Corporate Fuel for Ideas – Budgets

Ideas come, and ideas go. Within corporate entities, divisions and groups drive their ideas through levels of management and filter the good ones (hopefully) through stated goals relative to the potential returns they create. Innovation is directly tied to current plans, and often viability is looked at through the lens of those plans. Plans are represented financially by budgets, and these budgets ‘roadmap’ how dollars get allocated. A key question to ask oneself is how to get innovation that does not fit an existing budget funded?

Disability does not have budget allocations in most firms today. Even in the firms that do have allocations, these budgets do not come anywhere near representing the potential revenue opportunity that exists in business/disability. Logic says that a market with disposable income north of $220B in the US would have at least an 8-figure budget associated with outreach, but firms have yet to get there. While this does represent tangible opportunity, how does one ‘grow’ a budget from a seed?

Well, first step is…you need the seed. Prove potential by looking at the objectives of the group/firm and putting a framework around the idea targeting those objectives. For most companies in relation to disability, this means translating the mammoth demographic into increased revenue. This happens in two distinct ways, as employees and as Customers. One may see employees as solely a cost center, but when it comes to diversity, reflecting your Customer internally attracts them to you and adds to the organizational knowledge in better serving them. At the end of the day, it’s very difficult to pay shareholders without happy paying customers.

Secondly, one must find a ‘budget beachhead’ from which to project forward. This ‘beachhead’ is an umbrella from which to convene meetings, pay for travel/development and generally pull the levers within your organization. These umbrellas are typically Diversity, HR and/or Legal when it comes to getting a foothold for disability. Diversity is the best beachhead as disability has many parallels with traditional Diversity stomping grounds like women and racial markets. Much of their infrastructure can be grafted to fit and give a presence for disability sanctioned and minimally funded by the firm. Often, disability unofficially ‘lives’ in HR and/or Legal because it has historically been handled as a compliance issue. It is in a firm’s best interest to move disability out of the compliance mode into a Customer/Talent Acquisition mindset.

Living under the Diversity umbrella won’t drive this to its end goal, which is the full realization of the revenue potential in this market. In order to do this, disability must be included in main brand/business lines as part of standard operating procedure through talent acquisition/retention, marketing, product development, customer interaction and new revenue streams.

There are two parallel tracks to follow to do this, talent acquisition and market inclusion. The easier of the two is talent acquisition. With firms like Lime Connect working with large brands bringing talented people with disabilities to the workforce, the model is proven and repeatable. The budget tapped here is often a combination of Recruiting, Diversity and HR. This way, the risk is shared and the impact on one budget of an incremental expenditure is minimized. It is highly advisable not to seek budgets from Philanthropy or the internal foundation to fund outside relationships. This sends a message to all parties that there are no consequences to failure, and a message to PWDs that the firm does not take the efforts seriously. That said, if that is the only route available early on, pursue it with a plan to get away from it later.

The best way to get budget for a market inclusion initiative is to convince a senior business-line leader that the effort is key to the future of the firm. Disability lends itself nicely to this model, as the demographic is so large that it has a material impact on the future. Often these leaders have access to ‘innovation budgets’ that can bridge the effort from proof of value to the point where line budgets can integrate disability into their annual plans. For most consumer product firms, integration may have an initial ‘retrofit’ cost to alter messaging and product design, but once accomplished, the continuing marginal variable costs are de minimus.

One option to get away from the ‘switching cost’ effect, that can work against short-term financial goals, is to set up a corporate level fund to charge back outlays during the one-time retrofit. The message sent is that our firm sees disability as an imperative, and senior management does not want short-term budget choices to hinder forward motion in disability. Budgeting can be a political exercise, and providing a budget buffer can actually incent managers to ignite innovation in the disability space.

Budgets are nuts and bolts in corporate life. They define what exists, and what doesn’t. Disability does not yet reflect its potential in those budgets. In order best achieve the long-term goal of realizing return on disability, these budgets must be created as close to customer contact as possible. That process is a long one, which must prove returns to shareholders at every step. The only way that the idea of disability takes root in a corporate organization is through established budgets and the infrastructure that comes with them. Without that, this idea walks out the door…usually to your competition.