Design thinking
Harvard Business School defines design thinking as an “approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design”. It focuses heavily on showing empathy toward the consumer’s needs, which organically encourages a shift from focusing on the problem to targeting a solution.
Successful product innovation often revolves around customer-centric ideas. Organizations should also know that iterative approaches are often needed to ensure that products continue to deliver over the long haul. Design thinking additionally embraces out-of-the-box creativity in a psychologically safe fashion to challenge assumptions and unlock the best outcomes for business and customers alike.
Prototyping
The fear of failure can often restrict corporate innovation strategies, but intelligent failure can be a key step toward success. This is because success is achieved by rapidly testing ideas, gathering feedback, and gaining insights from failures. Efficient prototyping is, therefore, one of the best tools at your disposal.
Prototyping can be achieved with the help of various innovation programs and tools - like for example KICKBOX. This tool helps to visualize data and uses defined frameworks and templates to drive ideas along, allowing intrapreneurs to make informed decisions more quickly. This allows for streamlined prototyping, especially as ideas can often be tested in a virtualized setting - potentially with the help of Augmented Reality (AR) - to highlight failures and identify iterative improvements. This saves both time and money.
Phase-gate model
When developing a systematic approach to innovation management, the phase-gate model is one of the most popular solutions. When used correctly, it helps to minimize risks, allocate resources, and boost success rates while simultaneously promoting a shorter journey to market. Crucially, each idea is analyzed without bias, using the same rules.
Intrapreneurship can become accessible with the right tools and the phase-gate model for innovation management is very effective. While it will be necessary to prevent bureaucracy from creeping in, this method ensures that all ideas are subsequently put through feasibility testing, development, and validation. Successful innovations will then be ready for launch while the gate review process encourages further iterations to take place as needed.
Product life-cycle management
All products and innovations have a life-cycle. The various phases are defined as development and introduction, growth, maturity/stability, and decline. An innovation management strategy should have a clear understanding of the life-cycle to ensure that funds and resources are distributed efficiently at each stage.
As well as influencing development, marketing, and supply chain management, it will help teams identify opportunities to extend the life-cycle. This is often through iterative improvements, especially in the tech sector. When done correctly, it ensures that innovations can keep generating revenue for the longest time possible while employees can start working on the successor so that it can strike at the perfect time, ensuring sustained growth.
Upgrade your innovation management process with KICKBOX
Knowing what you wish to achieve with a revamped innovation management strategy is one thing but having the tools in place to do it is another. Our flagship KICKBOX Intrapreneurship program offers an online platform that supports visibility, management, scalability, and measurement of ideas. Employees will be able to embrace all of the tools above to work freely on creative ideas within the context of the business. In turn, failed innovations are removed quickly while successes can be released to market fast.
To find out more about our innovation management tools and how they can be useful for your organization, call the rready team to arrange a full demo today.
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