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Rapid innovation
requires an effective innovation process.
Virtuous Spiral
The process of
innovation is a rhythm of
proactive inside-out invention and
outside-in adaptation, search and selection,
simulation and experimentation, exploration and
synthesis, cycles of
loose-tight leadership − divergent thinking
followed by convergence. |
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Holistic Approach to
Innovation
In today's era of
systemic innovation,
you must design your firm's innovation process
holistically.
Holistic innovation (HI) is a visionary big-picture systems approach
to
inventing,
synergizing,
designing,
harmonizing, producing and delivering complex
innovative value.
Innovation is the key driver
of
competitive advantage,
growth, and
profitability. There are many parts of the whole field of
innovation:
invention,
business design,
business model,
strategy innovation,
new product development,
creative approaches to
problem solving,
idea management,
suggestion systems, etc. All of these components are important in
their own right. Yet approaching them separately will bring local
results only. These seemingly disparate issues must be
approached holistically,
synergized and integrated into a single overarching strategy if
they are to be mobilized in the quest for
growth.
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The Traditional
Phase-Gate Model
The traditional
phase-gate model has many weaknesses and works
well only when:
▪ the time required to innovate is shorter than the
rate of change in the
business environment
▪
the quality, reliability, and safety requirements
are critical
▪
a company has never had a defined innovation
process and can use the phase-gate paradigm as a good first step
to stabilize innovation before trying to speed it up. |
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The Jazz of
Innovation
The
improvisation-driven model for
innovation project
management doesn’t discard structure, just as there
is a clear structure to good jazz.
In innovation, this structure is created
through
roadmaps,
guiding principles,
business processes, systems and organizational
charts.
Strategic-planning
and road-mapping processes cannot guarantee brilliant flashes of creative
insight, but they can prepare minds and increase the odds that such flashes
occur in real time. Thus structure, as chords do in jazz, serves as a basis
for improvisation,
experimentations,
discoveries and
innovation...
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Radical vs.
Incremental Innovation
Incremental innovation projects, due to
low levels of uncertainties, are usually follow the orderly phase-gate
process.
Radical innovation projects, due to high
levels of uncertainties, use the flexible model. "Even though the radical
innovation life cycle includes many of the same sets of activities and
decision points, the reality of managing the process is
strikingly different
for radical versus incremental innovation," say HBS authors of
Radical Innovation...
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