Innovation Management
Imaginatik's Definition of Innovation
Innovation is the process of handling new things that deliver value.
The term "innovation" covers the development of an organization's new products, services, processes, markets, etc. The results of the innovation process can be big — so-called breakthrough or radical innovation — or small, generating incremental improvements.
Invention is often confused with innovation but they are not the same concept. Invention represents only a small step in the front end of innovation, and does not deliver value to the organization on its own.
Innovation has to be practiced across the whole organization and is not allowed to be considered the domain of the R&D department.
Innovation Drivers
All organizations need to innovate — at least as well as their nearest competitor. Innovation represents the most important competitive advantage for a company to thrive in today's business environment. It therefore needs to be recognized as a strategically important process that has to be managed.
In order to close its revenue growth gap, an enterprise has to invest in its innovation capacity. The top innovators deliberately innovate across multiple organizational functions, business units and geographies.
Organizations need an Innovation Pipeline to drive tangible results from innovation. Imaginatik’s Innovation Management software, augmented by our process support, helps to operationalize the pipeline concept at enterprise scale and achieve sustainable, pervasive, and successful innovation.
For more information on Innovation Management please refer to the following research from Imaginatik:
Key Success Factors of Innovative Companies
PricewaterhouseCoopers carried out a major study of innovation that found “most companies fail to take advantage of good ideas … the main reason is poor Idea Management.”
The PwC Innovation Report identified three main success factors of innovative companies, which are illustrated in the diagram below:
- Leadership & Followership
- Climate & Environment
- Structured Idea Management Process — gathering ideas widely from employees, customers and supply chain partners
A company cannot base its innovation capacity solely on software tools and methods. Yet the PwC study shows that it is mainly the quality of their Idea Management activities that sets the most innovative organizations apart.
The secret of innovative companies lies in their capacity to leverage the talent and motivation of their people in order to benefit from their Collective Intelligence. Experts and forward-looking companies alike recognize that Idea Management provides a key capability for exploiting the innovative capacity of organizations.
Critical Success Factors of Sustainable and Pervasive Innovation Programs
Looking at more than 200 companies, an Imaginatik Research study in 2006 identified two critical success factors that allow a company to generate tangible and sustainable results from a pervasive and scalable innovation program. These factors are:
- Executive Leadership
- Innovation Metrics and Targets
Managers on all levels of the organization should agree to key metrics, measurement frequencies, and targets. Metrics without committed targets will fail to drive innovation.
Well-chosen innovation metrics and targets are credible, easy to collect and easy to communicate.
Please contact us to find out more about innovation metrics and Imaginatik's Innovation Management-related consulting offerings.