I once read in an article the quote, “Not to innovate is to die” by Christopher Freeman and it really had me thinking;  what truly is innovation? How can you effectively execute innovation when you have to maintain what already exists? Is it even possible?
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When you think about innovation in product or business, you can quickly get lost dreaming about fun, new, fresh ideas that come to mind. Oftentimes, we throw ideas on a board and love imagining where they could take us. 

We could do this. 
We could grow to that. 
We could launch this. 
Then reality sets in... 
In order to do this we would need that. 
In order to do that we would need this. 
We can’t do that with this many bodies. 
We can’t do that with this budget. 
You quickly realize how executing them can become so daunting.

Throughout our 13 years in the industry, we have seen organizations leverage different engagements to chase innovation inside of their product companies. At the end of the day, we all want to build the best product we can, give users the best experience we can, and grow the best platform we can for the people and for our teams. Leveraging partners can help us get there. Let's walk through some ways to leverage partners to not only avoid stalling, but actually accelerate and propel product(s) towards innovation.

1. Short-Term Sidecar Teams

We often see companies leverage partners to spin up short-term sidecar teams to build out the innovative idea. If you’re in engineering leadership, you’ve heard this phrase before: “We want to build this feature to test it out in the marketplace; if it fails we can scratch it, but I just want to see if it generates traction.” Instantly, you think:

• We don’t have the bodies.
• Who is going to have the time to do this?
• How soon do you want to see this?
• Do we have additional budget for this?

It can be overwhelming to determine how you’re going to deliver. When you have a relationship with a human capital partner that spins team up and down everyday, it’s easy to call and bring in that temporary arm. You have the trust established, they understand your product and the importance of delivering, you get new fresh perspectives and ideas, they roll off when you’re ready for your team to step back in. When you need flexibility, a human capital partner can keep your innovation ball rolling in an invaluable way.

2. Keep Your Internal Team Sharp

On the other hand, if your internal team wants to be the one to focus on the new shiny thing, companies can also leverage a human capital partner to cover down while your team is preoccupied. Another hypothetical for you: 

• You are seeing some serious burnout from a couple of your rockstar engineers on the team. 
• You know if I don’t get them looking at something fresh or something new, you are at risk of losing them. 
• You have a new shiny feature that has been ice-boxed for when the time is right.

Instead of opening roles, you have the flexibility to bring in a contractor to work alongside your rockstars in the current codebase to manage the day-to-day tasks of the existing product and free up those internal rockstars to build out this new shiny feature in the icebox. Leverage your human capital partner to protect your team from burnout and support their need for innovation.

3. Get a Fresh Set of Eyes

A human capital partner also provides a fresh perspective and new ideas. You guessed it: another hypothetical is arising:

• You have been a two-person design shop for most of the product life. 
• You and your one designer notice the work is just feeling a little stale. 
• You call the partner you know and love (Midwestern Interactive, for example) for some consulting on your next sprint or two.

Boom. Ideas bounced, stagnation over, no long-term commitment. It doesn’t always make sense to bring on another full-time staff member to do that, but perhaps bringing in a contractor alongside for 60-90 days can be exactly what your product needs to chase down the face lift you have been looking for.

4. Maintain a Healthy Balance

The last, but arguably most valuable, way human capital partners can drive innovation for your team is by helping you maintain a healthy mix of a ⅓  to  ⅔ model from contractors to W2 staff. I don’t need to play out a hypothetical situation here since the statistics speak for themselves: 46,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2024 according to Nerd Wallet. Not only does a balanced team of contractors to W2 staff help you innovate with outside perspectives, ideas, workflows, opinions, etc., it also helps you manage the ebbs and flows of an everchanging economy, the ebbs and flows of fluctuating user adoption, and the ebbs and flows of simply building product.

We’ve all heard it said “two heads are better than one” and we believe this is true:two organizations are better than one. When you bring in a trusted, vetted, proven partner that cares and is invested in your organization, your team, your product, the benefits are tenfold. Whether you need to spin up a sidecar MVP team, free up some of your top talent to chase new features, cover down for an extended leave of absence, or simply maintain flexibility and scalability without fear of layoffs, it’s never too late to ask the human capital pros how they can help