When it comes to moving a business forward, innovation is often mentioned as one of the key elements. Innovation comes in all shapes and forms and is used to improve existing processes, products, and services. Still, not all businesses practice innovation management, which is the process of managing innovation from ideation to realization. But, if you want to continue growing your business, you'll need to master these important business skills.
Below, we’ll cover what innovation management is, why you need it, and how to implement it like a true professional. Let’s get started.
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What is Innovation Management?
It’s not enough for you to have smart and creative people working for you, to ensure their ideas get heard and have them benefit your business. Without proper guidance and management, their talents will go to waste instead of becoming a valuable resource for your company.
This is where innovation management comes in. Innovation management is the process of carefully supervising and controlling the decisions and activities around an innovation strategy in an organization.
Simply put, the team in charge of this process does everything from hearing out ideas to deciding how to implement the best ones. They take care of all the stages in the process and make sure the organization constantly moves forward.
What are the Benefits of Innovation Management?
Yes, innovation management sounds a bit complex and is certainly not something you can do in a day. It takes time and energy to do it right, but the benefits for your business will be worth the effort.
Here are just some of the many benefits that come with guided innovation management:
- early selection of the best ideas
- maximum time efficiency
- smooth product and service launches
- the more efficient creative team
- no repetitive activities
- improved customer satisfaction
- improved teamwork and cross-department collaboration
As you can see, all of the above will do nothing but good for your internal processes, team collaboration, and the overall results you'll achieve through innovation management.
The only thing that’s left is for you to learn how to best implement innovation management in your organization.
How to Implement Innovation Management?
The best way to handle the process of implementing innovation management is through carefully designed stages. This process needs to be built up slowly, to make sure you set a solid foundation for all the activities that are to follow.
In this section, we'll focus on the most important stages that all organizations can use. Additionally, you may add some more steps according to the specific needs of your organization.
Here are the key steps of implementing innovation management.
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Set a Goal
Decide what innovation management means for your organization and what you want to achieve with it. Set a decisive goal and make sure you pass it on to everyone else involved in the process.
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Put Together a Team
Next, you need an innovation team to handle the activities required by the process. Carefully select creative people with great organizational and management skills to guide the rest of the people forward. Discuss the above goals together.
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Evaluate Ideas
Ideas are going to start pouring in, and the team’s first job is to evaluate them. Ideas need to be categorized, and then the best ones need to be selected. You can even combine different ideas together to create one great idea and a new goal for the company.
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Consider Company Business Model
Be careful not to let your team get carried away. Your ideas need to be realistic and aligned with the company’s business model.
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Consider the Technical Details
Expenses, budgeting, risks, and complexity are certainly among the important risks to consider before implementing an idea.
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Develop the Idea’s Realization
Decide how you'll develop each innovative idea - the timeframes, resources, people in charge, the technology used, and all the other details. Supervise this process and learn from your initial mistakes.
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Follow Up
Finally, you need to regularly check how your previously realized projects are doing and whether your investment of both money and resources paid off. It’ll help you make better decisions in the future on your innovation management journey.
Final Thoughts
Innovation management should not be a choice, but a necessity for all up-and-coming organizations who want to climb that business ladder. Guiding your business forward is best achieved through the efficient stages we've covered above, and with the consistency and dedication of those in charge.
Hopefully, we’ve helped you understand the importance of innovation management for all businesses globally. Start using it in your organization ASAP!