Global innovation projects demand particular leadership competencies in a multicultural and networked environment. Leaders need substantial cultural and market intelligence, facilitation, and orchestration skills in order to accelerate innovation and performance around the world. Yet current leadership models are not designed for this highly challenging environment where performance is critical to international market success.
The key to innovation success is simple---innovation is nothing without exploration and exploitation.
We live in an increasingly multicultural and networked world where innovation has the potential to transform lives from Austria to Zimbabwe. Leaders and teams are facing changing customer needs across cultures and geographies. If you’re responsible for international products, services, projects, or programs, how are you facilitating innovation and collaboration around the world?
This is the second of two articles, co-written by Ralph-Christian Ohr and Kevin McFarthing. In our previous post, we discussed how Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) ensures that the content of the portfolio is driven by innovation strategy and associated targets. We would now like to move on to Operational Portfolio Management (OPM), where the portfolio directs resource allocation, metrics and reporting on an operational and tactical level. The link between the two is shown in Figure 1 below.
Facing increasingly dynamic and unpredictable environments, firms are required to develop convenient innovation strategies, constantly adapt them to changing conditions and properly implement strategically aligned initiatives throughout their organizations. Innovation portfolio management (IPM) can act as the pivotal tool to translate strategic objectives and priorities into project-based innovation activities. Furthermore, it provides a framework to convert raw ideas into real investment opportunities, based on their risk profile.
According to a recent survey of 65 senior executives of global companies, the large majority of firms are looking for innovation to drive growth. But they're not necessarily looking for the next great product or product feature. Instead, companies are putting greater focus on business models that create value for customers in new ways.
