Innovation work aims to identify appropriate solutions for new opportunities or customer needs, and to establish, scope, size and de-risk the change to deliver this, producing evidence-based decisions from experimentation and testing. The portfolio should be comfortable supporting a range of different innovation ideas, using innovation governance and incremental funding to whittle these down through survival of the fittest. Success here is measured on knowledge gained against a suitable innovation lifecycle. Once a change initiative has been fully scoped, it is the portfolio’s responsibility to ensure value for money and optimal fit, for example through the production of a lightweight business case reviewed internally by the portfolio.
Portfolio’s should only directly manage innovation work that is big enough or significant enough to be of interest to it, or that spans the entire portfolio. All other innovation should be delegated down the appropriate sub-portfolio or delivery team, ensuring this is managed as locally as possible by the people closest to the information.
Every portfolio, sub-portfolio, and delivery team is responsible for the pull-through of the innovation they’re managing into delivery, and for ensuring that innovation is being driven by future needs and is focused on shaping the future roadmap of change delivery.
Management of the innovation portfolio should use techniques such as innovation or seed funding, tracking innovation progress via measures such as potential impact and outstanding unknowns or risks, and using tools such as the double diamond to track innovation lifecycles (ensuring the customer need is understood before solutions are investigated).