Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

All too often we see companies coming to us with a new technological advancement that they are very excited about. Sadly, having a new technology does not guarantee a winning innovation. One needs to work hard at the front end to understand what the consumer needs and how the current market offer isn’t meeting those needs. Only against this backdrop can we hope to bring an idea to market that will be truly disruptive. The following article explains.

Companies located in developing countries are currently serving billions of local consumers with innovative and inexpensive products. What happens when more of those companies make the leap into more developed markets?

From incremental to breakthrough innovation projects, managers need to handle different activities and with them dissimilar venues of risks. In this article the internal, external and hidden risks of incremental, differential, radical, and breakthrough innovation projects are identified and ranked accordingly. In addition, for every category a general innovation eco-system has been analyzed.

We first discussed 3D printing in 2008, highlighting potential applications, the increasing range of materials being used, and the growing complexity of products which could be printed. That progress continues creating both opportunities and challenges the impacts of which companies need to assess across their product ranges and supply chains.

Transformational innovation for many businesses is inherently complex and, in many cases, high risk. It can be a big distraction, expensive in terms of cost and resource bleed from other key activities, must be managed carefully and will frequently not be successful. This article explores some key factors to work with when looking for transformational innovation.

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.

New materials and processes are proving effective against a growing range of bacteria and have wide ranging applications. Similar approaches may also change the way we clean our clothes and how often we paint our houses. They could also prove disruptive to existing sectors’ income streams.

Existing methods for the management of innovation projects have a low probability of success in the development of radical or disruptive innovations. A new spiral approach has been developed that provides the balance of flexibility and control needed for a repeatable and successful approach to disruptive innovation.

What does it take for companies to market new, innovative capabilities as a service? The challenge to expand beyond products is daunting, but as market exemplars show, the returns on the investment can be worth it. The case studies explored in this article illustrate the extent to which services demand a premium in the market, drive differentiation from the competition, and build loyalty.

Marlowe and Susan present their strategic innovation plan to the senior executives at Accipiter, recommending incremental innovation for organic growth, and disruptive innovation in new products. The question is, have they created enough innovation momentum to convince management to take on two simultaneous innovation projects?

Higher education is heading for disruption. In the new book The Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education From the Inside Out, Clayton Christensen and Henry Eyring explore why this is inevitable and what traditional universities and colleges can do about it. Professor Bill Fischer, himself an avid believer in disruption, reviews this book covering an extremely timely subject.

Radical innovation presents both a threat and an opportunity to firms. It has frequently turned entire industries on their heads. History shows us that large, successful firms may very suddenly become vulnerable when the underlying technology shifts. In this in-depth article Christian Sandström examines how radical innovation can be managed, despite the seemingly insurmountable problems created by the transition from one technology to another.

In the age of permanent uncertainty there is a resurgent interest in scenario planning. Executives that have witnessed high profile decline of strong companies know that past success is no guaranteed guide to the future. Kevin McDermott & Peter Kennedy argue that scenario planning can be lifted out of its conventional uses in strategy development and risk management and used instead to avoid “opportunity blindness”.

Dr. Alexander Ostervalder talks about the systematic approach to business model innovation. He suggests using architectural strategies when planning new business models, such as prototyping and sketching. He also stresses the importance of a strong facilitator who can enforce rules during the innovation process.

Tony Ulwick, founder and CEO of Strategyn, explains which innovations are disruptive and why it’s important for companies to be very precise about what type of innovation initiative they’re implementing so that the appropriate strategy can be followed.