The Innovation Process

What is innovation?

Innovation means different things to different people but here at Innovation Age we define it as 'doing things differently in order to create lasting new value'. This can mean doing completely new things (e.g. create a new product) or tweaking the way existing things are done (e.g. develop a new product feature).

What are the steps to successful innovation?

While innovation can come about in many different ways, we recognise six steps involved in successful innovation. These steps have been identified by combining the latest research with two decades of managing innovation in the real world. For simplicity they are shown here as a sequence, however in reality innovation is rarely the result of a linear sequence of steps as iteration is usually required to optimise the process.

Horizon Scanning - Making sure that the internal and external environments are tapped to identify all the possible inspiration for innovation.
Idea Generation - Coming up with the raw ideas for doing new things and applying an initial value-based filter to identify the best ideas.
Proposition Building - Challenging and refining the ideas until they form a coherent proposition or propositions to take forward to development.
Product Development - Building the physical elements of the proposition along with associated business case.
Implementation - Launching the new product or feature into the market including all associated activity such as training and marketing literature. If appropriate then using a pilot, prototype or soft-launch can mitigate the risks associated with a full launch.
Portfolio Management - Keeping a systematic track of all innovation initiatives in the form of a consolidated pipeline in order to continually improve the organisation.

For more information about each of these steps in the innovation process please click on the links on the left.

How can I get help with one or more of these steps?

Innovation Age has distilled years of experience into specific products to help in these steps so please select Products & Services from the menu on the left for more details.