Users
Site Sections
Login
Interested in full access to the contents of this site?
Learn more about the benefits of a Management Roundtable membership. Join Today!
http://fasttrack.roundtable.com/app/content/knowledgesource/section/22
Innovation and Ideation
Innovation – in products, processes and business models – was always an essential element in new product development. In the 21st century, as product lifecycles shrink and markets become global, innovation is even more essential. In this section, you will find reports dealing with such topics as how innovation is a learnable process; how to get ahead of the market through Lead User research; how to predict where disruptive technologies might enter the marketplace; and how not to get blind-sided by one’s own success.
-
Open Innovation Networks: Creating and Managing an Ecosystem for Innovation
-
Using Patent Analytics to Uncover and Assess Technology Innovation Opportunities – Before Your Competitors
-
Tireless Communication: Experts Share the State-of-the-Art in Product Development
-
Green Product Design: Innovative, Customer Focused – and Profitable
-
Demystifying the Link Between Innovation and Business Value: A Process Framework
-
Opportunity Discovery, The Front End of Innovation: Five Keys to White Space Identification – Audio Session
-
Assessing Technology Readiness and Maturity – A Step-by-Step Process
-
Want, Find, Get and Manage for Success: An Open Innovation Overview
-
A Disciplined Process for Innovation: Armstrong Clarifies the Fuzzy Front End with Marketplace Teams
-
Interface Inc. Builds Environmental Sustainability into its Product Strategy: not Philanthropy or Altruism but Competition
Documents
-
Open Innovation Networks: Creating and Managing an Ecosystem for Innovation
Presentations—While a select group of leading companies have successfully adopted open innovation, demonstrating impressive results, many others are moving slowly or stumbling along the way. Many companies equate open innovation with technology scouting. While scouting remains important, open innovation is much broader incorporating partnerships and informal relationships with networks of external innovators. Fostering these networks is an ongoing process that requires a company to approach business in a fundamentally different way, both externally and internally. In this June 2008 presentation, Mike Docherty, CEO of Venture2, provides an introduction and framework for creating and managing a network of external innovators. This presentation provides case studies demonstrating successful open innovation networks, as well as a straightforward approach to planning, structuring and managing external innovation partnerships to drive internal growth. In this presentation Docherty discusses the importance of moving beyond a narrow focus on technology scouting; defining strategic intent and developing network charters; a framework for creating and managing networks of partners; and how to structure collaborative pilots to harvest opportunities for innovation. (46 slides)
-
Using Patent Analytics to Uncover and Assess Technology Innovation Opportunities – Before Your Competitors
In today’s global economy, Intellectual Property (IP) may be a company’s most valuable asset. To best leverage this asset, leading firms are using a tool called Patent Analytics to assess the competitive technology landscape and make strategic decisions about what technologies to invest in, when (and with whom) to partner or license, and which markets to pursue. This presentation, by technology innovation expert Tom Blailock, provides an overview on how to use Patent Analytics including case examples and multiple approaches. This presentation covers: using a journalistic approach to develop the technology story; setting up the technology landscape assessment; white space; alternative solutions; search techniques; "Draining the Lake" and related metaphors; case examples and demonstrations.
(44 slides) -
Tireless Communication: Experts Share the State-of-the-Art in Product Development
Event Summaries—This overview of the Management Roundtable’s April 2008 PD IMPACT conference summarizes a range of presentations which reflect the current state of Product Development across industries. Presenters from such firms as Texas Instruments, Boeing, Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Kimberly-Clark, Honeywell and MEDRAD discussed roadmapping, portfolio management, co-development, open innovation and many other topics of current interest to R&D and product development managers. Issues around managing shared networks and anticipating markets and trends emerged as particularly important themes. Expert practitioners reported that much of the challenge of product development today is engaging these invisible resources and networks to achieve innovation. A variety of tools can facilitate that process; but, at the heart of it all, there is people – communicating tirelessly and incorporating lessons learned into the next iteration.
(7 pages) -
Green Product Design: Innovative, Customer Focused – and Profitable
Presentations—Environmental concerns have come to the forefront of consumer awareness. Many companies are realizing the benefits of investing in new and energy efficient solutions: better, more profitable products and positive societal contribution. The challenge is in making sure that the processes, energy, materials, facilities and technology used not only meet environmental standards, but that the products continue to meet customer needs. InterfaceFLOR Commercial has been on the sustainability journey for 13 years. Over the last five years this company’s core business has more than doubled and the valuation of the company on the NASDAQ has increased more than five times. In this presentation, John Bradford, VP Research and Development, InterfaceFLOR Commercial, shares the lessons learned from his experience with the multi-functional aspects of green product and process development. Among other topics he discusses: business reasons to go green; how his company moved outside its internally-focused development process in order to create an end result that would be effective and accepted in the field; a format for collaborative ideation on the foundation of ‘Biomimicry’; a suggested method for measuring options using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA); how to evaluate decisions on the premise of environmental health in a visual way that simplifies the complexities of LCA.
