Innovation Strategy – State of Lean Innovation 1/7

Ambition, vision and a fast start. Hypothesis and sources. Commitment.

Every organization requires an honest conversation regarding opportunities to innovate, internal solutions to support innovations, cooperation with external stakeholders, big picture approach towards innovation. All of these things are the responsibility of the upper management, that has to define resources and competences, define gaps between today’s reality and hypothetical tomorrow, define vision, ambitions and innovation challenges. They have to enable and encourage individuals and teams towards engaged innovating of the future. Therefore to participate in creating company’s innovation strategy.

The challenges usually come from competitive advantages, such as patents, technologies, infrastructure, special knowledge and experiences, different target markets, a brand … The challenges have to be concrete and they need to address challenges and needs worth solving, such as the effect of mega trends on our sector (global warming, population ageing, circular economy, 3D printing, VR, recession …)

We don’t need a lot of time to prepare the first draft of innovation challenges that we have. Besides inviting our key staff in solving concrete challenges we can also invite our customers, suppliers, partners, even competitors. The less formal that the whole process is, the more innovative can the solutions be. Detailed planning will not bring us a lot of value in the beginning; first questions we are answering are why and what and only then we will ask ourselves – how.

“Innovation is a bottoms-up, decentralized, and unpredictable thing, but that doesn’t mean it cannot be managed.”  ― Eric Ries, The Lean Startup