Innovation Management
The importance of innovation management is well recognized. Yet, in most companies, there is disagreement as to what innovation is, what steps comprise the process, what inputs are needed, and in what order the process should be executed. Some believe innovation to be ad hoc – a happening that is hard to explain and incapable of being turned into a discipline. Others go so far as to suggest that process stifles innovation. All this affects a company's innovation culture.
The truth is, innovation is a process. It is the process of devising product and service concepts that address unmet customer needs, resulting in ideas that get approved for development. Just like any other business process, innovation can be studied, understood, and transformed into a predictable discipline. This is hard for many to believe because most innovation processes used today are a hodgepodge of ineffective and incompatible theories and practices that have been pieced together over time. As a system, they just don’t work. Worse yet, they create an ineffective innovation culture.
As in any emerging field, what is needed is an integrated methodology whose components fit together to produce the desired results. This is what Strategyn’s Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) provides, as it ensures all the inputs and outputs of the innovation management process fit and work together within one holistic system to dramatically improve the innovation success rate.
The importance of having an effective innovation management process can not be overstated. If a company has an 80 percent product failure rate, then it would have to invest in markets that have a $5 billion growth potential in order to ensure a $1 billion increase in forecasted growth. In contrast, if a company has a 20 percent product failure rate, it would only have to invest in markets that have a $1.25 billion growth potential.
We can help you learn, adopt, and institutionalize this process, making innovation a core competency of your firm and an integral part of your innovation culture. ODI, like any new process, takes new learning, vision, and commitment. As the person responsible for creating an innovation program for your organization, you will face numerous obstacles. The five-step process outlined below will help you overcome them.
When it comes to innovation management, we can help your firm:
- Understand why traditional innovation processes are ineffective.
- Select an effective innovation process to adopt.
- Gain management approval to adopt the new process.
- Build a competency in executing the new process.
- Institutionalize the new process.
