the questionWhy do good internal ideas stall somewhere between the demo day and the budget meeting?
Build the environment where employees can innovate, and help the promising projects make it through.
Two kinds of work, connected. Intrapreneurship consulting builds the framework. Incubation and venture support helps individual teams move through it.
for Innovation leaders, program managers, HR and transformation leaders, and internal teams with a promising project
(the jargon)innovation theater(what we will actually do)a clear path to an executive decision, with a date
my working framework
From an idea to organizational impact
This is the framework I work with. Not every initiative moves through it in the same order, but most stall at one of these stages.
- 1/5Idea
- 2/5Experiment
- 3/5Evidence
- 4/5Sponsor
- 5/5Scale
Sponsor means an executive's commitment: resources, budget, and responsibility for the decision.
for program managers
Design the environment around employees who lead new initiatives.
- Designing or improving intrapreneurship programs
- Intake, selection, support, and what happens after the demo day.
- Building pathways from idea to proof of value and executive backing
- Clear stages, clear criteria, clear decisions.
- Improving how innovation is managed and decided
- Who decides, on what evidence, and how often.
- Creating ways to secure executive backing and budget
- So promising work meets the people who can fund and protect it.
- Supporting innovation leaders and program managers
- The people running the system, not only the people in it.
- Connecting employee innovation to business priorities
- Innovation connected to the organization's business goals.
A promising idea is not yet an organizational outcome.
for project teams
Help a promising project move beyond experimentation.
- Sharpening the problem and value proposition
- What changes for whom, and why it matters to the business.
- Identifying users, sponsors, and stakeholders
- Who needs to approve, who can help, and who may raise obstacles.
- Defining evidence and validation plans
- The smallest test that would change a sponsor's mind.
- Connecting the project to business outcomes
- Impact framed in the organization's own business measures.
- Preparing pitches for executive backing and decision materials
- A decision an executive can make in one meeting.
- Navigating internal barriers
- Procurement, information security, legal counsel, and the politics nobody writes down.
- Building a practical path toward adoption and scale
- From the team that built it to an organization that uses it.
formats
How it works
- Program design engagement
- Assess, design, or redesign an intrapreneurship or incubation program with its managers.
- Cohort support
- Support a group of internal teams through the program cycle.
- Project acceleration
- Focused sessions with one team preparing for an executive decision.
- Sponsor and leader sessions
- Help the executives who evaluate innovation initiatives and decide on investment do it well.
how to begin
Tell me where your innovation process gets stuck.
Too few ideas, too many pilots, or promising projects that never reach a decision? The answer decides whether we start with the program or with a team.