Product Overview

L Marks (an innovation consultancy firm) has been hired by client Karitus (a global conglomerate) to help Karitus structure and launch Project Elite, an internal innovation program. One objective of Project Elite is to spur cultural change within Karitus by motivating and incentivizing as many employees as possible across the globe to come up with new business ideas. The case describes the process by which L Marks assists Karitus in establishing Project Elite—setting up the structures for Karitus to source ideas from across the company and to effectively screen those that seem the most promising. Project Elite is one manifestation of an “innovation funnel”: an initiative that widely sources many ideas and whittles them down to the few most promising projects through a series of screening phases. The case dilemma centers around Demo Day, the final phase of Project Elite, where 11 ideas from across the company will be presented to global senior executives who will then select the final 4, which will receive prototype funding. The 11 ideas vary widely: They touch on many different topics; they each focus on different geographic markets; some are more incremental (safe) and others more radical (risky) in nature; and so forth. The L Marks team members need to consider whether they should provide senior executives with guidance around selection (especially considering the tension between investing in safer “wins” that could move the needle on corporate culture versus in riskier “bets” that have the potential to build new business), and, if so, what kind of guidance they should give. This case has been taught in a second-year MBA elective at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business titled “Managing Innovation,” which focuses on the process of innovation: idea generation and sourcing, project selection and prioritization, and execution. It is used as the first case in the course as an introduction to corporate innovation and structuring the corporate innovation funnel—especially regarding sourcing ideas from inside and outside the organization, then thinking through who should be involved in the selection of ideas, when they should be involved, and what criteria they should use. The case has also been taught in executive education programs, where participants tend to be more senior and are likely to have experienced the challenges of establishing effective innovation programs and building a culture of innovation.

Learning Objectives

Through the case discussion, students should do the following: - Apply a process lens to innovation. Rather than thinking of innovation as an outcome, the case offers students the opportunity to consider innovation as a process that can be configured and organized so as to improve the likelihood of achieving the organization’s innovation objectives. The case guides students through the phases of idea sourcing and selection. - Develop a framing to categorize different types of innovation initiatives, and how each type of initiative is meant to accomplish different goals. The case offers an opportunity to discuss the merits of internal versus open innovation, when to consider one versus the other, and what kinds of internal and open innovation initiatives exist. - Discuss the merits of a centralized innovation initiative in a highly decentralized organization. A central tension in the innovation literature concerns the extent to which an organization exercises focus and control or flexibility and exploration: how it harnesses creativity, maintains control over its innovation processes, and aligns these processes with its overall strategy. - Grapple with defining “innovation.” Innovation is not a new topic; it has been a staple of the organizational lexicon for the past several decades. However, it has become faddish and synonymous with tech and AI, disruption, and myriad other concepts. Students discuss what innovation is, what its objectives are, and how the definition that is adopted will shape these initiatives that are undertaken.