For Vikas

Mapping the Innovation Process



At a generic level, innovation is a core business process concered with renewing what the organization offers the world and the ways in which it creates and delivers that offering.  And to do this they all need to carry out these activities:



Searching - deciding (on the basis of a strategic view of how the enterprise can best develop) which of these signals to respond to



Implementing - translating the potential in the trigger idea into something new and launching it in an internal or external market.  Making this happen is not a single event but requires attention to:



Acquiring the knowledge resources to enable the innovation (for example, by creating something new through R7D, market research, etc., acquiring knowledge from elsewhere via technology transfer, strategic alliance, ect.).



Launching the innovation and managing the process of initial adoption



Sustaining adoption and use in the long-term - or revisting the original idea and modifying it - reinnovation.



Learning - enterprises have ( but may not always take) the opportunity to learn from progression through this cycle so that they can build their knowledge base and can improve the ways in which the process is managed.



In this exercise pick a sector - e.g. food retailing, airlines, chemicals, public administration - and draw a map of their particular version of this process.  How does it work out in practice?  Where are they likely to need or to place most emphasis?



Required Text



Tidd, J. and Bessant, J. (2009). Managing Innovation:  Integrating Technological, Market and Organizational Change 4th Ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons.