Innovation Engineering 101 : Part 2
The Innovation Imperative.
This part outlines the importance of innovation for businesses and presents a framework for pursuing innovation effectively. The chapter includes a description of the key elements of an effective innovation process and an overview of tools you can use to manage your efforts. The chapter also includes a description of the innovation process and the phases involved in it.
The Innovation Imperative
Innovation is no longer a nice-to-have activity. It has become an imperative for many companies, especially those in technology-based industries. As a result, more and more companies are building formal processes to support innovation. In fact, the most innovative companies have developed processes that not only encourage and challenge employees to come up with new ideas but also provide them with resources to carry out these ideas and turn them into products or services that can be sold as part of the company’s core business.
For example, Google is famous for its 20% time policy . Under this policy, employees at Google can spend 20% of their time working on projects that interest them personally (which might or might not have anything to do with what they are working on at work). Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin created this policy because they believed that creating conditions where people can try out new ideas and develop their creativity is a key to successful innovation.
True innovation is a process, not an event.
In the last decade or so, we have seen the rise of innovation management as a discipline. We now have books and articles written by innovation management experts and courses on innovation management offered in business schools. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in applying design thinking to innovation, especially in business-to-business contexts.
The good news is that this means more people are talking about innovation and more companies are taking it seriously. The bad news is that many of these efforts focus on one-time events such as brainstorming sessions or hackathons , which can be fun but often generate a lot of noise with little value. Innovation is not an event; it’s a process. So if you want to build processes that support innovation at your company, you need to start with a clear understanding of what innovation really is and how it works.
For example, most people think of innovations as new products or services, but that’s not what innovation is about. Innovation is about creating value for your customers and for your company. It’s about doing things better, faster, and cheaper than your competitors. And it’s about doing something that no one else has done before. So the first step in innovating is to identify a real need or a real problem you are trying to solve — something that excites you and motivates you to get involved in the project.
This need or problem can be either internal or external: an internal need might be a way to increase efficiency or reduce waste, while an external need might be a way to create new revenue streams or reduce churn. Once you have identified the need, then you can start thinking about how to innovate in order to solve it.
This process of innovating can take many forms: it could involve coming up with ideas and then prototyping them; it could involve asking customers what they want; it could involve looking at competitors’ offerings; or it could involve doing something completely new. The important thing is that you are creating something that is not just an incremental improvement on what already exists, but rather a genuine breakthrough in some way.
What does all of this have to do with startups? Well, the fact is that most startups are actually pretty terrible at innovation. For example, consider the following statistic from CB Insights: “Only 10% of startups are able to grow their revenues by more than 200% over a three-year period.” That means that 90% of startups aren’t able to grow much at all. And why is that? Well, one reason is because most startups aren’t very good at innovating — they aren’t very good at creating real breakthroughs for customers or for themselves.
And this makes sense because most CEOs and founders don’t think about innovation in the right way — they think about it as coming up with ideas and then implementing them. But in order to be successful, you really need to think about innovation as a process that involves both idea generation and idea implementation. You need to be able to come up with breakthrough ideas, but you also need to be able to implement them in a way that is truly innovative.
And this is where most startups fail, because most startups only do one or the other — they either come up with innovations but don’t implement them well, or they implement things well without coming up with any real innovations. But in order to be successful, you really need to do both — you need to create genuine breakthroughs for your customers and for your business. And in order to do that, you need to think about innovation in the right way — in terms of a process involving both idea generation and implementation.
Key Principles for the Success of the Innovation Policy
- Innovation Engineering is a process of identifying and mitigating risks before they can impact the organization’s ability to innovate.
- Innovation Engineering is a systematic approach to problem solving that uses a structured, repeatable process to reduce the risk of failure in new product development, new service development or other innovative efforts.
- Innovation Engineering is focused on the need for innovation and how best to achieve it within an organization and its projects.
- Innovation Engineering is a disciplined approach for managing an organization’s innovation process by defining a repeatable structure for innovation that defines the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders in the innovation process, including management, employees at all levels and customers.
- The disciplined approach of Innovation Engineering helps ensure new product development or other innovative efforts will be efficient, effective and successful by ensuring that all activities are performed at optimal times in the project life cycle; that risk mitigation activities are performed as early as possible; that resources are used effectively; and that the right tools and techniques are used at the right times.
- Innovation Engineering is used to develop innovative products, services or business models that can be used to create new markets, disrupt existing markets or sustain existing markets.
- Innovation Engineering ensures all elements of the product development process are considered, including product design, production planning, logistics and sales forecasting as well as customer service and support.
Targeting objectives for innovation.
How can we be more innovative?
How do we get others to be more innovative?
What are the characteristics of an innovative organization?
A Few Words About Innovation Engineering.
One of the most important tasks for any company is to develop and maintain a culture that encourages innovation. In order to innovate, organizations must be willing to try new things and to experiment with new ways of doing business. Innovation is not always about creating new products or services; it is also about improving existing products and services, as well as the processes used to develop them.
Innovating requires a willingness to accept mistakes, learn from them, and move on with a better understanding of what works and what does not work. Innovation requires creative thinking, open minds, and risk-taking on the part of individuals within an organization. It also requires management support for these efforts in order for innovation efforts to be successful over time.
The following sections will discuss some general principles for fostering an environment that supports innovation, as well as specific strategies for encouraging innovation within your company. In addition, we will look at some of the characteristics of innovative companies and organizations.
Leading the way with innovation.
The first step in encouraging innovation is to set clear objectives for the company’s level of innovation. It is not enough simply to say that innovation is a good thing; you need to define what “good” means in terms of your organization’s objectives. For example, you might decide that your organization wants to be among the top ten most innovative companies in its field within five years. Or you might decide that it is important to generate 20 percent of new revenue from new products or services within ten years. Whatever your goals, they should be clear and measurable so that everyone understands how they can contribute toward reaching them.
Another important aspect of leading an innovative company is having a culture that encourages taking risks and accepting mistakes as part of the learning process. You cannot expect people to try new things if they are afraid of looking foolish. On the other hand, you cannot simply tell people to be innovative and then leave them to their own devices. Innovation requires a whole series of activities, including training, mentoring and cross-fertilization of ideas.
Innovation is also a team effort. You need to identify people who will be responsible for creating an innovative corporate culture, as well as those who will create new products or services. You also need a team to manage the risks involved in any innovation project — financial, legal and technical experts who will be able to deal with every aspect of an innovation project from start to finish. And finally you need a team that can monitor progress, advise on problems and help develop new ideas as the project unfolds.
Leading an innovative company is certainly not easy; it takes time, energy and commitment from many different areas within your organization. But if you follow these guidelines, your company may well become more innovative — not only in the products and services it offers, but also in the way it does business.
This post is a contribution to the ongoing discussion of this topic. I hope it will be useful to you, and that you will share your views with me on the subject.
Part 1 : How to use open innovation for your team ? 👉 Here
Part 3 : The Innovation Leadership. 👉 Here
