Innovation Basics

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8 articles

The Failure of Innovation Training

Innovation teams have relied on workshops and culture change to drive outcomes. But skill and mindset training alone won’t achieve results. We must drive data flow through the entire organization to realize the value of these methods: Drive strategy with qualitative insights using design thinking; lower the cost of innovation through lean startup and agile methods; increase your chances of success by using the lower costs to test more ideas; quantify your opportunity and odds of success through innovation accounting; adjust your strategy, allocate resources, and get to scale based on the odds of success and opportunity size.

Breaking Down Your Innovation Process

Innovation isn't a singular leap; it's a series of calculated, compartmentalized steps that culminate in transformative change. Over-segmenting tasks can dilute the primary objective, while under-segmenting can lead to overwhelming challenges. Continuous feedback and agility within compartmentalized tasks ensure alignment with the broader innovation vision.

Four Must-Haves in Your Innovation Process

Innovation management has evolved significantly. It's no longer a rigid, one-way path but a dynamic, feedback-driven funnel. Projects can now revisit stages for further development, or take an off-ramp if they cease to align with strategic goals. This approach enables organizations to foster a more resilient, adaptable, and successful innovation process. But most of all, it increases both impact and ROI. In the rapidly changing business landscape, there's no room for static, one-size-fits-all processes. Your innovation process should foster creativity, leverage data, and maintain strategic alignment. By incorporating metered funding, data-driven decisions, bounce gates, and an offramp into your innovation process, you can enhance your new product development process and fuel your organization's future growth. Metered Funding stops funding to failing projects. Data-Driven decisions based on innovation accounting improves ROI. Bounce Gates allow pivots, which preserves lessons learned. Off Ramps for projects that don’t fit the strategy preserves option value.

Can You Use a Net Present Value Formula for Innovation Projects?

The Net Present Value formula is a way of collapsing future cash inflows and outflows into today’s value for easy comparison. The Net Present Value formula is not a replacement for Innovation Accounting. The Net Present Value formula can be used within Innovation Accounting for making Pivot-or-Persevere decisions.

Adaptive Strategy

Even the best-laid plans need to adapt and evolve to developing circumstances, by building agility into how we conceive and implement adaptive strategy in the first place.

· 12 min read