Adopting Innovation

As an entrepreneur for most of my adult life, I have always been passionate about building new products and bringing them to life. And when I look back over the last decade, it is safe to say, the most fulfilling moments for me have always been seeing the adoption of our product and services by some of the largest and most innovative companies in the world.

When I joined Ipsos, as a founding member of the Global Innovation Practice, it felt very familiar to me in many ways. We were experimenting with technologies, building and releasing new products, and working with clients to adopt these approaches. However, when we launched Ipsos SMX (Social Media Exchange) there was one new very real challenge that I had yet to face – the challenge of driving internal adoption throughout a mature organization.

When I review the 2014 GRIT results it is clear that the challenge of internal adoption is still a major factor preventing our industry from aligning with client expectations. This certainly is not due to a lack of interest or commitment to drive innovation, but due to the nature of our business, and the expectation of our clients for predictable results.

Thus, as an industry, the question I think we have to answer, is what do we, especially the large global providers, have to do to accelerate the adoption of innovations? Following are the three lessons that I have found to be the most helpful.

1. We must create champions at every level of the organization, especially among those responsible for developing solutions with our clients.

2. We must remember that technology is a tool, not the solution, and focus on how technology can help evolve our current product offerings and methodologies.

3. We must accept that new innovations can potentially impact or cannibalize our existing business, and that this is necessary to evolve as an industry.

I realize point three is not always easy for large organizations, however, to achieve adoption and drive scalable change this must be acknowledged and accepted across the organization. Otherwise, we run the risk of not meeting our client’s needs.

The good news, and we are seeing this first-hand within Ipsos SMX, is that our business leaders are not only interested in creating products that integrate social approaches, but truly see this as the future. Thus, as we continue to develop offerings with our specialisms around community and the integration of social data we continue to see our business grow, while meeting our clients’ expectations.