Strategic Blueprint for Building an Innovation Program: A Guide for CEOs and Board Members
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, innovation is not just a strategic advantage—it’s a necessity for sustained growth and competitive differentiation. At Hangar 75, we’ve developed a rigorous and systematic approach to crafting innovation programs that deliver outsized commercial returns and verifiable societal impacts. This guide outlines our comprehensive process, ensuring that every initiative is aligned with your organization’s strategic goals and delivers measurable outcomes that resonate at the highest levels of leadership.
Step 1: Define Strategic Outcomes
The foundation of any successful innovation program lies in a clear understanding of the desired outcomes—both commercial and societal.
Commercial Outcomes: We begin by collaborating with your executive team to identify specific, measurable commercial objectives, such as revenue growth, cost reduction, asset optimization, or customer expansion. Each objective is carefully aligned with the broader strategic imperatives of your organization, ensuring coherence with long-term business goals.
Societal Outcomes (SDG Aligned): Simultaneously, we identify societal outcomes aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Integrating SDGs into your innovation strategy ensures that your program contributes positively to global challenges, enhancing your corporate reputation and delivering stakeholder value.
Mechanisms for Measurement: To ensure accountability and transparency, we establish robust mechanisms for measuring both commercial and societal outcomes. This includes setting clear KPIs, benchmarks, and milestones that allow for real-time tracking and rigorous evaluation. These mechanisms provide your board with the data-driven insights needed to assess progress and make informed decisions.
Step 2: Establish Return Timelines
Understanding the time horizon for returns is critical for aligning the innovation program with corporate financial cycles and shareholder expectations.
Return Timelines: We work closely with your finance and strategy teams to determine the expected timeframes for realizing returns—whether within 1 year, 1-2 years, 2-3 years, or 3-5 years. This approach ensures that the innovation program is synchronized with your organization’s financial planning and reporting cycles, enabling clear communication with investors and stakeholders.
Strategic Fit: These timelines are not just about financial returns; they also consider the strategic alignment with your long-term vision. By defining when and how value will be realized, we help you manage expectations and maintain organizational momentum.
Step 3: Calculate Program Investment and ROI
A rigorous financial analysis is central to ensuring that the innovation program is both viable and impactful.
Target ROI and Investment: In collaboration with your CFO and finance team, we determine the total expected outcomes and calculate the necessary investment to achieve them. This involves a detailed financial model that outlines potential ROI, balancing the need for innovation with fiscal responsibility. The model is designed to withstand scrutiny from shareholders and auditors, ensuring that every dollar invested is aligned with your organization’s value creation goals.
Investment Justification: Beyond the numbers, we craft a compelling narrative that ties the investment to your broader corporate strategy, emphasizing the strategic rationale behind resource allocation to innovation.
Step 4: Design a Comprehensive Funding Strategy
Funding is often a critical barrier to innovation, but with the right strategy, it can become a catalyst for growth.
Funding Sources: We explore a range of funding options, from internal resources and joint ventures to external capital through sponsors, grants, investors, and donors. This diversified funding strategy is designed to mitigate risk and enhance the program’s financial sustainability, ensuring that innovation is supported by a solid financial foundation.
Capital Alignment: Each funding source is carefully aligned with the nature and objectives of the program. For instance, grants and donor contributions might be more suitable for socially-driven initiatives, while internal resources and joint ventures may be leveraged for commercially-focused projects.
Step 5: Audience and Program Design
The success of an innovation program hinges on its ability to engage the right audiences and deliver value across multiple dimensions.
Target Audiences: We segment your audience into internal and external stakeholders, identifying key groups such as employees, customers, suppliers, investors, recruits, experts, ventures, and brands. By tailoring the program to the needs and expectations of these groups, we ensure broad engagement and support, which are critical for the program’s success.
Program Types: Depending on your strategic goals, we select the most appropriate program types, whether competitions, incubators, accelerators, or think tanks. Each type is chosen to foster creativity, collaboration, and rapid execution, driving innovation from ideation to market impact.
Program Reach: The scope of the program is carefully defined—whether local, national, or global—based on your organization’s strategic priorities and market opportunities. This ensures that the innovation initiatives are scalable and capable of delivering impact at the desired level.
Step 6: Align with Brand and Audience
Innovation must resonate with both your brand values and your target audiences to be truly effective.
Program Themes: We help you define program themes that align with your brand’s core values and resonate with your target audiences. These themes could range from life stages and life events to education, employment, housing, well-being, finance, and social issues. By aligning the innovation initiatives with these themes, we ensure that they are not only relevant but also capable of driving deep, meaningful engagement.
Step 7: Define Support and Incentives
To foster participation and ensure the success of your innovation program, we design a comprehensive support structure for contributors.
Support Packages: We define a range of support packages, including mentorship, design, prototyping, engineering, marketing, access to space and equipment, networking opportunities, investment, revenue-sharing models, and prizes. These offerings are designed to attract top talent and ensure that participants are equipped to succeed, ultimately driving the program’s overall success.
Step 8: Risk Management and Contingency Planning
Innovation is inherently uncertain, and a robust risk management approach is crucial for navigating this uncertainty.
Risk Identification and Mitigation: We proactively identify potential risks—whether related to market dynamics, technological challenges, or regulatory changes—and develop strategies to mitigate these risks. This includes establishing risk thresholds and response plans to ensure that the program remains resilient and adaptable.
