It’s thrilling to see the rise of innovation teams and open innovation techniques over the past few years. The shifting focus of corporate innovation aligned with technology trends, with the enterprise devouring technology to stay one step ahead of the curve.

To understand corporate innovation better, it’s valuable to understand what companies are looking to achieve out of their innovation programs. While objectives may vary according to the industry you’re operating in and your own business objectives, there are a few overarching goals that are common for everyone in the corporate innovation world.

Reduce the Gap

Corporate innovation teams are tasked with studying the technological landscape and identifying areas where the enterprise is falling behind. Reducing the gap between existing platforms and new technologies is a proven method of staying competitive and relevant. This is done either through internal development or partnerships and/or acquisitions of key players in the start-up space.

Track the Opportunity Pipeline

By having teams following and identifying new trends, the enterprise can reach opportunities before any of their closest competitors. This allows new product development and internal technology movement to be led by quantifiable information. It's no secret that corporate innovation teams now have global presence to take advantage of new emerging technologies.

Fresh Ideas

Looking at an industry from a third-party perspective can shed an immense amount of light, bringing to the front certain information that may have overlooked before. A successful corporate innovation program identifies new sources of ideas that are relevant (and in some cases, not relevant) to specific industries and verticals.

Accelerate Internal Adoption

Assigning a team dedicated to innovation, rather than have multiple teams innovate in their own free time, accelerates the spread of the innovative mindset through an organization. These teams can help bringing multiple stakeholders on-board to quicken the process of executing new ideas and processes for a company.

Stay Relevant

Most important of them all - the combination of the above helps large corporations thrive in the new digital era, without having to worry about being made redundant by a dynamic technology being developed by a small company operating on the other side of the world.

The most important part of an innovation program is to develop an innovative mindset and help it grow across the enterprise.