Guest blog: How can you unlock the full potential of your innovation?

Innovation is the heartbeat of successful businesses, driving higher revenues, faster growth, and more substantial profit margins. However, the journey from innovation strategy to commercialisation is fraught with uncertainties, making effective innovation management imperative for sustained success.

And the cost implications of poor innovation management are substantial.

• 30% – 45% of all innovation projects are not completed.
• Over 50% of innovation projects overrun their budgets by up to 200%.
• Approximately 50% of business R&D expenditure is spent on failed R&D projects.

Innovation management is not just a process; it’s a journey aimed at realising value. It involves a structured and strategic approach to identifying, developing, and implementing new products, services, processes, and business models. Seven key aspects of an effective innovation management process, from strategy to performance evaluation, are critical for the success of a business initiative.

Organisations that excel in innovation are nearly three times more effective at idea generation than their peers. Yet, without a defined process, organisations may find themselves stuck in the R of R&D or pursuing projects that miss the sweet spot where desirability, feasibility and viability intersect.

Businesses should regularly conduct an innovation management assessment to address a fundamental question: how do we manage innovation within our business to minimise risk and cost inefficiencies while maximising returns on R&D investments? A framework for assessing your innovation management system is ISO 56002, including the following key focus areas:

• Context of organisation: understand the organisation, its challenges and opportunities, its culture, the needs of its stakeholders and customers and its innovation intent
• Leadership: demonstrate a commitment to innovation, sharing the vision and strategy for delivery, including assigning roles and responsibilities and implementing an innovation policy
• Planning: focus on the innovation objectives and how to achieve them, including putting an effective structure in place
• Support: ensure the organisation has the right people, resources, skills/knowledge, finance, infrastructure, and this is clearly communicated where necessary
• Operation: planning, implementing and controlling any innovation initiatives or processes
• Performance evaluation: monitoring, measurement, analysis and evaluation
• Improvement: consider opportunities for improvement and implement changes effectively

To help with this, we’ve developed an Innovation Management Assessment which evaluates innovation management systems and processes, benchmarking them against international best practice.

The output provides clarity to leadership of where a business’s current innovation management operation can be optimised, the strengths and opportunities, as well as practical and actionable recommendations specific to the needs and ambitions of each business.