Jacob-S.NET - Innovation, seek to uncover all major aspects of innovation in connection with Product/Service- and Business Development.
I hope that you will find and enjoy some valuable information on the aspects of innovation of your interest.
It seems that the term innovation has as many definition as it has contexts, or at least one for each author on the subject, so here is our definition:
Innovation = Creativity + Ability to implement + Ability to succeed
Creativity
The ability to get ideas for product, services, marketing and process improvement, creatively maturing ideas and sorting and selecting the best ideas.
Ability to implement
The Ability to implement new ideas rapidly, to get the most out of the ideas.
Ability to succeed
The ability to succeed in the market place (products and services) or within the organization (services or processes).
In other words: The ability to succeed in the market or in the organization with a newly implemented product-, service- or organisational change based on creative new ideas.
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2009-03-27, Jacob Sørensen
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Free Agile tools
Some time ago I was asked to investigate the availability of free software products for support Agile Development processes. Now I finally got time for publishing the list here. It is properly not exhaustive, but it includes the most widely used free products.
The list is also permanently available at the resource page.
2010-1-25, Jacob Sørensen,
http://jacob-s.net/links.php
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Joined Posility
As of September 2009 I started in a new job, and is now working as a management consultant at Posility, where I will help others manage in complexity.
In this job I will be working with Innovation, Change Management, Agile processes and Management and Leadership training.
Our prefered leadership and management training tool is the CoachingOurselves concept, which is developed by amongst other professionals Henry Mintzberg. CoachingOurselves is design as group training for management teams and is effective in three ways: Education (increasing knowledge), Building teams (management groups becomes teams) and driving change and action. CoachingOurselves is designed with a optimum of cost vs. effect ratio.
2009-9-14, Jacob Sørensen,
http://www.posility.dk
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Executive MBA in Technology Leadership
On the 19th of June 2009 Jacob Sørensen Graduated as an Executive MBA in Technology Leadership at the MMT (Master in Management of Technology) education at Aalborg University.
This education have been a great experience and is recommendable for anyone who are involved in or plans to be involved in management of technology.
2009-6-24, Jacob Sørensen,
http://www.mmt.aau.dk/
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What Kills Innovation?
Jacob-SNET_WhatKillsInnovation_2009Jun.pdf
"No Single Rain Drop believes it is to blame for the flood"
This newly published paper elaborates on different
areas of opposition that is facing innovation and
creativity in an organization. The innovation killers,
enemies and traps are found in litterateur and theories
of innovation and by the authors own observations.
The paper focuses on the most urgent and likely killers of innovation in SMEs.
2009-6-24, Jacob Sørensen,
http://jacob-s.net/download/files/Innovation/Jacob-SNET_WhatKillsInnovation_2009Jun.pdf
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Exceptional Utility
Jacob-SNET_ExecptionelUtility_2009Apr.pdf
Exceptional Utility
Kim, W. C. & Mauborgne, R. (2000), presents the idea that the likelihood of a customer being attracted to a new idea can be examined by a 6 by 6 matrix model called the Buyer Utility Map.
This model is designed for improving existing or known offerings. A subject i.e. a service or a product could be selected and time boxed brainstorming facilitated for a selected set of the 36 combinations in the Buyer Utility Map.
Customer Driven Innovation
Ulwick, A. W. (2002) studies how to succeed in using customers input for new innovations. The workshop participants should be identified lead customers/users and expert users of areas relevant to the innovation area in question.
Customers and users will tend to provide solutions instead of desired outcome, but their solution space is very small with only little insight in the possibilities of the given industry and it’s technologies and supply chains. Customers will be unlikely to ask for solutions which include emerging materials and technologies which they do not know of yet. Thus the customers must be asked for outcomes they would like to be improved and answers that resemble solutions should be avoided.
Ulwick, A. W. (2002) describes a five step approach to listening to your customers for outcomes that could be improved.
- Plan outcome-based customer interviews.
- Capture desired outcomes.
- Organize the outcomes.
- Rate the outcomes for importance and satisfaction.
- Use the outcomes to jump-start innovation.
The customers will be asked via a quantitative survey how they judge the outcomes by importance on a scale of 0 to 10 and the degree of the outcomes already being satisfied in existing products on a scale of 0 to 10. This will help reveal the attractiveness of each outcome by ex. using The Opportunity Algorithm, (Ulwick, A. W., 2002).