Contingency Planning: We create contingency plans for critical stages of the innovation process, allowing for pivots and adjustments without derailing the entire program. This flexibility ensures that resources are used efficiently and that the program can maintain momentum even when faced with unexpected challenges.
Step 9: Stakeholder Engagement and Communication Strategy
Sustained stakeholder engagement is essential for the long-term success of any innovation program.
Ongoing Stakeholder Engagement: We establish a structured engagement strategy that includes regular updates, feedback loops, and transparent communication with all relevant stakeholders, including employees, customers, investors, and partners. This ensures continuous alignment and support throughout the program’s lifecycle.
Change Management: Particularly in large organizations, innovation can disrupt existing processes and cultures. Our change management strategy addresses potential resistance, communicates the value of the program, and provides support to stakeholders through the transition. This helps embed innovation within the organizational culture and ensures that it is embraced rather than resisted.
Step 10: Cultural Alignment and Organizational Readiness
A successful innovation program requires not just strategic alignment but also cultural and organizational readiness.
Cultural Assessment: Before launching the program, we assess the organization’s culture to ensure it is conducive to innovation. This may involve preliminary steps to foster an innovation-friendly environment, such as leadership training, employee engagement initiatives, and incentives that reward innovative thinking.
Organizational Readiness: We also assess your organization’s readiness for innovation, identifying existing capabilities, resources, and processes that can be leveraged, as well as gaps that need to be addressed. This ensures that the program is tailored to your specific context and that necessary support structures are in place.
Step 11: Integration with Core Business Processes
Innovation programs must be integrated with core business processes to ensure sustainable impact.
Operational Integration: We ensure that innovation initiatives are not siloed but are instead integrated with your existing product development, marketing, and operational strategies. This ensures that the outcomes of the program are seamlessly incorporated into the broader business operations.
Scalability and Replication: We design the program with scalability in mind, allowing successful initiatives to be replicated across different parts of the organization or different markets. This maximizes the impact of the innovation program and enhances ROI.
Step 12: Leveraging External Ecosystems
External partnerships and open innovation are critical to expanding the impact of your innovation program.
External Partnerships: We identify opportunities for partnerships with external entities such as startups, universities, research institutions, and industry consortia. These partnerships can provide access to new ideas, technologies, and markets, as well as additional resources and expertise.
Open Innovation: We encourage open innovation, where your organization collaborates with external stakeholders to co-create solutions. This approach accelerates the innovation process and brings in diverse perspectives that can lead to breakthrough innovations.
Step 13: Continuous Learning and Feedback Loops
Innovation is an ongoing process that requires continuous learning and adaptation.
Learning and Development: We build continuous learning mechanisms into the program, including post-initiative reviews, learning sessions, and knowledge-sharing platforms. This ensures that the organization constantly improves its innovation capabilities and retains the knowledge gained from the program for future initiatives.
Feedback Mechanisms: We establish robust feedback loops, both within the program and with the broader organization, to inform ongoing adjustments and refinements. This allows the program to remain dynamic and responsive to internal and external changes.
Step 14: Ethics and Sustainability
Innovation must be pursued with a strong commitment to ethical practices and sustainability.
Ethical Considerations: We develop a framework for ethical decision-making within the innovation program, particularly when dealing with emerging technologies or sensitive societal issues. This ethical framework ensures that your innovation initiatives are not only legally compliant but also aligned with your organization’s values and social responsibilities. By proactively addressing potential ethical concerns, we help protect your brand’s reputation and build trust with stakeholders.
Sustainability: Beyond just aligning with SDGs, we embed sustainability into the core of your innovation strategy. This includes considering the environmental impact of new products, services, and processes from the outset. By integrating sustainable practices, we future-proof your organization against regulatory changes and shifting consumer preferences, ensuring that your innovation efforts contribute to long-term environmental stewardship as well as commercial success.
Step 15: Post-Program Integration and Commercialization
To maximize the impact of your innovation program, it’s crucial to plan for what happens after the formal program ends.
Commercialization Strategy: We work with your business development, marketing, and sales teams to create a clear strategy for how successful innovations will be integrated into the broader business and brought to market. This includes detailed plans for product launch, scaling, and market penetration, ensuring that innovations are not just theoretical exercises but practical solutions that drive business growth.
Post-Program Support: To sustain the momentum of successful initiatives, we provide ongoing support beyond the program’s conclusion. This might include incubation support, access to additional funding, market access strategies, or continued mentorship. By offering this extended support, we help ensure that innovations reach their full potential and deliver lasting value to your organization.
Conclusion: A Holistic Approach to Innovation
By following this comprehensive process, Hangar 75 ensures that your innovation program is strategically aligned, financially sound, and capable of delivering transformative results. This approach addresses not only the immediate objectives of innovation but also the broader strategic, cultural, and operational contexts in which your organization operates.
Our holistic methodology is designed to resonate with CEOs, CFOs, and board members by providing a clear, data-driven roadmap that balances innovation with risk management, stakeholder engagement, and sustainable growth. We are committed to partnering with you to build and execute an innovation program that drives measurable, sustainable success—positioning your organization as a leader in both commercial excellence and societal impact.
We look forward to collaborating with you on this journey of transformation.
For further information on Hangar 75:
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