Grassroots Innovation: A Promising Innovation Paradigm for Pharmaceutical Companies - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 137

(f) Enabling projects and incubation
After the grand jury event, proper project incubation and governance of the
winning projects are crucial for success. In order to enable project incubation,
Merck KGaA provided a budget within a ring-fenced innovation incubator with
the goal of allowing the advancement of projects in the frame of an innovation
greenhouse.
The governance of the Innospire incubator projects was done by a special
Innovation Steering Committee with members from both the chemicals and
pharmaceutical business sector. This governance and the dedicated Innospire
budget set project teams into a “greenhouse” environment for a certain time-
frame. This helped the projects to move forward independently of organiza-
tional constraints or restrictions from current operative business unit strategies.
Project champions were asked to report on a quarterly basis and the Innovation
Steering Committee is responsible for approving budget for the following years.
The Innovation Steering Committee is also regularly informed on the progress
of the Innospire projects pursued within the divisions.
A key mechanism needed to successfully enable and incubate promising
projects is to adequately prepare and implement the transfer of projects from
the innovation incubator/greenhouse to the internal customer, the strategic busi-
ness unit interested in developing and launching a successfully researched inno-
vation or product to the market. This process required extensive communication
to ensure a smooth handover. In that regard an involvement of business unit
representatives early on, including invitations to the Innovation Steering
Committee and project team meetings, was deemed essential.
Consecutive editions of the Innospire process taught us that to make the
process sustainable, the incubation step is crucial. In this step, it is important to
maintain a stringent follow-up of the best ideas and handoff the ideas to the
strategic business units at (and only at) the right time. Suffi cient attention dur-
ing incubation and existence of a specifi c budget allocated to help mature the
idea (conditional on successful performance in certain key performance indica-
tors) are essential. It is also crucial that management supports the projects up to
market launch and that all innovators and team members get their deserved
reward and recognition. We have also organized acceleration workshops for the
incubated teams to support them in trying to accelerate their time to market. In
a way, the real process really just starts after the grand jury approval.

4.4.3 Results of the Innospire Process

The Innospire program transformed the innovation landscape at Merck KGaA. The
main benefi ts obtained were (1) employees' perceptions about the competence-
enhancing aspect of Innospire , (2) their greater sense of autonomy, (3) unique
opportunities for networking and improved relatedness and, consequently, (4) new
promising innovations in Merck KGaA's pipeline. We discuss each in turn.