Innovation

Innovation has advanced many, but if something is missing, stagnation and uncertainty will surface.

Given the dynamic nature of business and the complex mix of its resources and business factors, there are many ways to differentiate and, therefore, there are many ways to pursue innovation. Different types of innovation should be managed via tailored management processes and scientific resource allocation. Innovation management can be structured by aligning talented people, robust processes and powerful technology platforms and tools.

Innovation contextual navigation: For many companies, innovation is still serendipity, because there is “no one size fits all” formula for doing innovation. A well-crafted innovation planning will always be aware of business strengths and weaknesses, opportunities & risks, set guidelines, and take step-wise and risk-intelligent actions. It helps the organization detect opportunities to grow, identify hot spots to innovate, and integrate important business elements into innovation competencies.

Innovation navigation prepares your teams to take alternative solutions, predict or manage risks, and deal with uncertainty effectively, etc. As innovation plan is a key element of business planning , innovation implementation is a significant part of overall business management. Innovation navigation oversight provides a holistic view including impact analysis, reporting and alignment to innovation planning. Contextual navigation not only helps the business generate fresh ideas, but also enables it to scale up innovation effort and amplify innovation effect.

Innovation portfolio has the right mix of incremental innovation and breakthrough innovation: There are many factors that influence organizational innovation, such as leadership, culture, organizational structure, people, technology, competition, market segmentation, roles and responsibilities. Innovation management needs to break down resource/talent bottlenecks, some innovation initiatives take longer time to mature and create better business results than the others, and make a leap to the next growth cycle of the business development.

There are incremental or breakthrough innovations. Incremental innovation has an equal concept with continuous improvement, focusing on improving part of the business process or capability. Breakthrough innovations are often driven by creative people not only far-sighted but also well-determined, challenge the rules of the game, connect interdisciplinary dots or accelerate knowledge transfers, and make their ideas succeed. Besides customer relationships, vendor relationships are also important to improve effectiveness and efficiency of innovation management.

Innovation processes can be very loose on purpose, with creative/analytical capacity for ideation/evaluation: Most companies fail at innovation management because they neither have any clear process to improve vertical accountability nor understand the linkage required to work horizontally across disciplinarily. The innovation managers should do the check-up: Are processes too rigid to adapt; too fragile to handle disruptions, or too inside-out without embracing people centricities Are there any fundamentally different approaches to innovation process management that would provide more flexibility, sensitivity, and responsiveness? Do innovations fail because they are too inside-out without embracing people centricities? Is there any fundamentally different approach to process management that would provide more flexibility, sensitivity, etc.

Unlike many other types of business initiatives, the process of planned innovation shouldn’t be too rigid, the chaos to some extent is necessary for sparking fresh ideas. Sometimes, managing innovation requires you to shepherd an idea through several phases of development, to improve innovation success rate. There are many areas within a company where the innovation process can be applied to create differentiated value. Overly rigid processes with heavy logistics stifle innovation.The ideal innovation process management is to tap into everyone's skills and talents, break down silos or other typical impediments to cooperation, for keeping creative ideas flow smoothly. An organization that has a lightweight process which allows innovation to blossom, get protected and channeled will succeed more often than an organization that does not have such a process.

Innovation has advanced many, but if something is missing, stagnation and uncertainty will surface. The true conflict in innovation is self-imposed by trying to make our “visions” reality. Barriers can be daunting, yet overcome them. If generating ideas is more art than science; then implementing ideas is more science than art. Innovative organizations create a disciplined, managed space for developing and testing new models, creative products/services, align innovation processes, select innovation indicators and improve overall innovation success rate.

Posted in: Innovation