How do you start with innovation?

There are four ways to determine how innovation begins:

1. The classic approach is top-down. It is determined in the organizational strategy, where a board member or manager has an idea, technology or problem that is addressed with innovation.
2. In a mature innovation-oriented organization, themes are determined in which innovation is stimulated. This is not just top-down or bottom-up, but rather integrated into the natural course of events within the organization. There are various ways to stimulate innovation within these themes, such as accelerator programs and regular roadshows. Perhaps every employee even has the opportunity to work on something new or different from time to time. A well-known example of this is Google, where the well-known email program Gmail originated from this 20% era.
3. Another approach is bottom-up, which mainly focuses on the executive employee and asks where and how innovation can take place. A good example of this is the police Q-labs.
4. The final way to start innovation is by looking at external trends. A lot has happened in recent decades that inspires every organization to innovate. Choose a technology and do an application exploration. The SVB has done this with Generative AI. Inspired by the rapid growth of generative AI, they investigate how and where they can use this technology to innovate their existing services.

Ultimately, reality will be a combination of the above approaches. This depends on the innovation culture and maturity of the organization, the moment and the size of the problem or opportunity.

In other words, this is the beginning of innovation. Some ideas don't move forward due to the combination of factors mentioned earlier, but some ideas do move forward. Do you have an idea? Then keep working on it! Do you hear an idea? Make sure it gets to the right people and don't hesitate to help push this idea. Is the idea not taken up? Please try again later, possibly with a different story or a stronger problem definition. Perhaps it is better aligned with the organizational strategy. Persistence and evidence increase the chance of success.