According to innovation theorists, a company should think about improving its operating system for innovation if any of the following apply:
· You feel you are nearing the end of a long and expensive development race and your competitors are about to pass you by and win a valuable brand name and profitable chunks of the market before you are able to act.
· The value in your industry is shifting from perfecting the old, toward inventing the new, in processes, products and services.
· Even when you take on significant new contracts, vast amounts of new work or hundreds of new orders, your share price won’t budge.
· It seems that the innovation efforts in your Organisation are not systematic enough and are based on chance flashes of genius or ad hoc ideas raised by individuals in skunk-works projects.
· You sense that your R&D staff members are sated and have settled into complacency, and the flow of ideas is not what it was.
· Your company has an excellent product that, ‘if we could only solve that problem,’ would conquer the world.
· You are certain that reducing development time, production costs, and product price by 15 per cent would make your firm and your product a winner.
· Despite all the consultants, ISO standards and best practices you deploy, the cancer of ‘it’ll be okay,’ and of undirected improvisation, has taken a grip on your firm, and this is something you are unwilling to accept.
When you think about innovations, think innovation managementandinnovation management software.