The trend for companies to invest in innovation teams, typically housed in a lavish, creative space, is growing steadily. Known as innovation labs, accelerators, or business incubators, these hubs have become known as a safe space to try out new ideas and directions. However, research shows that up to 90% of hubs fail before they achieve any real transformation or discovery.

The SAP AppHaus Network, consisting of over twenty locations, is an anomaly in that it has not only endured for the past decade, but it has flourished and grown from a small team into a large network of global locations.

SAP has recently reached a major milestone in its pursuit of human-centered innovation. With the official opening of the São Paulo office, run by our SAP AppHaus Network partner Exed Consulting, we now have SAP AppHaus locations across every continent. Across the globe, we have more than 15,000 employees dedicating themselves to customer co-innovation with the help of SAP Business Technology Platform.

As Head of SAP AppHaus, I’m often asked how I started this innovation network, and how we manage to not just survive, but thrive. After two decades of experience leading global UX design and innovation teams, I’m happy to share some of my key learnings. Here are six practices that have contributed to our success—from setting up an innovation team to ensuring it remains relevant in changing strategic business contexts.

1. Set clear goals from the start

The first step in creating business value is to set clear goals that allowed you to justify your existence and inform the makeup of your team.

Initial goals should answer the questions “What does the business need?”, “What do we want to achieve?” and “How do we measure success?” Once you define those goals, it’s important to make the value of your team visible for all stakeholders within the organization and beyond.

2. Form a multidisciplinary team

With clear goals set, you can then begin to build your multidisciplinary team. When we launched the first SAP AppHaus, we hosted a workshop to identify the in-house skills and personality attributes that would complement the team. I mention personality attributes because innovation teams aren’t just about technical skillsets, but also about finding the right emotional fit. Innovation environments and technologies change on a regular basis, so looking at soft skills like emotional intelligence, curiosity, adaptability, and a willingness to learn and engage in team building are even more critical than the professional or technical skills.

Put it into practice: Design a pizza service

To test out the team dynamics, we invited the interviewees to participate in a short exercise to design a pizza service, splitting them into groups of three to five. This allowed us to witness team dynamics and better gauge factors such as emotional and people-oriented skills alongside their technical know-how. Just watching how people behave in the group exercise provides valuable insight into soft skills. Find more ideas, methods, and tools to enable a culture of innovation at your company in the SAP Innovation Toolkit.

3. Define and track success

Innovation teams are a space for experimentation, but they need to be outcome-driven or they risk quickly losing executive support and funding. To ensure the long-term success of your team, define metrics early on that are closely tied to the business goals and focus on delivering results right from the start. What this might look like depends on the kind of innovation work you are doing, though ultimately the right metrics will remind the organization that innovation brings benefits that are both tangible (financial) as well as non-tangible (new knowledge and insights). Our metrics at the SAP AppHaus are strictly tied to customer success. We make sure to strengthen our team’s value with stories and references that demonstrate the successful innovation done with and for the customer, and which are closely tied to the capabilities and goals of our organization.

Take a tour of the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg, winner of the 2019 MUSE Design Award. Creativity needs space to unfold, to be inspired and to discover new possibilities. Space that promotes exchange and offers security to open up or even to be able to fail.

4. Do great things and talk about them

Don’t be afraid to share what you’re doing both inside and outside of your organization. In my experience, openly sharing our best practices and methodologies for innovation promotes excitement for the work and buy-in from our organization and beyond. The SAP Innovation Toolkit is a great example of how our team leverages our tools and best practices to not only secure our team’s existence, but to also showcase SAP as a thought leader in innovation, even beyond our work with our customers and partners.

The sooner you can share first achievements and successes, the better the team can show its value to the organization. What’s more, the reputation of a team is not only important for internal perception. External events, lectures, and panel discussions are a perfect means to spread the word about the good work a team is doing and grow your network of innovators. We are proud to share our customer co-innovation success stories on our website.

5. Keep it moving

Nothing is set in stone. To ensure your innovation team stays afloat, you’ll need to regularly reassess both your goals and the team dynamic.

Ensure that your team has an ongoing open exchange on all kinds of strategic topics that might affect the work, such as new solutions being developed, innovation tools, or strategic changes within the organization. Your team knows the world is constantly changing. Be aware that a team of highly motivated and empowered members will not only want to understand the changes, but also the reasons and purposes behind them.

One solution that worked well for keeping the team informed and up to date during the shift to hybrid and remote work during the pandemic was our Flex Team Workshop.

6. Be a collaborative leader

Team leaders play a crucial role in innovation teams – if they are doing their job right. A good leader should have a strong vision and strategy, foster innovation, and empower the team to implement their ideas effectively to create value for the organization and its customers. In my experience, an innovation team will thrive with a leader who can:

• Empower the team: Remember: it’s not about you, it’s about the team. As a leader, it’s your job to inspire and motivate the team with a contagious passion. You are responsible for creating the secure environment the team needs to succeed and thrive. It’s important to empower your employees to come up with their own ideas and allow them to make mistakes and even fail. As a leader, it will be your job to find the right balance between empowerment and accountability.
• Be an advocate for users and customers: Customer and user focus is key to driving sustainable innovation. As a leader, you need to live and breathe customer and user empathy.
• Make innovation a team sport: Innovation is not just driven by one team. It is a team sport and requires close collaboration with different areas and departments within the company. You need to be a collaborative leader and work together with other organizations in a positive and appreciative way. Support others and ask for support. Form strategic alliances with other teams.
• Be transparent: Share the good and the bad with the team to jointly work on next steps, solutions, and strategic change. Encourage a culture where it's okay to fail as long as we learn from our mistakes.
• Have fun! Ensure that successes are celebrated and appreciated. In this post-pandemic world where the lines between private and work life are increasingly blurring, fostering team spirit and mutual support is even more important.

Bringing it all together

Managing and leading an innovation team is a rewarding challenge. From my work spanning the past two decades, I am convinced that innovation needs more than just a creative space to succeed—it needs a team nurtured with the right direction, transparency, and support.

My team likes to think of innovation as the confluence of technical feasibility, business viability, and human values. We focus on implementing the latest and most robust technology, while also finding the right people and setting up processes for cross-collaboration that support innovation. This ensures that we are working towards the right goals while demonstrating success along the way.