Pure Insight Overview

Annual Survey of Key Innovation Management Challenges for Members of Pure Insight’s Innovation Leader Programme

Which challenges keep customers awake at night?
 

Listed below are the top 4 of our 5 key Innovation Management challenge areas, as defined by our ILP Members, in the 2010/11 membership year.

This short publication provides interesting insights into cross company, sector and industry trends surrounding the key innovation management challenges in the year ahead.

Data used for the survey is collected annually, through analysis of individual Service Delivery Plans, which identify two or three focus priorities for innovation management in the member organisation at the point of confirming or renewing their membership of Pure Insight’s Innovation Leader Programme (ILP).

Though individual company challenges are confidential, the document provides plenty of interesting generic insights as well as a snapshot of whether they’re up, down or static in relation to previous years findings.

 

1 The Front End of Innovation
17% of all requests
Particularly the areas of Ideas (ideation), Creativity, Finding White Spaces / Blue Oceans & Market Disruptions.

2 General Culture Change
15% of all requests
Particularly the areas of Team management, Appropriation of resources, Knowledge Management and Intrapreneurship.


3 Technology Management
13% of all requests
Roadmapping & Scouting, Future Trends etc.

4 Open Innovation & Alliances
11% of all requests 

5 Customer / Consumer Insights
10% of all requests
Particularly the areas of Voice of the Customer, Brand Development, Relationships between Marketing & R&D (Convergence).



Challenge Area 1: The Front End of Innovation: Going about ‘un-fuzzying’ the Front End

The Front End may not be the most expensive part of the innovation cycle but it’s where major investments involving time, money, and a product’s end nature are committed to.  

 

There was no movement in the FEI holding the top spot this year and it remains the number 1 innovation management challenge area for the third straight year in a row. The saying goes - Set the right strategy at the Front End, the rest will follow - set your course wrong, you’ll be following the rest.



Fig. 1: Like any other area, the ‘Fuzzy’ Front End needs a process  

 

The first step in getting things right at the Front End needs to be focussed on knowing the answer to “Why?” Before spending any energy on the “How?”

What are the key sub challenges within this area?

· Trend spotting

· Voice of the Customer Interviews / Ethnography

· Scenario Planning

· Lead User Analysis

· Structured Creativity

· Using Disruptive Technologies

· Brand analysis

· Competitor analysis

· White Space/Blue Ocean/Value innovation tools



Challenge Area 2: Innovation Culture: Getting it Right Leading Innovation is a ‘hot topic’ this year!

There is broad agreement that aligning innovation and the strategic goals of a company is tough...

‘Improving the innovation culture’ is the second key challenge that our ILP member companies are facing.

Rising from fourth in last year’s survey to second this year, it’s clear from our analysis that many organisations have adopted new innovation competencies in recent years, but many have also inadequately planned for the culture change required for successful implementation. In turn innovation performance is lower than expected and competency development is reported as being undermined.

Key challenge areas outlined for the year ahead are :

· What is the best way to incentivise innovative behaviours?

· How do we encourage more entrepreneurial behaviours?

· What can be done to ensure initiatives are acted upon?

· How do we create teams that work across R&D functions?

· How to create a more risk taking culture?

· What does a successful innovation culture actually look like?

· How to inspire people to be more innovative? How to make innovation a pervasive part of the culture?
 
Challenge Area 3: Technology Management: Creating a Strategy for Technology

Technology Management allows organisations to manage and create competitive advantage from new technologies. Technology is valuable as long as there is a value for the customer so the technology management function of an organisation should be able to argue when to invest on technology development and when to withdraw.

Technology Management can also be defined as the integrated planning, design, optimisation, operation and control of technological products, processes and services. Typical concepts referenced in relation to technology management challenges this year are:

· Creating a technology strategy

· Technology forecasting (identification of technologies)

· Technology scouting

· Technology roadmapping (mapping technologies to

· business and market needs)

· Technology Spin outs (Spin-in’s)

· Corporate Venturing
· Use of external Technology Intermediaries (i.e. Yet2)

The role of the technology management function in an organisation is understand the value of certain technology for the organisation, with potentially big rewards for sustained investment in this field, it’s unsurprising that it remains held as the number three innovation management challenge for the 2010-11 membership year survey.

 

Challenge Area 4: Open Innovation: Open Innovation moves towards Open Business

“In 2007 only 30% of companies were trying to measure the performance of OI, those that did used largely informal or estimated measures. When repeated in 2010 a clear set of priorities and measures are used measure OI by the large majority of companies”
Prof Ellen Enkel : Zeppelin University

Open Innovation (OI) has well and truly begun its maturation phase. Our 2010/11 survey results show that the need for knowledge (around what Open Innovation is) is still relevant, but it’s clear that Open Innovation is becoming more specific as companies increasingly look to define “what works” and “what doesn’t”?

2010/11’s service delivery plan survey showed that, for the first time since it joined the top 5 challenges list, Open Innovation has dropped in absolute numbers of requests made to our member services team. This could be for several reasons but external literature and studies have indicated that for many Open Innovation is no longer seen as a route to competitive advantage, or saving money, but is instead a simple ‘research necessity’.

“In many organisations Open innovation has not yet left the "piloting" stage and become an everyday practice”. Prof. Frank Piller

So when it comes to successfully implementing Open Innovation, one of the first priorities is to ensure that your internal structures for innovation are robust. Successful innovation, is tough to pull off, Open Innovation (or as some are starting to call it - collaborative innovation) is very tough. From our own findings as well as the findings of people like the acknowledged OI Metrics expert Professor Ellen Enkel, the biggest two challenges in OI at this time appear to be:

· Senior Management want to see results

· Making Partnerships (internal / external) work

Interestingly in all the requests for insight / resources and support that Pure Insight get, managing IP in Open Innovation is not widely considered to be one of the key barriers to OI success. Instead cultural concerns about aligning needs with partners, “lack of time to contribute effectively to new relationships”, and “poor planning / false assumptions” are much more common.

Fig. 2: (Below) From analysis of 2010/11 Service Delivery Plan challenges, Partner Management, Co-developing with suppliers and properly embedding OI into the culture of the company are all seen as more important than either protecting IP or OI Metrics.