Gaining Leadership Backing for Your Innovations

This article is part of our exclusive career advice series in partnership with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society. Imagine this: You have a strong idea for a new product for your company. Your coworkers encourage you to move forward because they believe it could be the organization’s next big success. The idea clearly falls outside your department’s responsibilities, however, and you have no role in the product line. What should you do? Sit and wait for “the right group” to pick it up, or push the idea forward without knowing how or what it might mean for your current position? Such situations occur frequently. Many end up as missed opportunities, even though they could have significantly advanced the company’s technological or market position. Some organizations actively support such initiatives, allocating specific periods during the workday for employees to focus on developing their own ideas. Companies known for that include Google and 3M. They allow employees to pursue projects with a portion of their time, such as one day per week. Research that I conducted indicates it pays off for employee performance. Bootlegging and skunkworks At some companies, managers know such projects exist, but they deliberately turn a blind eye, allowing them to continue. Some employees persist through bootlegging or skunkworks projects. Bootlegging projects have not been approved by a manager or funded by the company. Skunkworks projects involve a small team within the company that has been given authority and funding to secretly research and develop potentially groundbreaking innovations during their off-hours. The term comes from Lockheed’s Skunk Works division, set up in 1943 in a rented circus tent to build the P-80 fighter jet in secret. It took just 143 days. The 3M Post-it Note came out of the company’s “15 percent culture,” described as a permitted bootlegging policy. It gives employees paid time off to pursue their own ideas. The company traces the philosophy to its longtime president and later chairman William L. McKnight. Company scientist Arthur Fry used the policy in 1974 to turn a colleague’s dormant adhesive into the first Post-it prototypes, after his own bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal. There are several examples of high-visibility skunkworks projects. At Apple, Steve Jobs pulled roughly 20 people—pirates, as he called them—out of the company to build the original Macintosh computer in a building nicknamed Texaco Towers. In Walter Isaacson’s biography Steve Jobs, he frames the idea as modeled on the skunkworks approach. Google’s Gmail system is frequently—and incorrectly—cited as a product of the company’s “20% time” policy. In a 2014 interview with Time magazine, the system’s creator, Paul Buchheit, said Gmail was in fact an official assignment. What the Gmail incubation did share with classic skunkworks projects was secrecy: For much of its three years in development, it was kept hidden from most people inside the company. If you want to drive change in your organization, build a promoter triad around your idea. At Alphabet, Google X—now known simply as X—operated as a secretive “moonshot” lab, kept hidden from most Google employees, according to a 2011 article in The New York Times. Google’s self-driving car project graduated from X to become Waymo, and Google Glass was likewise incubated there. The X team is now developing the second edition of Glass Enterprise, a successor aimed at industrial rather than consumer use. Amazon runs a comparable model through Lab126, which, according to an article in Fast Company, evolved from a small skunkworks Amazon subsidiary into a hardware maker with nearly 3,000 employees. Lab126 delivered the Kindle in 2007 and the Echo in 2015. Then there are so-called submarine projects, which employees work on without permission and despite explicit disapproval. They can lead to disciplinary action and termination. Innovation management Innovation management theory offers a more structured and robust approach. It argues that successful organizational change requires support at several levels, according to “Teamwork for Innovation: The ‘Troika’ of Promoters,” published in R&D Management. The promoter theory, developed around 25 years ago, consistently shows that change projects are far more likely to succeed when they are supported on multiple organizational levels. A good idea alone is not enough; you need a network of technology, process, and power promoters to turn a concept into a fully implemented, scalable solution. First, you need a technology promoter: the person who has the idea, such as a new product, and possesses technical expertise and specific knowledge about the field or industry. Art Fry at 3M would be such an individual. How can you put that into practice as an individual? Start by clearly formulating your idea into a concise concept paper or one-page summary including benefits, technical feasibility, and potential business impact. Identify potential technology promoters (experts who can validate and refine your idea), and approach them early to strengthen the technical foundation. In parallel, map the relevant stakeholders and decision-makers, and identify process promoters who understand how decisions are made in your company. They could be colleagues in innovation, R&D, or business development who understand your idea and how it can benefit the company. The second is a process promoter: someone who might not know all the technical details but understands the organization’s formal and informal networks and knows how to navigate its processes, committees, and decision-making paths. This person can ensure the idea reaches the right stakeholders at the right time. In the 3M case, it would be a person from the organizational management department, often called an innovation manager. The key role here is to connect inventors such as Fry with people from other departments needed for further project development, such as manufacturing, quality control, and sales. Lastly, there’s the power promoter: a person in a leadership position who might not know the technical details but can allocate resources, eliminate obstacles, and maneuver through the company’s political dynamics. This individual has hierarchical power and acts as a sponsor of the idea or project. In the case of Fry, the person could be, say, the chief technology officer, but it also could be a middle manager who has the power for an individual field of action. The three-level promoter structure applies regardless of whether the change concerns a new product, new service, or internal process innovation. Engage potential power promoters by presenting a low-risk, small-scale pilot and a clear value proposition. Leaders are more likely to support ideas that are well prepared, vetted for potential risks, and backed by a small coalition. Building the promoter triad In short, don’t work in isolation. Systematically build alliances across expertise, networks, and hierarchical levels to create lasting change. If you want to drive change in your organization, build a promoter triad around your idea. The tech experts and leadership promoters are easier to identify. Process promoters are often found in corporate innovation management, R&D management, or strategy functions, but they also can emerge in line units with strong internal networks. Innovation management, as the promoter model describes it, looks nothing like the management structure most engineers are trained to expect. Traditional technical management runs on a single reporting line. With the promoter model, influence is spread across three people—technology, process, and power promoters—who may be in different departments, at different levels of seniority, and who might never share a reporting line. What holds the trio together isn’t a formal structure; it’s the idea itself, for as long as it takes to move the idea forward. That makes innovation management closer to networked, matrix-style leadership than to the pyramid most engineers picture when they hear the word management. It’s worth understanding both models before you decide which kind of impact you’re actually optimizing for. The Institute has covered the tension from the individual’s side in “Tips for How to Think Like an Entrepreneur,” “Management Versus Technical Track,” both published in partnership with the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society, and “What to Consider Before You Accept a Management Role” from the IEEE Spectrum Career Alert newsletter. All are worth a look if you’re weighing a formal management track against staying close to the technology itself. Remember: You don’t have to build your promoter network alone or only inside your own company. IEEE societies, sections and chapters, and technical committees, as well as the networking platform IEEE Collabratec, function as a ready-made cross-company network. They are practical places to find technology promoters with deep expertise in a field you don’t fully own yet, or to meet process and power promoters at other organizations who have built a promoter coalition around a similar idea. For more tips on how to advance your career, check out our Career Advice for Engineers, From Engineers collection. - Navigating the Pivot From Tech Expert to Organizational Leader › - Tips for How to Think Like an Entrepreneur › - How to Gain Footing in AI as the Ground Keeps Shifting › Alexander Brem is editor in chief of IEEE Engineering Management Review, a professor at the University of Stuttgart, in Germany, and an entrepreneur.