11 Things I Learned Building an Innovation Program - Innovation Training

Waterton, a private equity-backed investment manager and property management firm, launched a corporate innovation initiative two years ago, kick-started by their Director of Project Management Eric Potter. He offers 11 pieces of advice to those considering starting an innovation lab, from gaining executive buy-in to managing expectations, using purpose-built innovation management tools, and ensuring that communication plans are well designed. Start-ups can help de-risk an innovation program and partnerships with accelerators come with many benefits. It's essential to have a professionally diverse group of thinkers on board who can ask the tough questions and to avoid a sunk-cost bias by evaluating each project honestly.