Building Credibility Through Pilots
Building Credibility Through Pilots
Running Pilots with Startups
Other ways to engage: watch the webinar, listen on Spotify
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Thank you to our panelist Gary Gramajo of Chick-fil-A and our facilitator Tiffany Murray of Verizon for joining us for an Evolve Innovation Network conversation around running pilots with startups. In this conversation, Gary discusses Chick-fil-A’s innovation strategy, building internal credibility for innovation work, and knowing when to run a pilot. Replay the webinar now, listen to the podcast, or see below for selected highlights from this conversation.
Innovation for Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A is known for being an outstanding leader in the fast casual food industry and has remained as such through a continuous process of innovation. Their innovation strategy is multifocal, working with a wide variety of teams that are concentrated on different business challenges. Gary and the New Ventures team in particular focus on how Chick-fil-A can effectively partner with startups to accelerate innovation by leveraging startup talent, expertise, and technology. Chick-fil-A’s pipeline to the startup community is known as “The Conduit,” and the Conduit process typically begins with Chick-fil-A being presented with evidence of a business challenge, often by an internal department or Restaurant Operator. The team then sources startups who may have relevant technology to solve this challenge, and from there, startups are vetted and narrowed down until one or possibly a few are selected to run a pilot.
What is a pilot?
A pilot is a small-scale study that allows for a new or disruptive idea to be tested in order to evaluate feasibility, cost, and potential problems. Ultimately, the goal is to improve upon the design prior to full-scale market implementation. This allows for innovation teams to develop concepts in an agile and scalable manner.
How do you know when something will benefit from a pilot?
“Everything brought to New Ventures eventually must undergo a pilot,” Gary explains. Pilots help to communicate what the concept’s return on investment (ROI) will be, and the goal is to work out kinks in the pilot stage to minimize the operational impact a new technology or process will have on operators in a high-volume restaurant. The pilots are structured collaboratively between internal stakeholders, who have a stronger understanding of the business challenges, and New Ventures, who have a better knowledge of how to structure, run, and measure these tests. Choosing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is a vital part of the pilot and must provide a clear way to gauge the success of a concept. However, Gary explains that imperfect KPIs are preferable to no KPIs.
How to build up internal credibility?
As a new department in a large corporation, it can be challenging to develop the reputation and trust needed for stakeholders within the company. At the start of New Ventures, the strategy for building internal credibility began with identifying focus areas and startups innovating within those focus areas. In these early stages, some startups were eager to partner with New Ventures, despite the department’s early stage, with the mindset that trying new things was important and vital to the growth of their startup. Others didn’t have a large enough budget or large enough team to do projects solo, so partnering with New Ventures was a mutually beneficial solution. These initial projects helped to build credibility and attract new opportunities to New Ventures.
These relationships created a network, and the New Ventures team began to get a reputation for their rigor and efficiency as well as their willingness to take responsibility for less-than-successful outcomes. Gary also acknowledged that the New Ventures team may not get credit from the team they supported for the successful outcomes, but paraphrases Jonas Salk saying, “The reward of getting to do work is that you got to do it.” He elaborates on this by explaining that the New Ventures team is being invited to do things that are on the leading edge of where Chick-fil-A wants to go, and New Ventures is able to help shape that strategy. Gary says, “There’s no playbook to refer to. We are making the playbook.” By being a part of the decision making process, the New Ventures team has a huge impact on the new and uncharted directions Chick-fil-A may choose to go, and this requires a level of humility. Even if New Ventures doesn’t get the recognition, at least they got to be a part of the work.
Writing by Hannah Ranieri, Design Strategist at Orange Sparkle Ball, Inc.