Developing Innovations: Pitfall #1

Don’t underestimate the 95% of your innovation effort!
The first pitfall is right ahead

Moving from having a great idea, about 5% of your innovation effort, to up-and-running new business will cost you the other 95% of the effort. So you have sifted through tons of information. And based on your innovation strategy selected the best ideas, and developed those into great value propositions. For some useful concepts go to selecting ideas. You have made clear which benefits you will offer which customer segment. Which business model you will use to monetize your attractive business case. Which new technology will provide a great, industry-changing new benefit to your customers.

Hang on! New technology? Yes, your innovation team decided that your classical, superior quality product needs to enter the realm of Internet-of-Things and Smart-devices. At least, that is what you believe they said. Now you have to be very careful, the 95% of effort is right ahead of you. Ensure that it does not become 99.9% of the effort! Three frequently visited pitfalls loom ahead.

Firstly, many companies vastly underestimate the effort of developing a new-to-them technology. Early on you will already have to make quite some choices. Do you have the technical people who can make such choices? Moving a technological concept from technology readiness level (TRL) 6 to 9 will take you at least 3 to 4 years. An early dead-end choice will cost you 3 years extra effort. Look up TRL, useful concept to have some common language on technology maturity. Unless you have pretty big R&D and Engineering departments, please use a TRL level 9 technology and bring it in from another industry. In another industry ‘your problem’ was probably already solved a long time ago. Use this great and very productive approach to innovation and you might stay close to the 95% development effort. Next week we will examine the other pitfall: Hard at work on the 95% of your development effort. However, the second pitfall looms ›

For further information
Three pitfalls of developing innovations with winning business models

1. Don’t underestimate the 95% of your innovation effort! The first pitfall is right ahead
2. Hard at work on the 95% of your development effort. However, the second pitfall looms…
3. Limiting the development effort to 95% seems feasible! Oh dear, the third pitfall opens up!

Find more information about developing innovations with winning business models ›

Jeroen de Kempenaer
Value propositions, business modeling, business cases, road mapping, portfolio management

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.