Why there is so much more to innovation than just having a good idea

Decarbonisation, productivity, digitalisation – there are so many factors driving change in the infrastructure and construction sector and many people look to innovation teams to solve all these issues. Yet, developing a new approach to existing problems and making that idea become business as usual is not as simple as it may seem.

Anni Huovinen is a senior strategic advisory consultant at Mott MacDonald

Lack of understanding around how to maximise innovation in the sector could be part of what is holding it back from nurturing new thinking to bring about transformational change.

Creating funding for innovation and a team to work on it is only the starting point – understanding how investment will bring value, and when that will happen, is critical. The return on investment in developing new ways of working often takes time to be realised, so it may not fit with financial years or infrastructure funding cycles, plus it may not be immediate but increase gradually over time too.

To help explore barriers faced in bringing alternative solutions into the mainstream, Mott MacDonald brought together innovation leaders from a number of major infrastructure clients for a workshop. The difference was that everyone came together to play a board game but rather than one you might play as a family at Christmas, this one is based on the innovation management standard ISO 56002:2019.

Despite the work-focus of the game, the teams who played the Year in Innovation game had fun while exploring some serious issues. Through the game, the teams examined the impact of their decisions to invest in various capabilities on the overall ability of an organisation to develop new ideas, build resilience, realise value and progress ideas at pace. In principle, they explored how to build a balanced innovation management system.

The game took the teams through a year in innovation planning and investment and each month they could choose what to do with the funding and resources they had available. Cards dealt to them along the way either boosted their efforts or threw hazards in their path, much like they would face in real life.

One of the first choices the teams had to make was whether to prioritise developing a strong pipeline of ideas or work on pushing fewer of them through the system faster. They also had to consider when and how to build resilience to external pressures to ensure their innovation wasn’t stifled.

While the people who took part work in innovation day in, day out, the game play stimulated some interesting debate around what the right approach was to deliver the maximum value.

One of the main issues raised was around how innovation is valued – should it be on the number of ideas brought forward or the financial benefit delivered? Consensus seemed to be that the return on investment is the ultimate measure but that is the final output and lots must happen along the way and over a considerable length of time to realise that. Also, the value created by innovation is not instantaneous and can be spread over a number of years, which is why many felt that long term supply chain agreements are the best way to foster innovation and reap the rewards it brings.

Through playing the game, the teams saw the benefit of creating a platform for innovation before building a pipeline of ideas and moving some through the development process more quickly before building resilience.

Nonetheless, there were still questions about how much focus should be placed on risk management for innovation to still flourish despite hazards such as market, regulatory and technological risks which can disrupt the innovation process. Part of resolving this comes from who owns the innovation and there was a general agreement that this should lie with the directorate and not the innovation team. There should also be someone within the directorate that acts as innovation champion to help ensure everyone is engaged with progressing new ideas.

Part of ensuring innovation isn’t siloed and everyone is on board with its ambitions is creating a common language, which is the ambition of one of the guidance documents in the ISO 56000 family. The role a common language can play in removing blockers to innovation was underlined by a discussion around the impact procurement can have.

The innovation specialists at the workshop agreed that trying to define innovation can be a blocker in itself but procurement teams often try to “put it into a box” in order for it to fit with their processes. One solution to this challenge put forward was to create an “innovation passport” that clearly presents the problem, need, objectives, success criteria and risks of an innovation. This approach would take the procurement team – and other parts of a supply chain – on a journey with the innovation and creates a licence to innovate.

The key takeaways from the exchange on procurement was the need to engage earlier with the supply chain and potential users of new ideas with a focus on outcomes.

From the conversations during and after the event, it is clear that there is a need for the infrastructure industry to take a more systemic approach to innovation. This needs to be combined with considering the whole end-to-end journey from initial problem statement though to deploying solutions at scale as one journey with multiple stakeholder groups collaborating to make this journey as smooth as possible.

The need to improve delivery of major projects has been placed under the spotlight by government, particularly with the planned merger of the National Infrastructure Commission and Infrastructure and Projects Authority. Without bringing forward new ideas effectively, it will be impossible to make this step change which underlines the need for everyone in the supply chain to fully understand and value the innovation process.