(33 slides)
Access the Presentation Here -
Demystifying the Link Between Innovation and Business Value: A Process Framework
Presentations—Innovation is a crucial component of business strategy, but the process of innovation can be difficult to manage. To plan organizational initiatives or bolster innovation requires a firm grasp of the innovation process. Few organizations have transparently defined such a process. In this presentation, innovation expert and faculty member in the Information School at the University of Washington Kevin Desouza offers a process framework and proposes mechanisms to measure the value of innovation. The innovation process is broken down into the discrete stages of idea generation and mobilization, screening and advocacy, experimentation, commercialization, diffusion and implementation. For each stage, Desouza provides context, outputs and critical ingredients as well as mechanisms to measure performance. The presenter concludes the audio session by linking these performance measures to business value measures.
(48 slides) -
Opportunity Discovery, The Front End of Innovation: Five Keys to White Space Identification – Audio Session
Event Summaries, Presentations, Transcripts—Related Links: Audio | Transcript (26 pages) | Slides (51 slides)
As firms begin to add structure to the front end of innovation, it has become increasingly clear that opportunity discovery – finding the so-called “white space” – is vital to sustaining success. In this audio-session, Geoff Waite and Simon Karger of Sagentia outline five fundamental areas to explore to find potential opportunities: 1) unmet customer needs, 2) future trend analysis, 3) market bases of competition, 4) business value chain disruption & exploitation, and 5) brand design. The presenters describe how to channel creative energies where there is real value by using a set of tools for identifying, quantifying and validating opportunities in each of these five areas. They also discuss how to increase the likelihood of genuine breakthroughs while reducing the number of great ideas that go nowhere, ensuring market success and maximum return on investment.
(13 pages) -
Assessing Technology Readiness and Maturity – A Step-by-Step Process
Presentations—A Presentation by Has Patel, Founder and President of Infologic
Related Link: Audio (mp3)
Emerging technology-based projects are often plagued by cost overruns, schedule delays and performance problems. In most of these cases, technology maturity analysis hasn’t been properly conducted, and immature technologies are inserted into products and systems. In this slide presentation, Has Patel discussed current technology due diligence processes and their pitfalls and presented NASA’s developed technology maturity matrix, called Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), now widely accepted by the Department of Defense. Patel also presented a technology maturity matrix which extends the TRLs, by incorporating technology life cycles, such as the technology hype and technology adoption. Finally, the presentation also included a methodology that allows an organization to select, insert and integrate emerging technologies throughout the lifecycle of a project.
(36 pages) -
Want, Find, Get and Manage for Success: An Open Innovation Overview
Interview with Gene Slowinski, PhD
Gene Slowinski, an expert on alliances and co-author of the recent book The Strongest Link, believes that the emergence of Open Innovation is due to the fact that it has become virtually impossible for a single company to develop complete solutions in-house. In this article, he presents a proven model for Open Innovation based on four stages: Want, Find, Get and Manage. Slowinski cites best practice in each phase of this model. He also discusses key challenges to Open Innovation such as IP management, the changing role of the Legal function and the integration of external resources into the phase-gate process. Slowinski’s conclusion: “Every link in the value-added chain must be open for external innovation.”
(5 pages) -
A Disciplined Process for Innovation: Armstrong Clarifies the Fuzzy Front End with Marketplace Teams
Case Studies—This report summarizes a recent talk by Leslie Kulis, Director of Process Improvement at Armstrong World Industries’ international headquarters, on the subject of maximizing innovation through clarifying the “fuzzy front end” of development. Leslie discusses how Armstrong has increased its number of product launches in part by focusing on ways to generate and evaluate promising new product ideas. In particular, Leslie describes how Armstrong created local marketplace teams help keep new ideas in the “pipeline” before the company’s business divisions commit resources to development projects. Kulis also reports on the dashboards that help the company maintain a balanced product portfolio. In addition to the text-based summary below, click here to download presentation slides (56 pages) related to this talk.
(6 pages) -
Interface Inc. Builds Environmental Sustainability into its Product Strategy: not Philanthropy or Altruism but Competition
Case Studies—Interface, Inc., a leader in the interior furnishings industry, builds its focus on the environment into its products and processes, allowing the company to shave waste and develop more innovative products. For Interface, the key word is sustainability, which entails measuring the benefits of its business decisions against their potential costs to earnings and to the environmental and social systems which its products affect. A multi-year effort culminated in the creation of a series of metrics around sustainability. These metrics dovetail with the program the company refers to as its Seven Fronts of Sustainability. These seven involve such issues as eliminating waste, reducing harmful emmissions, using renewable energy and encouraging resource-efficient transportation of its products. The company also has a tool for assessing the environmental impact of its products over their entire life cycle. Interface carefully screens the raw materials it allows its designers to use and partners with suppliers to gather the data it needs to make better decisions for the environment. An underlying principle in Interface’s sustainability strategy is to imitate nature’s own solutions to the challenges it faces. Interface has discovered that ‘green’ is not only politically correct – it’s also good business.
(7 pages)
