Lorrie Vogel, Founder of ImagineNOW on Building an Innovation Portfolio
After working at Nike for 20 years, Lorrie Vogel founded ImagineNOW, an Innovation consultancy. She talks with Brian Ardinger, Founder of Inside Outside Innovation, about building an innovation portfolio.
Lorrie started her career at Nike working in industrial design, then led innovation and sustainability, and finally served as Vice President of Material Science and Innovation. Today, Lorrie leads an innovation consultancy, where she helps others with emerging science and tech, systems, and innovation teams.
Key Points
- Nike’s approach is very systematic. Every team has a process. Nike does early prototyping.
- As we brought new innovation into the portfolio, we became more systematic when looking at tech. If it was successful, how would it impact our business?
- If you work in innovation, you need a filter. Evaluate – Does it drive revenue, decrease cost, reduce environmental footprint, strategic IT, new better performance, and brand value? Look at it from different perspectives, which innovations are below this line. Does it add value? Look for the game-changer. Sometimes specific teams want to elevate various activities for different reasons.
- Make sure to break up portfolio across business teams so every team benefits. If your company commits to reducing enviro footprint, you need to have some key components to address this. Bulk of your innovation should focus on revenue.
- How do other companies address? Google makes sure value is there in new innovation, but they can do almost anything. Think about what stage are you in your company. Don’t do it in a vacuum. Sometimes it’s around can I make this happen, but is the marketing team excited? Need to have all teams engaged.
- Even by having a system, need to think about the budget. The more you learn, need to continue to evaluate. Dynamic portfolio. Monitor the market because sometimes the market is not ready for the newest innovation.
- Innovator Traits – Be alright with ambiguity. Every group that performs well are reaching out to others. Open to collaborate. Design boards help others understand.
For More Information on an Innovation Portfolio
For more information, go to imagineNOWinc.com or find Lorrie Vogel on Linkedin.
This week’s podcast is sponsored by Husch Blackwell
For similar podcasts, check out:
- Ep. 123 – Gatorade’s Xavi Cortadellas on Breakthrough Innovation
- Ep. 81 – Jack Elkins with Orlando Magic
- Ep. 77 – Renata Policicio with ESPN
Find this episode of Inside Outside Innovation at insideoutside.io. You can also listen on Acast, iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and Google Play.
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