Corporate innovation efforts at large companies often lack a clear mission Recently, more and more companies are setting up a Corporate Innovation Unit (CIU) or similar responsibilities attached to other titles … … however, in many situations the CIU’s role is unclear and lacks a framework to design its future state and its efforts At the European Center for Strategic Innovation (ECSI), we have researched on the role of successful Corporate Innovation Units across various industries Drawing on our research and consulting work, we have developed a framework that breaks the CIU’s mission down into some specific roles – or “jobs” – and provides a way to decide on what role to play, or not, and how

1. The roles of a Corporate
Innovation Unit
ECSI’s framework
June 22th 2017

2. 2
§ Corporate innovation efforts at large companies often lack a clear mission
§ Recently, more and more companies are setting up a Corporate Innovation Unit (CIU)
or similar responsibilities attached to other titles …
§ … however, in many situations the CIU’s role is unclear and lacks a framework to
design its future state and its efforts
§ At the European Center for Strategic Innovation (ECSI), we have researched on the
role of successful Corporate Innovation Units across various industries
§ Drawing on our research and consulting work, we have developed a framework that
breaks the CIU’s mission down into some specific roles – or “jobs” – and provides a
way to decide on what role to play, or not, and how
Source: A. Di Fiore, "A Chief Innovation Officer's Actual Responsibilities", Harvard Business Review, November 2014
At ECSI, we have developed a framework to help Corporate
define mandate and roles for an Innovation Unit

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SCOPE OF CORPORATE INNOVATION
UNITS & INITIATIVESRoutineDiscontinuous
INNOVATIONTYPE
Insight/concept Launch & deployment
STAGE SUPPORT
Product development
Our research shows that best practices focus their Corporate
efforts on the upper left of the matrix

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Fit with existing technical & organizational capabilities
Builds on Our Competences Breaks From Our Competences
Fitwithexistingbusinessmodel
FitsDoesNotFit
Routine
Disruptive
Breakthrough
Architectural
“HOME FIELD
ADVANTAGE”
Source: Professor Gary Pisano, Harvard Business School. ECSI and ECSI Consulting collaborate with Gary Pisano on research and consulting
Discontinuous innovation is fragile during the early stage, when
internal enemies tend to kill or scale back innovations

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Why do innovations so often find their biggest enemies in their
own company?
INTERNAL
ENEMIES OF
INNOVATION
4. Incumbent culture
and business
model
1. Strategic and
External Analysis
2. Resource
Allocation
Processes
§ Benchmarking
§ Market research
quantitative protocols
§ Planning and budgeting
§ Capex process
§ Stage gate criteria
3. Internally
Oriented
Organizations
§ Existing assets and
competencies
§ Culture
§ Product oriented organizations
§ Short term goals and MBOs
§ Metrics

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§ Under pressure to run the day-to-day business and deliver profits, BUs instinctively
reject innovation initiatives that are not contributing to their short term goal
• MBOs and reward system
• Metrics
• Financial pressures
§ Driven by a result-oriented culture, most BU executives focus on short-term profit-
bearing efforts that don’t allow for taking much risk (risk averse culture, quantitative
and financially driven)
§ BUs are usually organized around products (product managers, product budgets and
goals, product marketing plans, etc) which makes difficult to dedicate attention
outside existing markets and product lines
Internal enemies of innovation are stronger in the BUs

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§ Based on our research findings, Corporate adds more value when is focusing on
Discontinuous Innovation
§ This is where the BUs usually do a bad job (or don’t do the job at all)
§ On the contrary, when Corporate decides to play a role on routine innovation, it
usually ends up overlapping with what BUs already do pretty well
§ Corporate focus should be on supporting Discontinuous Innovations in its early
stage
• When the proof of concept is done – thanks also to the role of Corporate – then the risk lowers
significantly and most likely the BUs wants to enter in the game …
• … and invest on the development process (i.e. the downward steps of the stage gate) which they
usually do quite well
This is why Corporate should play a role on Discontinuous
Innovation and counterbalance the natural killing instinct of BUs

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1. Identify new
market spaces
2. Help people
generate ideas
3. Fund early stage
initiatives
4. Support BUs in
new initiatives
5.
Incubate/accelerate
start-ups
6. Support best
practices
7. Develop skills
8. Provide overall
governance
Samsung Corning
§ In the last 3 years ECSI Consulting has
conducted research on Corporate Innovation
Units and Innovation Initiatives
§ ECSI’s research has been published with
articles on Harvard Business Review, Rotman
Management Magazine and the London School
of Economics
§ The sample covers companies of different
sectors (e.g. Corning, Samsung, P&G, GE,
Intuit, J&J)
§ We identified a set of best practices and
developed an analytical framework based on
key “roles”
ECSI research “8 roles” framework
ECSI’s research and framework
Companies put a different emphasis on the roles according to their context and business goals

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The roles Innovation Management Unit can play
Roles Description
1. Identify new market
spaces
Exploration of trends and needs using quantitative and explorative methods. Eco-system and holistic
view of the landscape and mapping of the emerging opportunities/search fields
2. Help people generate
ideas
Provide a center of excellence support to the overall company’s idea generation (internally and
externally), providing expertise, methodological skills and support to run idea generation processes on
dedicated platforms
3. Fund early stage
initiatives
Own and allocate resources to fund internal “homeless ideas” which do not have a budget and/or a
clear organizational owner, in order to bring them from the idea to the proof of concept stage
4. Support innovation
projects
Support highly strategic and potentially disruptive projects across the company with a pool of experts,
who act like facilitators/coaches with innovation methodology skills
5. Incubate/accelerate
start-ups
Develop educational and funding programs, as well as facilities and services to help external startup
companies in the incubation and/or acceleration stage
6. Support best practices
Set up systems and processes for scouting, standardization and dissemination of selected innovation
methodologies and best practices
7. Develop skills
Train the organization personnel on the above best practices and methodologies by setting a wide-
spread skill-up and training initiative. Design and coordinate a community of practitioners/experts
across the company
8. Provide innovation
governance
Ensure a clear process and rules to steer and coordinate the portfolio through the stages of
development (from exploration to ideation, experimentation and hand over to the Businesses)

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Thank you!
Contact: adifiore@ecsi-consulting.com
Follow: @alexdifiore