I am planning to transition out of the Visionary seat in three years, but I am terrified that without my creative spark, the company's product development will stall. How do we design the Accountability Chart to institutionalize innovation?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If you are a Visionary owner with a high Quick Start drive, your company creative spark and product development likely live entirely inside your head. To prepare for an exit without stalling growth, you must design your EOS Accountability Chart to institutionalize innovation. This means you must formally separate the function of product development from your personal seat and build it into a repeatable process. Start by creating a dedicated Product or R and D seat on the Accountability Chart, and clearly define its roles. These roles should include identifying market trends, gathering customer feedback, and managing the development pipeline. Next, find an internal successor or new hire who has the natural conative drive to explore, refine, and simplify ideas. They do not need to replicate your personal genius. Instead, they need the discipline to run a structured innovation process. Document this process as a core component of your operations, detailing how new ideas are vetted, prototyped, and brought to market. By transforming innovation from a chaotic, personal trait into a structured corporate department, you prove to a buyer that the company growth engine will continue to run long after you have exited.