How do you align innovation with what the business actually needs to achieve, and build the organizational capability required to deliver on it?
Christman
PROJECT TYPE
Innovation Architecture / Innovation Program Build and Launch
CONTEXT
The Christman Company, one of the largest employee-owned construction management firms in the United States, had innovative ideas and local improvements emerging across the organization. But those efforts weren’t clearly connected to their business agenda, and the organization lacked the capabilities to consistently turn ideas into impact. Leadership wanted innovation to serve specific business goals, not run as a parallel track disconnected from strategy.
We worked with Christman’s leadership to translate business priorities into a clear innovation agenda and framework, then designed the operating model needed to act on it: governance and decision-making processes to keep initiatives tied to strategic goals, innovation programs leveraging different approaches and methodologies, defined roles for innovation leaders and regional teams, and a training program to build the capabilities the organization needed to execute consistently.
The system is now live and already producing results. Its first cycle generated 15 opportunities from across the business, evaluated against strategic fit; six were shortlisted, and the steering group selected three to move into development, and eventually piloting.
