Selling Innovation to The C-Suite

Most organizations now place a major emphasis on innovation as a pathway to corporate growth. The R&D manager is a central player in that effort, and not just to supervise the development of new products; increasingly, he or she is expected to help direct the role technology plays in enabling new services or business models and building closer integration with channel partners. To develop internal marketing skills, R&D managers can look to successful independent innovation companies -- design firms -- for lessons on how they engage client C-suite members to get more deeply involved in innovation initiatives. In this article, the authors take a look at the practices of these design firms in the hope of better equipping the R&D manager to bring innovation into his or her own C-suite. The most successful design firms in the authors' study make executive immersion a systematic practice. Successful design firms assess the competitive position and culture of a client company before even starting an innovation initiative.