When you think of change management, you would typically think about managing changes taking place for people transitioning into a new work environment through careful interventions.

Be it senior leadership shake-ups or operationalizing new business model, change is disruptive when the people in the organization are not to adapting for the new transition.

Innovation is no different.

Innovation is creating something new and different that creates impact.

Innovation replaces the old with the new, the same with something different, the status quo with something impactful.

Innovation is change itself - be it big or small.

Incremental innovation = incremental change

Disruptive innovation = disruptive change to those that are unprepared.

Radical innovation = radical change to those that are prepared

The effect of business model change is radical / disruptive to the people, as opposed product addition, improvement or removal.

It may seem glorified to have a new "business model innovation", but there will be pushbacks and reluctance. Some will even try to sabotage it.

Therefore, when designing new business models, business innovation designers must also design change transitions in order to successfully navigate the implementation of new business as usual.

Here are the steps how to manage change transitions.

1. Understand the current business model.

2. Map out the new business model design

3. Identify stakeholders within each component of the map.

4. Define interventions for each stakeholders to enable change transition.

5. Identify resources required to execute the interventions.

6. Gain bottom-up buy-ins from internal influencers, assign them as champions, and equip them with resources to self-organize change within their sphere of influence.

7. During execution, over-communicate. Where we are in the change transition. What are being implemented. What goes in, what goes out.

8. Celebrate small and big wins!

Innovation is easier to manage if you can recognize what types of change it involves and how people will react to them.

Designing businesses is about facilitating change. If you're a business innovation designer, this is the game you're playing.

Innovation is change management without change there is no innovation. It is simple as that.