Making innovation possible
Consulting | Specials | Innovation management
How the new comes into the world
- Everyone can be creative. Use the creative potential of your employees!
- Ideas often arise by chance, but also from structured and professionally moderated work.
- This is how you implement successful innovation management in your company.
Innovation management encompasses more than the invention of new products. The new “product” can also be a new process, a new structure, a new service, a new market positioning or something “different new”.
A structured flexible process
You can’t always wait for innovations to emerge by chance. Innovations can be made possible and promoted with an orderly process. This process is often not fixed, but takes place in a number of detours, junctions and some return journeys. And often it is also a result of hard work and overcoming resistance and doubts. This also raises the question of how to organize active participation and create an innovation-friendly culture. You will find a picture of this process in our ‘flow innovation mesh’.
We will show you how to introduce structured innovation management – from actively “pushing” ideas to testing and adapting models and prototypes.
flow innovation mesh
Three dimensions of innovation
Innovation: Always a product?
When it comes to innovation, most people think of things – new smartphones, new means of transport, new coffee makers. When we think of “innovation”, we also think of processes, procedures, business models, organizational cultures and restructuring. Christopher Columbus certainly discovered something new (although not the sea route to India) – so fundamentally new that it shaped the following centuries. But it was not a product.
In determining the concrete challenge, three dimensions need to be clarified. In the target function, you describe what you want to achieve with the innovation. Then define the type of innovation. Is it a technical, organizational or social innovation? Or is it a new business model? With the degree of innovation you describe how “new” the innovation should be. Should existing ideas or solutions from other areas be adapted or should a market innovation be developed?
Innovation and culture
“We don’t have the culture to think so innovative and lateral.” This is what we get from companies from time to time. Is it a lack of willingness to take risks or is it the unusual that breaks normal routines? Perhaps it is the fear of confessing the old routine made us stood still? The reasons for a reserved attitude towards a structured and strategically intended innovation management are varied like companies and their active employees.
To want to change all this before innovations are consciously tackled – this leads to an artificial dry practice without immediate benefit. For this reason, working on culture is part of a successful innovative process. The four-field matrix shows what is needed to create an innovation-friendly climate.
One possible way to develop a culture of innovation is to introduce a digital think tank. We will be happy to explain to you what needs to be considered. Please also read our project reports.
Four field matrix
Promoters of innovation
It doesn’t work without promoters
Experience shows that there should be promoters on several levels for the development and implementation of new ideas, like people who develop their own initiative, who enjoy innovation and who are there with the corresponding energy. The power promoter has the appropriate connections in the organization to overcome resistance. He can ensure that the necessary resources, whether time or money, are available. The professional promoter is the “inventor” who designs ideas, researches and develops alternatives. The process promoter knows the structures in the organization well and ensures, for example, that other departments are involved or that conflicts of objectives are considered. Finally, there are people who have good external contacts, e.g. with other companies, associations, partners, customers or suppliers. We call them relationship promoters.
Find these promoters, enable them and give them a protected framework in which they can work. An example of this is the establishment of a “Digital Innovation Tank” which is installed of employees from your company; from all areas, across all hierarchical levels. You are welcome to read our project reports.
Tools of innovation management
Let us gradually test the culture of the new with a step-by-step introduction to innovation management. Give yourself and your employees the opportunity to befriend with innovation management. On the basis of initial challenges, we can venture into innovation management.Gradually and faster than you will assume the processes and tools of innovation management become part of your daily work.
The best innovation management is the habit of doing and struggling for the new – the best innovation is the unusual idea that comes into the world.
The ISO standard 56002 shows the areas that have to be considered when establishing an idea management system.
ISO 56002 Guidance on Innovation Management
Accompanying implementation – change management
If the innovation is planned and has passed through all decision-making instances, implementation is still not certain. If, for example, an innovation calls into question habits that have become dear or intensifies the struggle for scarce resources, resistance can become so great that implementation fails. That innovation really achieves the effect everyone expected from it sometimes depends on the way in which it is implemented. But even if everything goes smoothly until then, the new still has to become routine so that it is produced, marketed, followed, implemented and integrated into the company as a matter of course.
We are familiar with changes in companies, whether a gentle change or a major transformation. One of our strengths is to keep an eye on possible pitfalls and opportunities as early as the development process of the new product. We advise you on the implementation and pass on our know-how in change management to the participants involved in your company.