Three steps to Innovating for Growth
When asked, very few executives and managers would say they see no room for improvement in innovation, new business models, new product development, R&D, new business creation, or whatever terminology they prefer. Even the best performers always see potential next steps.
By Iason Onassis, Managing Consultant, Industry Consulting, Philips Engineering Solutions
If someone excels at execution, they may see potential for opening up new areas and creating new growth. If they already excel at that, making smart choices or engaging in Open Innovation could be an improvement area. Furthermore, in larger companies there’s always potential for leveraging a good practice from one part of the company across the entire firm.
Helping manage your innovation
At Philips, we have been innovators for over 125 years. In that time, many successful innovations have seen the light of day, which have brought the company to where it is now. Obviously there have been challenges, too. Key recurring questions are: How do I choose where and what to innovate? How do I realize better innovations for profitable growth? How do I innovate faster, better and cheaper?
With our Operations Management colleagues we take an integrated approach to challenges (End-to-End). We have ongoing access to Philips technology experts and start our involvement with implementation in mind.
A closer look at the ‘three levers’ for ongoing improvement
As innovation consultants that support businesses – inside and outside of our company – we have found that three levers are vital for accelerating innovation to profitable growth.
- Lever 1: Innovation: choosing what, where and when
That means Roadmapping your innovation choices to reach your strategic goals, based on winning architectures and effective portfolio management. - Lever 2: Higher innovation quality for profitable growth
Managing ideas to business through building new business through breakthrough innovation, creating new business models and value networks, customer driven value propositions backed up by solid business cases. - Lever 3: How to improve efficiency and speed of your innovation process
End-to-End increasing speed, reducing costs and creating better innovations by applying Lean Development practices.
In this edition, we will present these three areas. Upcoming issues will more closely examine the skills a company must master to achieve the first part: setting clear innovation goals and making smarter choices to achieve Innovation for Growth.
Introducing three levers for ongoing improvement of the innovation management process
Image: The first, second and third part of this funnel are introduced in the articles mentioned above: