Away with Innovation Labs, innovation must get into the heads of all employees!

The pressure to innovate is increasing

Many larger companies now have a so-called Innovation Lab, internally or even externally. In these, employees or external persons are busy finding new ideas and/or implementing new ideas. Not only do large companies now have their own Inno Labs, but SMEs are also starting to set up their own innovation workshops. The approach is plausible and positive, provided that you position an Innovation Lab correctly. Because creativity and innovation should be able to originate and be promoted in the minds of all employees.

Global competition and digitization are forcing companies to constantly adapt, develop new business models and quickly find new things. Inno Labs should generate new ideas and produce the next big innovations. However, it can often be observed that they are very distant from the company and are deliberately kept out of sight. This is certainly an advantage for creativity and efficient work, but it can become an enormous obstacle to successful innovations. Because of the distance, there is often a lack of connection to the core of the company, knowledge of existing business models and a common vision. If new ideas are generated using design thinking or other agile methods, the company itself, current business models, customers, services, the customer journey, etc. must not be ignored. Focusing primarily on new ideas in the Inno Lab would not be profitable in the medium and long term and would lead to disappointment at the latest when it comes to implementation, integration into the company and marketing.

• Focusing too much on the fact that the Inno Lab is responsible for innovations and ignores the other large entirety can result in employees who do not work in the Inno Lab becoming demotivated and losing valuable innovative potential and remaining unused.
• If “new things” are primarily sought and existing products, processes, services and problems are ignored, this can result in many new ideas being created, but these do not “help”, do not “fit”, cannot be implemented or are too far away from the company.

All in all, it is easy to run the risk that exactly these ideas, which could be the next successful innovation, may be missing. Creativity and brainstorming should not be outsourced purely to an Innovation Lab, as this affects the entire organization and every single employee in the company.

Innovation labs for implementing ideas

In our opinion, an Innovation Lab is, among other things, useful and targeted when it is located further back in the innovation process. As soon as ideas have been generated and evaluated and an idea can be worked out in detail — concept, design, PoC, business model, business case calculation, MVP and implementation. This requires “space”, resources, an environment away from day-to-day business and creative minds who can free their heads for new things. At this point, the potential of an Innovation Lab can be optimally used and employees can focus on implementing ideas. It is more promising and sustainable to start and generate ideas directly in the company and outsource the development and implementation to an Innovation Lab.