After collecting the outcomes and calculated the Opportunity measures the data should be used to brainstorm the opportunity areas for possible new products/services developments or new market segmentations.
For an even more detailed approach to customer input innovation, the QFD (Quality Function Deployment) program and its House of Quality model could be examined.
Lead Users
The concept of lead users is presented with the definition supplied by Hippel, E. v. (1986):
- Lead users face needs that will be general in a marketplace – but face them months or years before the bulk of that marketplace encounters them.
- Lead users are positioned to benefit significantly by obtaining a solution to those needs.
The lead users are known by their unique insight in the future of the relevant product/market area and are capable of spotting new trends of the industry.
Two major challenges comes to mind when considering how to utilize lead users in the innovation processes:
- How can we find such relevant and skillful lead users for our particular industry?
- What can we do to encourage and motivate lead users to share their invention with us?
2009-4-16, Jacob Sørensen,
http://jacob-s.net/download/files/Models/Jacob-SNET_ExecptionelUtility_2009Apr.pdf
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Innovation by Patterns
Jacob-SNET_InnovationByPatterns_2009Apr.pdf
This article will cover how a workshop based on patterns from successful innovations can be utilized to create new successful innovations. Goldenberg, J. Et al. (2003) found that using the SIT method (Systematic Inventive Thinking) will take free brainstorming into a highly disciplined “inside the box” approach for idea generation.
The workshop should kick off by presenting the method and its Russian origin. When the subject of the brainstorming is presented (typically a product or service offering) first two lists are developed in brainstorming with the participants:
- Essential elements of the product/service, i.e. physical parts, software components and attributes.
- Elements and attributes of the environment surrounding the product/service.
The two lists of elements and attributes are then taking through a brainstorming process of manipulation by patterns, using from one to five different patterns, the patterns are explained in detail in Jacob-SNET_InnovationByPatterns_2009Apr.pdf:
- Subtraction.
- Multiplication.
- Division.
- Task Unification.
- Attribute Dependency Change.
These brainstorms on patterns leads to a number of virtual products, no matter how strange they seem they must no be judged out too early.
The idea is to upset the minds of the participants and pushing them to get ride of their assumptions about the fixedness of a given product or service, based on the following quote (Goldenberg, J. Et al., 2003):
“… creative discoveries are more likely to emerge when people analyze a novel form and then imagine the function such a form might perform than when they try to come up with optimal forms to achieve a particular function.”
The brainstorming participants will sort and group the raw ideas and they will be asked to score the ideas based on feelings and energy.
2009-4-5, Jacob Sørensen,
http://jacob-s.net/download/files/Models/Jacob-SNET_InnovationByPatterns_2009Apr.pdf
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The Innovation Pyramid
Jacob-SNET_InnovationPyramid_2009Apr.pdf
Present paper elaborates on the
development of an innovation process, a continuous
assessment tool for innovation opportunities and an
agile monitoring and controlling process for driving
innovation forward. These processes and tools is seen
as initial models of open processes which should be
adjusted along the way as the experience build up in
the innovation guiding coalition and the business
development team.
2009-4-1, Jacob Sørensen,
http://jacob-s.net/download/files/Models/Jacob-SNET_InnovationPyramid_2009Apr.pdf
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Market Life Cycle Innovation
Jacob-SNET_InnovationToMarketLifeCycle_2009Apr.pdf
In a few pages this paper elaborates on matching innovation to the current maturity of the product or market compared to a standard product market lifecycle, Moore, G. A. (2006).
Innovation to market life cycle
Moore, G. A. (2006) describes the importance of innovation of a market or product, should be carefully linked to the current stage of the market/product’s lifecycle. Claiming that industries, products, markets and concepts all traverses on a standard lifecycle trajectory.
Moore, G. A. (2006) elaborates on how the innovation effort should be changing according to the stage of the target market’s lifecycle, finding that innovation should depend on the maturity of the market, from this Moore; G. A. (2006) derives 15 types of innovation parted in 4 major groups dependant on position in the life cycle. The types and groups are illustrated below and explained in the following subsections.
2009-4-1, Jacob Sørensen,
http://jacob-s.net/download/files/Models/Jacob-SNET_InnovationToMarketLifeCycle_2009Apr.pdf
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