaborate on these ideas.
4. Validate the problem you're solving & prototype your solution.
You have to validate the problem you’re trying to solve. It might seem like the most obvious step of all, but you’d be amazed at how many people skip it. No matter how confident you are in your product idea, you first need to figure out whether the problem is a real one that needs solving.
If that is the case you obviously want to create a solution that is desirable, feasible, and viable. And this is where solution prototyping comes in to test and iterate on all parts of the solution presented.
5. Explore new business models & pitch your idea for investment.
Now it’s time to define the manner by which your enterprise will deliver value to your customers, entices customers to pay for value and converts those payments to profit.
If you’ve trickled that all down, you should be ready to pitch for investment for the C-level and the innovation lead of your company. Good luck!