• Insights
    • Perspectives
    • Blog
    • Webinars
    • Toolboxes
    • Awards
    • Innovation Day
  • Offerings
    • Strategic Innovation
    • Digital innovation
    • Product innovation
    • High-tech innovation
    • On-site consulting
      • Onsite consultants
      • Project management
    • Solutions
      • MyStartUp
      • MyStartUp Portfolio
      • MyInnovationFactory
      • MyInnovationTalent
      • MyFutureProduct
  • Markets
    • Smart Space & Security
    • Smart FMCG
    • Smart Life Sciences
    • Smart Industry
  • Capabilities
    • OpenLab
    • DesignLab
    • InnoLab
    • AILab
    • DigitalLab
    • EmbeddedLab
    • MechLab
    • PhysicsLab
    • FabLab
    • OpticsLab
  • Technologies
    • Technology portfolio
    • IoT & sensors
    • AI & data science
    • Robotics & autonomy
    • Cooling, heating & fluidics
  • About
    • Our story
    • News
  • Jobs
  • Contact
Verhaert Masters in InnovationVerhaert Masters in Innovation
Verhaert Masters in InnovationVerhaert Masters in Innovation
  • Insights
        • Perspectives
        • Blog
        • Webinars
        • FEATURED
          Innovation Day 2023
  • Offerings
        • Strategic
          innovation
        • Digital
          innovation
        • Product
          innovation
        • High-tech
          innovation
        • On-site
          consulting
        • FEATURED
          Innovation Academy
  • Markets
        • Space & security
        • FMCG
        • Life sciences
        • Industry
  • Capabilities
        • AILab
        • DesignLab
        • DigitalLab
        • EmbeddedLab
        • FabLab
        • InnoLab
        • MechLab
        • OpenLab
        • OpticsLab
        • PhysicsLab
  • Technologies
        • IoT & sensors
        • AI & data science
        • Robotics & autonomy
        • Cooling, heating & fluidics
  • About
        • News
        • Our story
  • Careers
  • Contact

Managing innovation as a predictable driver for growth

10 August 2022 Posted by Stijn Smet FMCG & consumer, Perspectives, Strategic innovation

Research and innovation play an essential role in creating added value for society. They’re also critical levers to ensure a sustainable and inclusive recovery, while boosting the resilience of our production sectors, the competitiveness of our economies and the transformation of our socio-economic systems. However, innovation success is often uncertain and inherently risky to predict.

The scaring high numbers of failed market introductions across industries sometimes make innovation a perceived leisure activity when a company is doing well. Even worse, innovation budgets often suffer in times of crisis although top management previously listed it as a number one priority. There are several studies though that prove the contrary leads to more mid-term outperforming growth.

If you’re going to search for a golden needle in a haystack, you need to know when to move on.

Many innovation professionals currently struggle to secure IR&D budgets, as opposed to internal investment programs on digital transformation or operational excellence as the innovation program is seldom managed as a predictable driver for growth. However, it’s our firm belief that innovation processes can, and should, be managed in a more objective and transparent way, making it more reliable as a critical engine for company longevity.

Successful companies require predictable growth drivers. What’s predictability in innovation exactly? This clearly differs for various involved parties as the following overview shows. A holistic innovation program approach should fulfill these various needs.

INVOLVED PARTIES PREDICTABILITY FOR THEM SYMPTOMS OF STRUGGLE HOW TO DELIVER PREDICTABILITY
Innovation enthusiasts
  • Receive credits on innovation effort even if the realized impact is not visible (yet)
  • Being able to focus on innovation next to the daily operations
  • Work in the shadows in lack of clear resource approval
  • Low initiative on calls for ideas (due to lack of confidence in adherence)
  • Deliver clear strategic direction on where to ideate and to get approval for their initiatives
  • Provide a stage-gate flow to gradually tackle the innovation challenge in a lean & agile way (innovation practice)
Middle management
  • Consequent resource policy to avoid business Continuity challenges
  • Program support to tackle short-term opportunities
  • Prioritizing daily deliverables over innovation initiatives
  • Setting up own initiatives to deal with an (ad hoc) innovation challenge
  • Provide a flexible innovation framework that leverages their business unit’s challenges
  • Provide incentives to accelerate innovation and cross-company collaboration
  • Provide a framework to deal with temporal loss of resources
Top management (& shareholders)
  • Balanced risk-taking and investment
  • Transparent and objective decision-making process on investments
  • KPI’s for follow-up
  • Putting innovation on the radar, but only taking safe bets on short-term ROI
  • Gut-feeling approval for innovation budget requests
  • No focus on spill-over potential to other business units
  • No framework provided to accelerate insight gathering and de-risking
  • Subjective discussions on whether the company is over/under-spending on innovation
  • Build a transparent portfolio overview, with a sound risk/reward ratio, spread over the different activities
  • Objectivize innovation effort and impact with simple, yet effective KPI’s (innovation accounting)
  • ‘Fair’ business case thinking framework (more on that later)
Stakeholders
  • Long-term vision on ecosystem collaboration and value creation
  • Understanding when a reach-out to the company would be sensible
  • Little or no reach-outs for collaboration
  • Fuzzy bi-directional requests in the value chain
  • Provide an innovation thesis as a mission and strategic outline
  • Provide a portal and/or dispatch platform to internal stakeholders, incl. communicating on updates

Dan Toma, Tendayi Viki and Esther Gons utilize the following model in their award winning book “The Corporate Startup” in order to summarize the most critical innovation-related activities in a company. Each of these building blocks follow a step-by-step approach to deliver a predictable process.

It’s up to the innovation manager to substantiate these building blocks, keep them connected and relevant, and communicate them clearly to all involved parties. As the discipline of innovation management is still a rather new domain, new insights on best practices pop up constantly.

Interested in upgrading your innovation governance and culture?  Book a call to discuss our Innovation Audit, building further on these insights.


Download the perspective to continue reading on the 3 building blocks to manage innovation as a predictable driver for growth.


Looking for solutions to innovate?

Leave us your email and get in contact with Pieter Deleye, Manager Innovation Acceleration Services – Strategic Innovation, to help you with your innovation process.

Tags: Innovation methodology

You also might be interested in

Agility in innovation to maximize speed

Agility in innovation to maximize speed

Dec 1, 2021

In this webinar we discuss how we developed an ambitious project using the 80% rule and a high-risk/high-gain strategy to maximize speed.

How to work actively on building innovation capabilities?

How to work actively on building innovation capabilities?

Dec 15, 2022

How does Swiss Re reach their commitment to innovation excellence? Find out in this Verhaert Innovation Academy webinar.

Check out these free entrepreneurial tools

Check out these free entrepreneurial tools

Mar 31, 2022

The OpenLab team at Verhaert have brought to life engaging tools that can help any team in their entrepreneurial journey.

OTHER CONTENT
  • The untapped innovation potential of connected appliances & AI
  • The learner engagement equation
  • Overcoming 15 bottlenecks in software development
NEWSLETTER



Verhaert Masters in Innovation is a pioneering innovation group helping companies and entrepreneurs to innovate, creating new products, businesses and services.

Verhaert icon LinkedIn Verhaert icon Facebook Verhaert icon SlideShare Verhaert icon YouTube Verhaert icon Twitter

OFFERINGS
FUNDING
MARKETS
CAPABILITIES
TECHNOLOGY
PERSPECTIVES
BLOGS
WEBINARS
ABOUT
NEWS
JOBS
CONTACT

© 2023 Verhaert New Products & Services NV • BE 0439.039.420 • Privacy policy • Terms of use