Innovation management: the key to lucrative market opportunities
Innovation is important for every company – regardless of whether it is small, medium or large. The prerequisite for new ideas to find their way is well thought-out innovation management.
Renewal as a corporate goal
“Innovation” is derived from the Latin word “innovare”, which stands for renew. From the point of view of economists, an innovation is something new that benefits a company, an organization and / or society. “New” is always relative. So it can be about things that are global or just new within the company.
Innovation management means that something new is targeted in order to achieve a specific purpose. In this sense, innovation management is the systematic promotion of innovations that are planned, organized, managed and controlled.
The tasks of innovation management
The tasks and goals of innovation management are correspondingly diverse. Often it is about new services and products in order to open up new markets or to stand out from the competition. Innovations can also improve internal processes, save costs and strengthen the company from within. The development of new business models and the development of new sources of income are also the focus of innovation management.
Innovation management in four steps
1. Innovation planning
Systematic innovation management has a structured process. The first step is to precisely plan innovative processes and projects as well as the use of resources. There are several methods for this strategically oriented innovation planning – such as roadmapping, scenario analysis or portfolio technology.
2. Innovation organization
Innovation processes are very complex. The associated organizational tasks are correspondingly broadly diversified. In addition, management often has to solve unclearly structured tasks and obstacles within the company. To make it easier to discover and introduce new things and to bring clarity to the processes, good innovation management is therefore important:
Parts of the necessary organizational structures are project management , the creation of innovation teams, the creation of communication structures that promote the innovation process, an innovative management style and, overall, an innovation-promoting corporate culture. The right incentive system is also important in order to organize innovations in the best possible way.
3. Leadership in innovation
Innovations must be able to establish themselves professionally as new processes. In order for this to work, structures must be created and processes must be established. Important components are cross-departmental networking and the development of new team strategies that go beyond the company’s own research and development department. This network can include external experts.
4. Innovation control
According to eshaoxing, innovation controlling is required for innovation projects to succeed. It ensures that projects do not get out of hand, supports all parties involved and provides them with all the necessary information. This transparency is important for the efficient and effective management of projects. Innovation controlling collects all information relevant to the project, analyzes it and prepares it as a basis for decisions.
This is how your innovation management works!
In order for innovation management to work, two prerequisites must be met: a good internal culture of innovation and the ability to innovate .
Culture of innovation
The greatest innovations and ideas fail when there is no innovation culture in the company. If an innovation does not work, it is mostly up to people and not processes and technologies.
A beneficial innovation culture exists when employees and management are open to ideas and new things and have a positive attitude.
This can be achieved, among other things, by allowing employees to actively participate in the innovation process. In addition, the importance of innovations should be emphasized and it should be made clear that they are actively supported.
Ability to innovate
How innovative a company is can be seen in how many ideas arise in the company itself, how they are dealt with and how quickly they are implemented. The ability to innovate can be determined using various indicators from the business model and the annual financial statements . The comparison of these indicators with competing companies shows how innovative a company actually is.
If innovation processes run sluggishly and slowly, your company’s ability to innovate is low. If everything works very efficiently, the ability to innovate is high. The promotion of the right framework conditions increases the ability to innovate and makes it easier to achieve the set innovation goals.
Innovation processes run in three phases
First phase: brainstorming and generation of ideas
Ideas can be found and developed using proven creativity techniques. Design thinking and other methods can also help in this early phase. Certain forms of teamwork and internal company ideas competitions are also tried and tested tools.
Second phase: developing ideas
Social collaboration is an effective tool on the way from new ideas to prototyping : teams with different thinking styles and specialist skills jointly deepen their ideas by bringing their respective perspectives into the project.
Third phase: implementation of ideas
There are some classic innovation processes for the implementation of ideas. In addition, there is a relatively new tool, agile project management , which dispenses with time-consuming documentation and rules. In this way, possible stumbling blocks in the course of the project can be quickly identified and those involved can react quickly and flexibly. The planning cycles are short, the cooperation is intensive and the continuous exchange in short meetings promotes team spirit and is good for added value.
