An Interview with Adam, Chief Innovation Officer

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, the concept of corporate innovation has become increasingly pivotal for companies aiming to stay competitive and relevant. Embracing new technologies, refining processes, and fostering a startup-like agility are all part of this transformative journey. To delve deeper into what corporate innovation entails, we sat down with Adam Walker, our Chief Innovation Officer. His insights shed light on the essence of corporate innovation, its benefits, challenges, and the strategic advantage of outsourcing innovation efforts.

Hi, I'm Adam.

I'm the Chief Innovation Officer at Rocketmakers, which means I work with new and emerging technologies and try to help businesses find ways to use them.

What is Corporate Innovation?

So corporate innovation is the idea of bigger corporations trying to behave more like a startup. Whether that's introducing new technologies or developing new apps that might help you pursue a new idea. The Corporate Innovation Guidebook tries to help put that into realistic terms. So for your organisation, there are going to be tips for your specific market vertical, how you could look at maybe adapting new practices, training your team, hiring new people, whatever that might look like, and to help you kind of get started with it.

What are some of the benefits of Corporate Innovation?

So some of the benefits of Corporate Innovation are that it lets you experiment in new areas that your traditional software stack or other practices might not let you do. Especially if you're a large business, you probably have some form of legacy software, legacy process. But by using Corporate Innovation, it means you can take a small team or a third party and have them look at maybe one facet of your business and work out how you can do things in a new and different way, potentially by using new technologies. I think it's something that you kind of just know. So you feel that some processes might be slower than they need to be. You might have seen a new piece of software or read about a new piece of technology and all the wonderful benefits that you can bring to big companies, like accelerating certain things or that kind of thing. So I think there isn't a fixed time for every business because it kind of changes, but I think you just know when it's time to start experimenting.

What are the challenges of Corporate Innovation?

So some of the challenges I guess that you might find are typically when you have teams maintaining or working on old systems, old processes or technologies, they know it very well and change is scary to everyone, so trying to implement something which is radically different can be quite hard. When you're a small company, a startup, it's easier because you have fewer established things in place and staff are still new and you're still experimenting with different things. So yeah, one of the challenges I guess is what we call red tape. So it's getting things approved, getting the right kind of sign off, getting your team on board, and that can cause quite a lot of friction I think. So by doing it in kind of a more isolated way or research and development type focus, you can help hopefully get around these things a little bit.

What are the advantages of outsourcing Corporate Innovation?

One of the advantages of trying to take this to a third party like Rocketmakers is that we work with both startups and corporates, so we get the benefit of having both of those sets of experiences. Our founders are ex-Microsoft, so very familiar with the way of working in larger organisations, and how you can get technical roadblocks and things like that. And allowing a third party like ourselves to do this for you means that you can have your core team focus on your day-to-day business practices. So there's no downtime, there's no diversion of focus on whatever your other strategies might be at the time. But you can work with us, think of us as an extension of your team, which will help work to understand how you work at the moment. And try and think about how we can apply different technology, different ideas to try and move things forward, I guess, in a productive way, without having to sidetrack your day-to-day business.

In Summary
As Adam says, corporate innovation is not just about adopting new technologies but about fostering a mindset that encourages experimentation and agility within organisations. While challenges like resistance to change and bureaucratic hurdles are inevitable, the benefits—such as accelerated growth, enhanced competitiveness, and breakthrough advancements—far outweigh them. By embracing external expertise through outsourcing, companies can effectively navigate these challenges while maintaining focus on their core operations. Ultimately, corporate innovation isn't just a buzzword; it's a strategic imperative for businesses looking to thrive in a dynamic marketplace.