Innovation Leaders Club: Recent Episodes
Innovation Leaders Club
Based on the Innovation Leaders Club members’ knowledge, experience and best practices, the Innovation Leaders Club Academy Podcast aims to share informative content pertaining to innovation management and development.
How to prepare a creativity session?
Creativity is not chaos, and it shouldn't be. When leading creativity sessions, the so-called brainstorming, you must be organized so that the creativity flow is managed to ultimately end up with a prioritized list of the best ideas. Other than that, you will be generating deception.
Managing a large pool of ideas can be overwhelming if you are not using any tool. You don't necessarily need a dedicated software, but something powerful enough to score, sort, and prioritize your ideas so that you can push further the best ones.
How many ideas do you need for successful innovation?
Innovation is rarely the matter of a spark, an aha moment, it is rather the combination of multiple good ideas. But how many do you need to be successful?
Here is a hint, to get successful innovations, you will need a lot of ideas, many dozens.
How to identify which project should be a technology development project?
Using a set of criteria, you will be able to identify which technology is unmatured and requires a technology development project.
To manage advanced development projects, you will need a tool to prioritize them.
What is an effective Front End of Innovation?
The front end of innovation is often synonymous with creativity. Even though creativity is part of the front end of innovation, it is only a part of it. Front end of innovation must be structured and integrated with other innovation processes and it should be initiated proactively to unleash its full potential.
Simply put, the front end of innovation is a maturation process taking an innovation from its earliest insight and turning it into a feasible concept proposal.
How to Identify an Innovation Opportunity?
To identify an innovation opportunity, you must find a real problem and understand it clearly, so you can clarify and scope the opportunity before generating ideas.
A common technique is "the five whys", which will help you dig to the root of the problem.
Once you know the pain to target, you can use the opportunity tool to better define your innovation target.
How to distinguish the Technology Development from the Product Development process?
Distinguishing the technology development from the product development will provide time for a given technology to mature enough before being implemented in an innovation. You will thus need a different process with its specificities.
A technology development process is needed so you can take a different path for technology to nurture it until it is ready to be integrated into an innovation development project.
Are you tired of incremental innovation projects?
Moving from tactical to strategic innovation can be facilitated by adopting a different management approach; since strategic innovations are more ambitious, they require a different toolset.
Differentiating tactical and strategic innovation will help better balance the organization's innovation portfolio.
Moving from project to program management will promote a multi-year development of strategic innovation.
How to Consistently Innovate?
To consistently innovate, your organization should plan recurrent innovation cycles to set a pace for conducting proactive innovation activities.
Knowing the innovation cycle approach will help you define the appropriate cycle for your organization.
Changing the innovation cycle ownership will better reflect the function mostly solicited during a specific phase.
What is Proactive Innovation?
Proactive innovation aims at starting development projects before getting a formal customer request. It requires vision and a clear process.
A structured innovation management system comprises five (5) components that group all critical processes required for effective innovation management.
How Long Should an Innovation Be Tracked?
The duration your organization will track innovation varies from one industry to another. It also depends on the length of the innovation lifecycle.
First, it all starts with your innovation definition. As a hint, using innovation in the value offering is a proven and practical definition of innovation amongst Club members.
Then, your product life cycle and your organization's context should dictate how long your innovations should be tracked.
How to determine where to focus your innovation efforts?
Identifying strategic arenas, which are the area of focus for your innovation efforts, is part of the first steps to defining an innovation strategy.
Identifying strategic arenas will help the organization pinpoint where to focus its proactive innovation effort.
Examples of innovation strategy outcomes will help you visualize how you could apply this approach in your workplace.
Get your project approved with a feasible concept proposal.
Developing a feasible concept is the ultimate front end of innovation deliverable and a critical component to get a project approval.
Adopting a common terminology is highly relevant to communicate with your teammate where you stand in the maturity stages of the innovation. In addition, you will have an overview of the creative process of developing concepts.
Use the concept tool to detail and evaluate the feasibility of a concept. Then score and prioritize it to move to the project proposal milestone.
What is an Innovation Strategy? An innovation strategy is the foundation of a proactive innovation system. It clarifies the innovation objectives and the area of focus for the next three to five years. An innovation management system comprises five (5) components that group all critical processes required for effective innovation management. An innovation strategy has three(3) components that make it impactful and actionable.
How do you define innovation?
Before measuring and setting innovation objectives, you must define what an innovation means for your organization.
There are two ways to define innovation to ensure everyone is on the same page when dealing with it.
Using Innovation in the Value Offering is a proven and a practical definition of innovation amongst Club members.