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March 2007 - Vol 1, Issue 9
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Welcome to the OVO innovation newsletter.

March comes in like a lion and ends like a lamb - sounds like a few innovation initiatives we've seen. Many innovation projects start quickly but run into a series of unforeseen challenges. We'll help you look at some of those in this edition of the newsletter.

This month, in a continuing series of articles featuring some of our partners, we hear from Bill Barrett on innovation and intellectual property.

We continue our series of columns on the important roles for innovation, focusing this month on the "librarian". We conclude our focus on the important "C's" for innovation success. Last month we looked at Compatibility as a driver for innovation. This month, we look at "Completeness" and its place as a driver for innovation success.

Finally, we'll look at the "locations" in your business where innovation occurs, and the interplay between those locations, and the possible need for a centralized innovation team.

Innovation is about bringing new ideas to life as new products or services, and happens in many businesses. In fact, given this definition, it happens in many "locations" within every business. These locations aren't necessarily geographic locations, but are teams and organizations within your business. While your team should encourage innovation, you'll also want to ensure some common approaches and understand the similarities and differences across these innovation locations. You may also find that a centralized innovation team can provide great value to your innovation goals. Let's look at these innovation "locations" in more detail.

Innovation Locations

We like to think there are five unique innovation "locations" within a business. They are:
  • within one product group, function or geography
  • across several product groups or functions
  • in the "white space" of your business
  • between a product group and a business partner
  • external or open innovation with a range of customers

The first three are completely internal to the business. These "locations" represent teams that are trying to create new ideas within the confines of the business - either as incremental ideas to existing products and services or as completely new products and services. The last two "locations" demonstrate a firm innovating with business partners. In the first case, the firm is innovating with a defined, designated partner. This could be an instance of co-development. In the last case, the business is seeking ideas from a wide range of prospects and partners.

Each of these locations has different capabilities and offerings.

Innovation in a product group

Innovation within one product group or business function is probably the most accepted and common approach for innovation. Most innovation happens in product management or R&D functions, so we are familiar with this approach. You need to be careful not to become too comfortable with this as the only innovation approach, however, as this approach tends to create incremental, product-centric innovations. These teams often don't have the mandate to create or evaluate disruptive innovations or innovations that impact process, service or business models.

Additionally a product team can become very confident of its technical capabilities and miss consumer needs and trends in the market.

Innovation across product groups

Often a firm will innovate by creating a combination of offerings that were once discrete products or services. Combining the offerings from two product groups or functions often gives the customer a more significant benefit than providing them separately. What's challenging about working across product groups is the fact that the teams have different culture, different metrics and different processes, and neither wants to adopt the other team's approach.

Innovation in the White Space

White Space innovation is the ultimate goal of many firms - to create something new that adds significantly to the revenue line and the profit line. White Space innovation looks at the opportunities outside the firm's traditional focus areas. This type of innovation offers a lot of promise, and a lot of challenge. The challenges are based on identifying who should investigate "white space" ideas, and where those ideas should reside if they are approved. Many firms have a "New Products" team or business development team to investigate and mature ideas from the white space.

Central Innovation Team

We believe a central innovation team can provide a lot of value as innovation is happening in these different locations. A central team can help define a common language, culture and approach, and provide assistance to teams when they need fresh eyes and a different perspective. A central innovation team can take on white space ideas to evaluate and mature the ideas before passing them on to product teams or functional teams. A central innovation team can become the conduit for the executive team to assist in reporting on innovation across the business.

I heard a speaker say of such a team that they should define the infrastructure but not control the content. I couldn't agree more.

In April we'll publish our white paper on innovation locations and how a central innovation team works with each location.
In our continuing effort to reach out to other innovation leaders and understand their experiences and perspectives, we're pleased to welcome Bill Barrett to our newsletter as a featured contributor this month. Bill is an experienced patent lawyer, working with a number of firms to define new ideas and new intellectual property


Bill is working on a framework to improve the way firms capture and manage their intellectual property while innovating. He agreed to contribute a short article on the subject to our newsletter.

