The Internal Corporate Incubator

via alles-schlumpf on Flickr

Imagine if every firm had an internal center designed to incubate ideas and truly invest in the best ones.  In fact, I'm positive that super innovative firms like Apple or IBM have these programs, but I think every company should.  

The reason is because I recently saw first hand the power that an incubator has to launch a start-up from an idea to reality.  My colleague Marlo Struve and I had the pleasure of working with the Hub Seattle these past few months to facilitate the creation of a new accelerator program.  In case you're unfamiliar with the concept of an incubator,  "a start-up incubator [is] for people to connect, work, attend and produce events, run bootcamps, access funding and mentorship, source clients and co-conspirators, build campaigns, prototype and test products, and launch companies."  An "accelerator program" is like a boot-camp within the incubator designed to fast-track a select group of start-ups to new heights.  I can't say enough about how great it was to work with Brian Howe and Lindsey Engh from the Hub, as well as Rashmir Balasubramaniam from Nsansa and Luni Libes from BGI to design this program.

Going through the process of designing the requirements was incredibly educational - especially because the Hub is focused on social entrepreneurship rather than the typical tech start-ups that other incubators focus on, so it had to be entirely new.  Yet it awakened me to the potential for ideas to explode into reality while providing something as simple as a space to be collaborative.  And it made me realize that all major firms should create internal incubators within their own walls - including my own.  

As a consultant, I operate in markets that change direction at the speed of light.  Deloitte's shift index highlights that the firms that stay on top from year to year is changing faster than ever.  At Hitachi Consulting, we're already focusing on the next round of emerging markets for clients to enter and designing systems for measuring energy ecosystems that were previously un-measurable.  But we should never stop increase the flow of information because we are supposed to stay ahead of everyone else, so it is imperative that we create environments that facilitate innovation.  

We already do a great job at staying ahead of the market and continually provide solid strategic advice.  But imagine how much more could happen with an internal incubator.  Employees could propose new products, service offerings, solutions for un-addressed client challenges, internal web apps and technologies, marketing campaigns, even corporate strategies.  The best ideas would be voted on by internal "VC's" and the teams with winning ideas would be taken to training centers where they could go through a quick 4-6 week intensive accelerator program.  This would also have the additional benefit of transferring knowledge from one market to the other as teams from Seattle would ideally focus on different challenges that teams from London or Iberia.  

As I've stated before, the faster a company can learn to channel flows of information and remove any damns in its way, the better it will be at surviving the new world of change.