Innovation Coaching: The Perfect Play for Championship-Level Results

At Seed Strategy, we’re constantly experimenting with different ways to bring our 21+ years of innovation experience to bear in order to generate breakthrough outcomes for our clients.

With that in mind, we recently partnered with a Fortune 500 food and beverage client on a unique initiative where we coached its employees on innovation—all in support of the company’s efforts to democratize innovation throughout the organization.

Background
Our client invited its employees throughout the organization—regardless of job function or seniority—to submit ideas for new innovations. (After all, no individual, function, job level or  location holds a monopoly on good ideas.)

The client’s senior leadership team then selected six lead ideas to move forward for further development. The employees who submitted these ideas would be given the opportunity to come back and “pitch” their refined ideas to the leadership team in a Shark Tank-style session for possible funding and go-to-market support.

What We Coached
Seed coached the idea founders (most of whom had little to no experience in innovation) at every step to prepare them to effectively and persuasively make their pitch.

• Idea Refinement & Optimization: Our coaches worked with intrapreneurs (i.e., internal idea founders) to refine and optimize their ideas (identify the consumer tension, best brand fit, channels, varieties and ways to make the idea bigger).
• Strategic Narration Development: We coached the intrapreneurs to develop a clear and compelling narrative that fleshed out their innovation, along with supporting proof points and potential benefits to the organization.
• Idea Visualization & Package Design: Our expert designers brought ideas to life via photorealistic visuals of the offering with branding and primary packaging.
• Pitch Preparation & Delivery: We led intrapreneurs through the preparation and delivery of an 8-10 slide pitch deck to persuade senior leaders (CEO, CMO, CFO, etc.) to provide funding for their innovations.

How We Coached
Great coaches know that how you coach is just as important as what you coach. Even the very best content may not be understood, believed or acted upon if it isn’t delivered with the right approach. To that point, we leveraged four key principles to maximize the effectiveness of our coaching.

• Coach, DON’T crush. Seed’s coaching needed to balance doing what it takes to ensure the necessary work got done with excellence and providing the critical emotional support against the inevitable ups/downs that come with pursuing new ideas.
• Seeing is believing. Our expert designers strategically leveraged AI tools to efficiently bring the ideas to life with photorealistic visuals—which was essential to garnering understanding and excitement for the intrapreneurs’
• Speed, speed, and more speed. Seed moved the intrapreneurs from idea selection to final pitch in just 7 weeks.
• Be brief. Be brilliant. Be gone. Each intrapreneur’s proposition needed to be captured in a 7-minute, 8-10 slide pitch for the client’s Executive Leadership Team. It was critical to clearly and concisely communicate the idea, consumer tension, benefit/solution and business potential.

The Outcome
It was truly a win-win experience for the company and the innovators.

Company leadership saw six powerful new ideas and elected to move forward with five of them. This initiative also allowed them to further build a culture of innovation and show their commitment to pursuing and supporting good ideas across the depth and breadth of their enterprise.

The intrapreneurs built solid innovation and strategy skills while also getting valuable facetime with executive leadership. And just as importantly, they felt seen, supported and heard in the pursuit of ideas they really believed in. Powerful stuff.

Oh, and Seed won too! We had an absolute blast coaching new innovators… watching them grow… and seeing their ideas blossom. It was truly inspiring and helped fuel the flame of innovation burning brightly within our walls.

Interested in learning more about how our innovation coaching can help you instill a culture of innovation, harness the collective intelligence and creative spirit of your employees and uncover profitable ideas that will set you apart from the competition? Reach out—we’d love to help!

And be sure to check out our case study for additional information about this project.

Written by Adam Siegel. In addition to being the Editor of The Accelerator, Adam is a Senior Strategist at Seed Strategy where he draws upon his diverse experience in advertising, research, brand management, new product development and copywriting to help clients craft breakthrough innovation and brand strategy.

Connect with us! Follow Seed Strategy on our LinkedIn, X, Facebook, Threads and Instagram pages.