Innovation and Intellectual Property

Innovation is driving unprecedented economic globalization, which creates a variety of opportunities and risks in the intellectual property (IP) arena. How is this happening? To begin with, innovation is driving the global expansion of communication, collaboration and competition. In a recent assessment of the global forces shaping our economic reality, Thomas Friedman writes:

“Clearly, it is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world”

Underlying Friedman’s list of superlatives is a series of innovations that includes more, faster and more reliable technologies for communication, including more optical cables crossing and satellites orbiting the planet, along with more and cheaper devices such as cell phones and computers, for connecting into the global explosion of bandwidth. Better infrastructure and technologies are moving people and goods around the world faster and more reliably than ever.

Read the rest of the article here.
Innovation as a cross-functional activity requires people in many different business functions to generate, manage, evaluate, prototype and launch new products and services. As a cross-functional activity, innovation requires that many people participate in ways that are not well-defined or organized by our existing organizational structures.

Innovation can create new part-time and full-time roles within your organization. Over the next few months we'll examine some of these roles and the value they can add to your innovation initiatives.

The Librarian

This month, the innovation role we'll consider is the Librarian. Last month we looked at the role of the Framer in innovation initiatives. The Framer provides context for ideas and helps innovation teams understand key challenges and issues. The Librarian helps the team capture and manage a portfolio of ideas, understanding what ideas have been captured and worked previously, and which teams or individuals may have experience with a particular topic.

As opposed to the common picture of a librarian dusting off books in a rarely used library, librarians are on the cutting edge of information management, helping teams research, find, file and recover information.

Idea Research

Librarians help innovation teams understand what work and research has been completed previously on an idea topic. They help the innovation team identify any previous investigation on an idea and any existing market research, trends or other information that may pertain to the idea at hand. A well-informed Librarian reduces the effort associated with researching an idea and can eliminate unnecessary rework on an idea that has been considered before.

Your firm probably does not catalog ideas with the Dewey Decimal system or any other unique identifiers to enable research, so creating a system and a small team of individuals to help catalog and research ideas is important to reduce rework and redundancy.

Idea Capture

The Librarian can not only help your team research similar ideas or information, but help with the capture and management of the idea as well. As your innovation focus grows, a central idea repository will become important. A Librarian can provide a consistent approach for capturing and managing the ideas in the database, rather than allowing each team to determine what data to provide and how to register the ideas.

Idea Recovery and Reuse

Imagine a library with no Dewey Decimal system or other method to locate information or retrieve information. Books that were removed could not be reshelved properly and eventually the library would not be useful as no data could be found quickly and easily. In the same manner, your idea capture systems will be at best locally optimized and practically useless to a broad team unless the ideas are cataloged and managed in a central location. The Librarian helps research ideas that already exist and capture new ideas in the system, and store ideas that need more maturation before they are ready to become new products or services. However, there are always a set of ideas that do not get implemented, for a variety of reasons. The Librarian also records these ideas and can provide a history of each idea and its ultimate dispensation, so that any team following on later can understand what happened to the idea and why it was or was not implemented.

Conclusion

Your innovation process will generate a lot of ideas. Some will be considered and rejected, some will be considered and held for future evaluation and some will move ahead to become new products and services. These ideas and their history and context must be managed effectively. Your innovation process needs a Librarian.
Over the last few months we've had an ongoing series of articles about the "C" factor - success criteria for innovations that begin with the letter "C". In previous newsletters we've examined the concepts of Choice, Control, Convenience, Community and Compatibility.
In this issue we'll look at the importance of Completeness as a success factor for innovation.

OK, so it's a bit of a fudge - what we really mean is that the innovation is a "whole product" solution - that is, it is not just a technology or stand alone service but offers a complete solution to a problem or challenge a customer faces. Too often innovations are unique new technologies that while interesting, don't provide a complete solution to a customer. Too bad "whole product" doesn't begin with a "C".

What's a "Whole Product"

Geoffrey Moore in his book Crossing the Chasm defines a whole product as a technology or service that provides all the the expected needs and benefits. For example, early PDAs had some handwriting recognition software, a few manuals and poor connectivity to other electronic devices. While the consumer wanted a PDA, they also wanted total integration to other databases, quick and easy connectivity to other devices and fully documented help functions. The "gee whiz" of the technology alone is simply not enough for the vast majority of customers to take the risk on a new product or service.

What's that got to do with innovation?

Well, really everything. Innovation is about bringing new ideas to life as new products and services. If we bring new products and services to market without carefully considering all the facets that are necessary to provide the customer a "whole product" solution, then our innovations are doomed to failure. No matter how neat the technology is, no matter how outstanding the service offering, if we go only part way to the customers expectation of a whole product solution, we've missed the mark and the product or service will fail.

