How do you make digital innovation part of your organization?

To make digital innovation a part of your organization, there must be support for it. But: how do you create that? How do you make digital innovation an integral part of your organization?

6 minutes7 oct `26

Knowledge & Inspiration

In brief: digital innovation only becomes part of your organization if you create support for it. Involve stakeholders and end users from the beginning, address resistance with change management (e.g., the ADKAR model), and make digital innovation part of your strategy and budget. Allocate structural funds for further development: on average, at least 20% of the starting budget per year.

Digital innovation is important, but it is not always successful in becoming an integral part of the corporate culture. This is due to a different way of thinking. Research shows that only 16% of employees adopt new initiatives and/or ways of working without assistance. The majority, therefore, struggles with it.

How do you create support for change?

Digital innovation feels like a hurdle for many people. People are not necessarily against change but feel resistance to the lack of control, potential loss, and uncertainty that comes with change. To change something and inspire people, you first need to create support. To address the mentioned hurdles énd create that support, there is change management.

Change management is, simply put, guiding people and an organization through change. One way to do this is by using the ADKAR theory.

ADKAR stands for:

Awareness
Desire (stimulating desire)
Knowledge (gaining knowledge)
Ability (the ability to do it)
Reinforcement (continuing to encourage new behavior).

Want to read more about change management in digital projects? In the article Implementing digital projects: dealing with change, we delve further into how to apply a change process. The change triangle from this article can also be helpful.

Who should you involve in a digital innovation project?

To create support for your innovative digital project within the organization, it is crucial to involve certain stakeholders in the conversation as early as possible in the process. The sooner these people are involved in the project, the more engagement they feel, and the lower the resistance (or: the sooner it can be addressed). The people you should always involve in a digital innovation project are: the management, a project leader (the product owner), employees/teams, IT/security, legal department or privacy department (due to GDPR).

Don’t forget the end user!

A stakeholder often forgotten in digital innovation projects is the end user. Whether they are within the organization (e.g., employees) or outside the organization (e.g., consumers), they must always be involved. Sometimes you may think your digital innovation idea is perfectly developed, but during use by the target audience, it may turn out that the “route” you envisioned within the design is not followed by the target audience at all. Contact with your target audience about your digital innovation often leads to surprising insights that help you move forward. And: it’s ultimately all about the end user.

To map the needs of end users, there are various tools. One of these tools is the user story. Read more about it in this article.

How do you make digital innovation part of your strategy?

How do you ensure that digital innovation becomes embedded in your cultural organization and doesn’t remain a one-off project? To anchor digital innovation within an organization and make it part of the internal culture, it is essential to ensure that it truly becomes a priority. Not just as an ambition, but by incorporating it into the strategy and allocating resources, people, and funds for it. This means it must also be prioritized in the budget and included as a fixed expense.

Incorporating digital innovation into your business strategy also means setting aside funds to continue developing projects once they are established. Developments continue, and updates need to be implemented. Sometimes functionalities need to be adjusted, or new features added. Ensure that budget is allocated for this as well. On average, allocate at least 20% of the starting budget for each subsequent year for further development.