EarlyBirds Helping to Move Corporates From Innovation Theatre to Actual Innovative Outcomes
21 June 2022

A competitive environment is what motivates companies and government agencies to have new forms or organisation that can quickly respond to the continuous disruption that they are facing. Oftentimes One of the first initiative that organisations undertake is to hire management consultants who reorganise the company into a matrix organisation where teams report to several leaders. Unfortunately, this usually results in an organisational theatre where everyone gets busy with the reorganisation for a year but ultimately, there is no real innovation that impacts their product or service. Organisations may also try to accomplish innovation activities, such as innovation workshops, hackathons, design thinking classes, and more, but the result is just innovation theatre. And finally, organisations may focus on the processes and metrics and try to make some reforms but the result may just be process theatre.

EarlyBirds, an Australian firm that has established an open ecosystem  that allows innovators, early adopters, and subject matter experts (SMEs) to come together and work together to speed up technology advancement and adoption in an organisation, wants to inform everyone that they can help companies move from just innovation theatre to authentic innovation. Organisations are facing continuous disruption and they’re realising that their current strategy and organisational structures are not nimble enough to gain access and mobilize the innovative talent and technology that they require to meet various challenges.

Kris Poria, co-founder and CEO of EarlyBirds, says, “If you are an early adopter organization and you understand the value of innovation, you can work with EarlyBirds to seize opportunities and solve challenges using actionable innovation from innovators, who are startups, scaleups or mature organisations.”

Innovation theatre is any initiative taken by a company that makes use of an innovation, but it doesn’t really have any impact on the business. This is usually due to lack of focus that can stir the innovation team into the wrong direction. This typically happens in organisations that try to rush innovation with occasional initiatives. While no organisation deliberately sets out to create an innovation theatre, many still end up doing it although they frequently don’t realize it.

A competitive environment is what motivates companies and government agencies to have new forms or organisation that can quickly respond to the continuous disruption that they are facing. Oftentimes One of the first initiative that organisations undertake is to hire management consultants who reorganise the company into a matrix organisation where teams report to several leaders. Unfortunately, this usually results in an organisational theatre where everyone gets busy with the reorganisation for a year but ultimately, there is no real innovation that impacts their product or service. Organisations may also try to accomplish innovation activities, such as innovation workshops, hackathons, design thinking classes, and more, but the result is just innovation theatre. And finally, organisations may focus on the processes and metrics and try to make some reforms but the result may just be process theatre.

Authentic innovation creates value, either by optimising the current business or developing new revenue sources and profits. To achieve this, the leaders must provide clear guidance on strategy and what innovation projects to focus on. EarlyBirds can be the most suitable partner for organisations to avoid innovation theatre. This is because they can help organisations achieve “actionable innovation,” through an open innovation system where organisations come into contact with SMEs and innovators. Meanwhile, Kris Poria says, “If you are an innovator, we can help you engage with early adopter customers and their partners to adopt your products and solutions. Thus, the EarlyBirds open innovation system is beneficial for both organisations wanting to adopt technological innovations to improve their products or services, and also those startups, scaleups and mature companies offering innovative products and solutions.”

The EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem has two major parts – its award winning platform with over 4 million Innovators and two programs. One is the Explorer program that is designed to accelerate the technological innovation process for the entire organisation as a service. The Explorer program has a number of key features, including: weekly webinars to help stimulate innovation in the organisation; quarterly and monthly innovation days; a nominated SME for the business; a platform enterprise license; and a focus on specific types of innovations. The others the Challenger program, which is for those businesses that prefer to work on one particular challenge at a time. EarlyBirds also offers the Edzility framework that can help businesses with their continuous improvement strategy with the ultimate goal of having an improved organisational agility and competitive edge.

The Explorer program is the most suitable choice for addressing all of the previously mentioned needs when it comes to new technology with options to take part in Challenger Programs, undertake innovations days and come up with innovation maps based on technical sectors or business themes that are relevant for an industry. And the Challenger Program is used to solve one particular business or technical problem in a few weeks.

Those who would like to learn more about the Early Birds Marketplace and how it may help companies in moving from just innovative theatre can visit the EarlyBirds website at earlybirds.io.