Whole Product - is that just for physical products?

While Moore called the phenomenon "whole product" he meant that any solution - physical, service or business model - must consider all the facets that a customer expects to exist in order to be considered complete. For physical products, that may include help manuals, a support phone number, a limited warranty, compatibility with other similar hardware and so forth. For a service, that may include seamless transitions between the individuals offering the service, 24 hour support, support in the chosen language, differentiated services for different types of customers.

Completeness

Moving beyond the "Ah ha" to create a new product or service is really just the first step. To create a lasting solution, your product or service must incorporate the "whole product" that the customer expects. Anything less than a complete solution will founder in the market, which will reflect negatively on your innovation processes. In many cases, it's not that the idea was wrong, it's that the idea was poorly executed as a new product.
In our work on innovation and idea management over the last few years, one recurring theme we've noticed is that innovation and idea management initiatives are often begun without enough forethought and planning. As we speak with individuals who have been tasked to innovate, we find:
  • Unclear goals
  • Uncertain direction
  • Poorly defined strategies
  • Little organizational support
  • Few defined processes

These factors tend to slow down an innovation initiative or keep the initiative from achieving what is possible. Innovation Readiness is a key factor to innovation success.

If Readiness is an important factor to success, how can you "Get Ready"? We at OVO suggest an innovation readiness assessment. Based on the work we've done, we've identified eight factors that are necessary for innovation success across the business. An assessment looks at each of those factors and helps determine the level of experience and support each of the factors has within the business, the level of effort necessary to improve that factor, the impact that will have to the business, and the costs and timeframes associated with improving those factors. Once the assessment is complete, it is easy to identify the "factors" that need work and a work plan to get the organization ready for successful innovation.

Got Traction?

If you have a team defined, and have started doing some innovation work but feel like you are not accomplishing much, you may need to back up and ensure your company is ready. Symptoms will include:
  • Different expectations across the organization
  • Unclear definition of your team's goals
  • Constantly evolving requirements and outcomes
  • No measurements or metrics established

If you encounter one or more of these symptoms, it's likely that your organization is not ready for the work you are doing. The executive team buy-in has not occurred, or has not been communicated, or the culture has not accepted the concept of an innovation team. Regardless of the problem, you'll need to fix these concerns before you can move ahead. Meanwhile the clock is ticking. You are expected to deliver something - but what? Unclear goals and shifting expectations mean you spend time on a number of ideas and projects, but none meet all the criteria necessary for success. Eventually the team falls into disrepute, because they've worked for quite a while and have little to show for it.

What's great about an innovation readiness assessment is that it does not take long to accomplish, provides very meaningful, actionable results and it helps ensure a much higher success rate when you start your innovation initiatives.

Use physical fitness as an analogy. If you decide to get in better shape and run a marathon, you'd probably consult a doctor to determine the areas of concern. You'd adjust your eating habits and exercise routine. You'd train to get ready for the marathon. Likewise, since innovation is such an all-encompassing activity, you need to lay the groundwork and prepare your organization for innovation. The average person won't be successful running a marathon without preparation, and most firms won't be successful creating sustainable innovation processes without similar preparation.

Back to Basics
In most cases where innovation initiatives have failed or stalled, the cause of the failure is not based on a lack of ideas within the organization, or the innovation team. Almost always, the stumbling block causing innovation to fail is a cultural or process issue that should have been addressed before the initiative was started. Before you start your innovation initiative, or before you get too far down the road, do a quick assessment of the factors we define to ensure your innovation initiative has a great chance for success.
Be sure to attend the upcoming Front End of Innovation conference, which is one of the leading conferences on innovation. OVO is proud to be a sponsor of the conference and will be an exhibitor as well.

The Conference will be held in Boston, and you can read all about it here.

Mention registration priority code: SPONM1904V and receive a 15% discount. Register by Friday, April 13th and save up to $600 off standard conference fees.

You can register at the IIR site.

If you'd like to discuss how OVO can work with you to improve your innovation strategies, ideation sessions, innovation processes or software, contact us today at our website or (919) 844-5644 x789. If you enjoyed this innovation newsletter, please pass it along to your friends. If you wish to unsubscribe, please see the link below.

Sincerely,
Jeffrey Phillips
OVO

phone: 919-844-5644 x789

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