What good is an idea if it remains an idea?
Blog: Groudlion
The importance of automating innovation
If we stand still, we go backwards. How to stay ahead of competition should therefore be a constant concern for every company that is in it for the long run. In order to earn and defend that lead, companies should focus on optimising all innovation-related processes and information flows. Let us explain why and how.
Getting innovation into a company culture can be supported by a structured approach into cultivating ideas. Innovation is knowledge work, and that knowledge is exactly your competitive edge.
Structuring an innovation process does not mean limiting creativity. It simply means guiding it to an extend where ideas are gradually translated into a minimal viable product or service. Guiding the do’s and don’ts in every stage of the development process. Determining these guidelines for innovation will be a combination of objective market number crunching and ‘gut feeling’ or the more implicit knowledge of your people. Leveraging the ideas, product and market knowledge of your employees (not just a specific R&D team) is only possible through a flexible system in which the development of ideas can be registered, monitored and compared. Unfortunately, nowadays the knowledge of employees is seldom put to full use.
You can’t automate how to innovate, but you can automate the guidelines of what (not) to do. And however frustrating as it seems, administration of all ideas and to what extend they were already investigated, saves time in the long run. Making your innovation process ‘structured’ and making it a structured part of your company’s DNA, will spike entrepreneurship and let ideas live more throughout your business. A necessity to think about, to get back to and to focus on new exciting things.
Innovation processes are not always optimally, nor digitally, supported. And that’s a pity, because demonstrable time gains and quality improvements are achieved when centralising the information and assisting in the innovation workflow. Clear milestones to reach, suited for your organisation, can be identified and monitored. Best-practices activity can often be recognized and will provide focus at every stage of development.
When tracing activity (task control and registration), bottlenecks are revealed, and your solution can be iteratively improved to support in achieving desired outcomes. By defining behaviour-driving metrics and KPI’s, innovation will be a process in the spotlight of your organisation, as it should be.
How about your company? Is your innovation process optimized and (digitally) supported?
The Ground lion experts can show you how. Get in touch.
(Koen De Maesschalck)
The post What good is an idea if it remains an idea? appeared first on Ground lion.
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