From scouting to scaling: How innovation managers drive corporate transformation

No company can afford to innovate in isolation. The speed at which new technologies and business models emerge often outpaces the traditional R&D cycle of large organisations. To bridge this gap, a growing number of corporates have created a dedicated role: the Innovation Manager. 

The idea of formal innovation management emerged in the 2000s, influenced by Henry Chesbrough’s concept of “open innovation”. Corporations realised that ideas and technologies often come from outside their own labs. To capture this potential, they began appointing professionals whose sole responsibility was to scout, test, and scale external innovation. Today, the Innovation Manager has become a key figure in large organisations, especially in industries under high pressure from digital disruption, sustainability targets, or new consumer expectations.

What an Innovation Manager actually does

The role is far more than startup scouting. Innovation Managers are strategic translators between the outside world and the corporate core. Their responsibilities typically include:

• Trend & Technology Radar: Systematically monitoring global innovation trends, new technologies, and business models. This involves attending startup events, working with accelerators, scanning patents, and engaging with universities and research institutions.
  
• Strategic Alignment: Mapping external opportunities against the company’s long-term priorities. Not every exciting startup is relevant. Innovation Managers filter based on corporate strategy, market positioning, and concrete business challenges.
• Startup Engagement & Pilots: Designing collaboration formats, from hackathons to proof-of-concept projects. They act as “dealmakers,” negotiating pilot conditions and coordinating across procurement, IT security, and legal teams.
  
• Internal Evangelism: Building an innovation culture inside the company. This means creating awareness among business units, training colleagues to work with startups, and overcoming resistance to change.
  
• Scaling & Integration: Ensuring pilots don’t remain isolated experiments. Innovation Managers push successful solutions into the mainstream business and measure their impact on KPIs such as cost savings, customer satisfaction, or new revenue streams.
  
• Governance & Reporting: Tracking the performance of innovation initiatives, reporting to top management, and justifying budgets in terms of ROI and strategic relevance.

An Innovation Manager brings together a diverse set of competencies. At the core is a strong business understanding, which allows them to align external innovations with corporate strategy and market needs. This is complemented by solid technological know-how, enabling them to assess new solutions and engage with startups on equal terms. Also important are change management skills, since innovation often faces resistance and requires building internal acceptance.

Building an Innovation Culture

Of course, in practice, innovation is about much more than launching pilot projects. It starts with company culture. An Innovation Manager is therefore not only a scout of external trends and startup partnerships but also an architect and amplifier of an innovation-friendly culture inside the organisation. The key challenge is to ensure that innovation becomes part of everyday work and decision-making.

With more than 30 years of experience in the energy industry, Daniela Hertzer, Innovation Manager at LEAG, explains: “Innovation management means challenging routines and the apparent certainties of existing solutions. Those who want to establish something new do not always encounter enthusiasm, and that is precisely where the task lies: creating spaces and work processes in which change is recognised and accepted not as a risk, but as an opportunity.”

Creating an environment where innovation becomes a continuous organisational mindset is one of the Innovation Manager’s most important contributions. Such a cultural foundation is essential; without it, even the most carefully designed pilot projects risk remaining isolated experiments rather than evolving into catalysts for systemic transformation.

The rise of the Innovation Manager marks a shift from closed R&D toward open collaboration. These professionals link corporate priorities with external innovation, turning promising ideas into concrete business outcomes. Innovation today is less about inventing alone and more about building the right connections, a mindset that will define which companies stay ahead in the long run.

Disclaimer:

Responsibilities and focus areas of Innovation Managers vary significantly between companies. Depending on organisational structure, industry, and strategic priorities, the role may encompass different functions. Infineon defines the Innovation Manager role in its own way, just as every company interprets and implements it differently. The section above is intended to provide a general overview of what the work of an Innovation Manager can look like.

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