Ed Connolly, strategy director and director of John Lewis Partnership’s JLP Ventures, on how to create a corporate environment where innovation can thrive.

When it comes to innovation there is little value in getting too hung up on a rigid process. Each idea has such a radically different complexion at the start, and often takes a shape as it matures, that it would have been hard to predict what it looks like at the end.

Flexibility and agility are crucial, as is an understanding that each idea needs individual treatment.

“If it’s not high risk then you’ve got to question if you’re thinking big enough”

Some pieces of innovation are created as a reaction to market shifts, others from finding a spark from the seed of an interesting idea, others still look like longer-term ‘moonshots’.

So instead of applying a one-size-fits-all process, it is better to think about the environment that will allow innovative thinking to flourish.

Celebrate the lessons

The key is bringing together driven individuals with great ideas with a clear set of outcomes who are then given the freedom and power to explore how to get there.

This can be done by developing a culture ready for innovation. Leadership must see itself as a facilitator, setting the vision and then working hard to unblock external and internal routes to market.

An important component is communication – understanding the end-to-end impact of new propositions within the organisation to align the overall roadmap and create the right mindset for constant transformation.

The likelihood of failure in corporate innovation is certainly much higher than from existing operations. The risk of failure should be a gauge of whether the project is worthwhile; if it’s not high risk then you’ve got to question if you’re thinking big enough.

Essential to becoming a more innovative business is learning to accept and celebrate the lessons that come from failure, treating those lessons as successes in their own right.

Some of our best stories of innovation success are built upon multiple failures along the way. In JLP Ventures, one of our best learning experiences was Cook Well, a recipe kit box that we closed earlier this year due to operational issues at a third party we were over-reliant on, and an inability to articulate an eventual route to value.

On the way, we learned so much about how to build the tech, how to integrate successfully with core business functions and how to build the best possible partnerships. Many parts of this proposition, including the excellent partners who developed it, are a major part of the success of our newer experiments.

We need to always strive to find the best market fit for our ideas and it’s rare to hit the bullseye with your first dart. Embracing that makes the culture of innovation more resilient, helps maintain that critical ingredient of enthusiasm and improves the chances of successful value creation.

The way it is

Every great team knows it needs to get better as a unit every year. Developing a culture that can live and breathe these values is the best way to attract new talent and strengthen a network of contacts and partnerships.

The partnership was built on an experiment and our founder John Spedan Lewis openly encouraged it to keep up with an always-changing society.

Innovation exists everywhere across the partnership, not just in JLP Ventures or in JLab. We work across the partnership, linking up with and relying upon many different teams.

“If you are not constantly reinventing yourself then you will be left behind very quickly”

As of August 2019, JLP Ventures has propositions live in Home Solutions, Wine Tasting at Home, While You’re Away and Rapid Delivery. And there are more to come.

‘Disruption’ is surely just the way it is now. To succeed, brands need to accept that challenge and become the disruptor. If you are not constantly reinventing yourself then you will be left behind very quickly.

For us in retail, disrupting is about judging what the customer really wants and excelling at it first. Speed? Quality? Experience? Increasingly it’s all three.

I believe it is the most exciting time ever to be in retail. We are put to the test like never before and the mandate to try new things has never been stronger.

Tech. 2019

Ed Connolly will be one of the Discovery judges at Tech. 2019 in London on October 2-3. Discovery provides retailers with a platform to find that next innovation, while giving tech start-ups the opportunity to flaunt their wares to a room full of influential decision makers in commerce technology.

The judges will then select 30 start-ups they think are worthy to pitch live on stage and compete for the title of Start-up of the Year, announced at the end of day two of the festival.

To see the packed programme and buy tickets visit www.tech-festival.com