Back in my days in the automotive industry, supplier led innovation played – and still plays – a key role in the development of new innovative products. Procurement organizations have been set up for a long time to facilitate this process. However, on the Indirect side of things, we still struggle to integrate supplier innovation – certainly at scale.
If you are a long time listener, you will have heard me share my thoughts about the importance of innovation as a key component of the new procurement value proposition. But, where do we start, and how can we enable innovation at scale?
Today’s guest answers those question. I am joined by Jon Washington, founder of The Innovation Garage. Jon help clients increase their profitability through innovation design encompassing products, processes and delivery models.
“It is critical in infuse system based thinking into the pursuit of supplier enabled innovation. Systems to create ideas, systems to communicate them, and systems to commercialize them. That will scale into a future of innovation. You want to encourage a culture that can fail fast and do small scale experiments on innovation that limits the risk.”
In this episode, you will learn:
- How Jon defines innovation
- Why innovation is a lot broader than just product design
- 5 elements that are key to infusing innovation into an organization
- The importance of mindset in shifting from a savings-first focus to one that encompasses other value levers
- Why Jon believes that procurement is perfectly positioned to be innovation brokers
- Why repetition breeds culture, and how that applies to innovation.
- How enabling internal innovation pioneers to flourish encourages others to follow their lead.
Links and Resources:
- Subscribe to the Art of Procurement podcast.
- Jon Washington on LinkedIn
- The Innovation Garage
