It seems to be more or less a fact that the more mature a company is, the harder it is to produce something totally new that deviates substantially to what has been done earlier. In order to understand this phenomenon better Bengt Järrehult makes a comparison between human and industrial life, trying to elucidate the similarities and differences between the 2 worlds.
Innovation is about moving an organization forward. But many companies are trying to get there without an execution plan; without any way to assess the how, why, where, what and when, and to adjust when the unexpected comes along (as it always does). Those involved with innovation planning are increasingly understanding that the answers are found in product line roadmapping – a critical front-end process that has finally come of age.
Running a successful enterprise innovation management program can be a challenging mission. Multiple factors have to be considered,each of which affect potential outcomes. One key aspect is the level of support an innovation program receives from an organization’s management. Connecting the needs of top-down management with the strategy and architecture of an innovation program will always lead to greater levels of success.
We know that innovation capability is a critical driver of strategic growth targets. We also know that innovation success is not a one-time occurrence, but the result of an organization’s ability to conceive, develop and commercialize new products and services on a sustainable basis. In this article Dr. Scott J. Edgett discusses a model for measuring if your organization has a mature innovation process with well-internalized innovation capabilities.
Doing more of the same old product improvements, extensions and modifications – product renovation – won’t deliver the sales and profit impact needed to grow the business. To the great majority of businesses, product development means line extensions, improvements and product modifications and only serves to maintain market share. Firms increasingly compete for a piece of a shrinking pie by introducing one insignificant new product after another. The launch of a truly differentiated new product in mature markets is rare these days.
Open Innovation is becoming an essential part of an enterprise innovation strategy. Yet, so often, companies focus on getting a narrow set of tactical activities going without thinking through the strategic and organizational issues necessary to enable those activities to have the intended impact. This brief article covers a few of the implementation challenges faced by companies seeking to establish successful Open Innovation programs.
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.
In this article, the final in a series of six, Professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps, discusses the imperatives for an effective innovation governance system. Innovation performance is often not directly dependent on the type of governance model used. Rather, innovation performance reflects the strength of top management’s commitment and engagement, and the credibility, skills and energy of the actors who under take the governance mission.
“Open innovation” is a technique that is gaining greater consideration these days. For many companies, this practice has the potential to help them quickly and efficiently harness the new ideas they need in a volatile and uncertain business environment. It also may accelerate and de-risk progress from idea to launch. To realize the power of open innovation, businesses first should come to terms with how “open” they are willing to be.
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.
Is it possible to identify the best innovators in an organization? Most companies know who their best performers are and this is true for almost every critical initiative except innovation. A current research initiative from Jeffery Phillips is delving deeper into the possibilities to identify the potential of an individual to be a good innovator based on shared traits. The goal is to develop a simple assessment tool that any corporation can use to identify the most talented potential innovators on its team, or to use to identify and hire new people with innovation capabilities.
From our talks with innovation management practitioners and business executives it seems that not many organizations have a well-defined and integrated innovation strategy. To find out more about how to go about creating and executing such a strategy, we spoke to Wouter Koetzier and Christopher Schorling at Acceture who encourage a very pragmatic and execution-oriented approach.
While many people believe that process and structure stifle creativity - the center of gravity for sourcing and inspiring innovation – this couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, planning ahead streamlines the process and surfaces any potential bottlenecks ahead of time, resulting in a program that is more apt to produce meaningful outcomes and return on investment for organizations.
What role does the C-Suite have in exercising the company’s innovation governance responsibilities? In this article, the last in a series of five, professor Jean-Philippe Deschamps, defines six domains that are essential to organize and mobilize for innovation. They will condition the way innovation will be carried out and sustained by the organization and hence belong to the prime innovation governance duties of the top management team.
Is innovation part of the governance mission of boards of directors? At first sight, the answer seems to be “no”. In this new series of two articles professor Jean-Phillipe Deschamps delves deeper into the specific role of the board of directors and that of top management in exercising their innovation governance responsibilities.
