How to win with innovative products,
services & solutions

Innovation has become a management mantra. Most companies claim innovation as part of their strategy. Sound familiar? But innovation isn’t about claims or how much you invest in R&D or even how many patents your company is awarded. True innovation is about developing breakthrough products, services and solutions that delight customers. It’s about changing the rules of the game and confounding competitors. It’s about creating a sustainable innovation engine to drive your company’s revenue and profit growth.

If innovation were easy, anyone could do it. But in fact, it’s not. 50-90% of all new products introduced fail to earn a profit. The reasons are many. For example, too late to market, too little differentiation or too expensive. In order to significantly improve your organization’s ability to innovate, it’s necessary to dig deeper and understand the fundamental obstacles. Below you will find the most common obstacles based on our experience in working with leading technology, healthcare and industrial companies.

10 Most Common Obstacles to Innovation

1. No management alignment (e.g. priorities, expectations, strategic intent)
2. No clear definition or measure of success
3. No innovation process that works effectively & reliably
4. No clear assessment of opportunities & how to leverage existing strengths
5. Few deep insights about key, unmet customer needs
6. No promising, high-impact innovation projects
7. Limited experience in effectively managing innovation projects
8. Difficulty choosing the right concepts & resourcing right number of projects
9. Conflicts between existing core business & new innovation projects
10. Past success results in risk-aversion and blinds management to new opportunities
    (Don’t change what’s working!)

Warning: Do any of the above sound familiar? Only 46% of senior managers, according to a recent Business Week innovation survey, are satisfied with their return on innovation spending. The problem generally isn’t a lack of ideas. Most companies have plenty of ideas. The issue for many companies is that they don’t have a disciplined, effective process for turning their ideas into money.

What INNOVAND can do:

To build a customized approach to innovation, while honing the involved individuals' skills. INNOVAND works closely with your management team.

The focus is on transferring skills and implementing effective innovation processes, that incorporate best practices and reflects your specific needs. In some cases, the goal is to structure and implement an overall approach, spanning strategy development and idea generation through commercialization. In other cases, the goal may focus on improving a certain aspect of the process such as opportunity assessment, innovation portfolio optimization or measuring progress and results.

As a coach to management and project teams. INNOVAND provides direct innovation assistance.

The focus is on accomplishing vital project objectives, for example, correctly anticipating disruptive technologies, generating high-potential innovation projects or accelerating the time-to-market for a hot, new innovative product.

Click on one of the following to learn more about our innovation services:

• Innovation Capabilities & Results Audit
• Innovation Strategy
• Entering New Market Segments
• Innovation Portfolio
• Innovation Process
• Generate High-Potential Innovation Projects
• Roadmapping & Disruptive Technologies
• Innovation Workshops

To discuss your specific situation and goals. contact us. Or read what existing clients say about working with INNOVAND Consulting.