Hi there – I’m making this is post to define a term we will be using quite a bit in our future posts & articles.

The term is:

Innovation Engine

Let us define this term now…

Definition: Innovation Engine

In a couple of previous posts – I outlined why we should approach innovation as a process, and how to start building your innovation process.

As discussed in the second post linked above, a good innovation management process takes raw materials (ideas) and converts them to desired output (innovative products & services). Here’s a diagram that depicts this:

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In a previous post, I outlined 3 types of innovation. As shown in the image below, they are: Incremental innovation, Semi-radical innovation, and Radical innovation.

One question that often comes up is:

Can Idea Management really lead to “Radical” innovation?

This is a very good question. Here are my thoughts on this.

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How many types of innovation are there? Well, the answer depends on which book we’re reading!

I have no doubt that if we combine all the books on the topic of innovation, there would be at least 1,683,276,951 types of innovation!

That said, for practical purposes – I like the model presented in the book Making Innovation Work. This book lists a mere 3 types of innovation (actually 4, but we’re going to ignore the 4th one for now). What are these 3 types of innovation, you ask? Let us dive right in… [Read more…]

In this post, I’d like to address a basic question:
What exactly is Idea Management, and how can it benefit you?

As we all know, ideas form the foundation of all innovation. Yet, at most companies there is no systematic way to turn ideas into innovation. In fact, most companies leave it to chance to determine whether the right ideas make their way to the right people – i.e. people with decision making authority.

As a result, at most companies, ideas from only a small number of people have a realistic chance of becoming reality. This is usually people like R&D personnel and senior executives. This is bad enough, but often there’s an even bigger problem… [Read more…]