How to Manage the Innovation Process from Ideation to Scale.

The process of coming up with and putting into practice fresh concepts that benefit a company, its clients, or society as a whole is called innovation. Organizations that embrace innovation can boost productivity, address challenging issues, and obtain a competitive advantage. However, innovation is rarely a random or unplanned occurrence. It necessitates a methodical and structured strategy that includes organizing, managing, coordinating, and planning an organization's innovation efforts. Here are 4 practical steps that will assist you in managing the innovation process, from ideation to execution.

Step 1: Ideation/ Idea generation

The first step in the innovation process is to generate ideas that address a specific need, challenge, or opportunity. You can use various methods and techniques to stimulate creativity and encourage divergent thinking, such as brainstorming, mind mapping, SCAMPER, TRIZ, etc. You can also involve different stakeholders, such as employees, customers, partners, and experts, to get diverse perspectives and insights. The goal of this step is to produce a large number of ideas, without judging or filtering them. The process of generating ideas can be quite daunting as you would need to pick a wide number of people's brains.

• The key here is to manage the personalities of the people in the room, keep them engaged and get rid of all restrictions so as to allow smooth free flow of ideas.

Step 2: Idea Screening

The next step is to evaluate and select the most promising ideas from the pool of generated ideas. You can use various criteria and tools to screen the ideas, such as feasibility, desirability, viability, novelty, alignment with the organization’s goals and strategy, etc. You can also use techniques such as voting, ranking, scoring, or SWOT analysis to compare and prioritize the ideas. The goal of this step is to narrow down the list of ideas to a few that have the highest potential for innovation.

• A pro tip is to ensure that your audience does not know the author of the idea in voting so as to avoid biases that come with group voting, it is also more rewarding to cast votes individually.

Step 3: Idea Development/ Idea Incubation

The third step is to develop the selected ideas into more concrete and detailed concepts. You can use various methods and tools to elaborate and refine the ideas, such as prototyping, testing, feedback, iteration, etc. You can also use techniques such as value proposition canvas, business model canvas, lean model canvas, etc. to define and validate the key aspects of the concepts, such as the customer segments, the value proposition, the revenue streams, the cost structure, etc. The goal of this step is to transform the ideas into viable and feasible solutions that meet the customer needs and expectations.

• Practical tip: Incubating an idea requires lots of patience and constant iteration, always going back to the idea and exploring what might change for the betterment of that idea.

Step 4: Idea Implementation/ Scale

The final step is to implement the developed concepts into the market or the organization. You can use various methods and tools to plan and execute the implementation, such as project management, change management, stakeholder management, risk management, etc. You can also use techniques such as pilot testing, launch strategy, marketing strategy, etc. to introduce and promote the solutions to the target customers and users. The goal of this step is to deliver the value of the innovation and measure its impact and outcomes.

• Scaling an idea across an organization can be quite difficult but it is still possible. Practical tips for making this possible include; leadership buy-in and employee buy-in, once you get these two up and running you are on the right path to scale.

In conclusion, the steps outlined in this article are not comprehensive but can make a great starting point in managing innovation. It is important to remember that ideas can come from anywhere in an organization so restrictions will not help the process of innovation to thrive. Going from idea to scale also requires a tremendous amount of collaboration and team effort. As the African Proverb goes "If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together".

Together innovation is made possible. :-)

?