By: Rob Hoehn
The term “innovation management” has been around for a long time (at least since the 1980s – if not before), but for many business leaders establishing a sustainable innovation management program is still a new concept. Executives aren’t sure what skills they need, who should be on their team, what activities are essential to success, and who they need to partner with.
But perhaps most importantly, most leaders don’t understand the business case for innovation management. If you’re trying to sell your boss on an innovation management program or you are a boss who is trying to better understand innovation, try out these four reasons.
1: More than Half of Companies Say They Struggle with Innovation
Business leaders have stated time and again that one of their key concerns is their ability to innovate and outpace the competition, and yet more than half of companies struggle to bridge the gap between innovation strategy and business strategy. Oftentimes business goals aren’t tied into innovation efforts and innovation efforts don’t consider the business needs. Innovation management connects these processes.
2: Industry Leaders are Already Embedding This in Their Strategy
Organizations that prioritize innovation are working to broaden their collaborative efforts and look for new ideas across an organization or even utilize open innovation and look for ideas beyond the walls of their company. There is a great deal of research that says the most transformative ideas actually come from the collisions between different ideas. Inviting more people into the innovation process means more opportunity for collision, combination, and collaboration. In fact, 61% of the survey respondents are embracing open innovation to generate new ideas.
3: Innovative Companies Grow Faster than Their Competitors
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but the more innovative a company is, the more likely they are to report growth and high margins. According to Booz Allen, innovative organizations report 11% greater revenue growth and 22% EBITDA growth over their competitors.
4: The Most Innovative Organizations have Digitized Their Process
Creating repeatable innovation processes in a workshop or lab is a great start, but digital tools truly allow these programs to scale as innovators are able to organize ideas, create searchable collaboration databases and a shared network of resources and knowledge. Innovation managers can then begin to leverage the creative power of large-scale brands and organizations. Begin thinking how you can digitize the innovation process.
>> To learn more, download our infographic that details the case for innovation management in the workplace.
About the Author
Rob Hoehn is the co-founder and CEO of IdeaScale: the largest open innovation software platform in the world. Hoehn launched crowdsourcing software as part of the open government initiative and IdeaScale’s robust portfolio now includes many other industry notables, such as EA Sports, NBC, NASA, Xerox and many others. Prior to IdeaScale, Hoehn was Vice President of Client Services at Survey Analytics.
Featured image via Unsplash.