Innovation Funnel for R&D Ventures

This article is about; how to converge, select and develop R&D project ideas for products, technological solutions and services development for commercial success including elements of concrete R&D project design..

Organisation’s Innovation Strategy:

o  Internal Technology or Products Roadmap: This is the internal technology or product roadmap of the organisation. Where Organisation wants to develop its future competitive technologies and products.

o  Research Portfolio (Including projects and products) : Innovation thesis, existing portfolio of research projects, products and services available to exploit further, into future developments.

o  Innovation Agenda: Innovation priorities or needs or plans for organisation, expansion, product improvements, disruptive solutions development, exploring new technologies/applications/market or new business model exploration.

“Innovation is the ability of individuals, companies and entire nations to continuously create their desired future”-John Kao, “Innovation Nation” (2007)

o  Existing Background Intellectual Property: Portfolio of existing background IPRs, or knowledge based assets.

o  Internal Capacities and Resources: Organisation’s internal teams, expertise, resources, labs, R&D capabilities etc.

<At this stage you must be sure about your innovation agenda, research priorities, areas and technologies to pursue and funding programmes or investment approaches to target>

Ideas and Concepts development :

o  Ideas development , brainstorming and TRL positioning: Ideas development, brainstorming workshops. Identifying and positioning TRL levels of different ideas.

“Project idea addressing the problem/need will have a significant Impact”

“For startups they say, the job of a startup is to pivot on the right idea before running out of money, for high risk R&D projects and ventures, one should find the best ambitious and feasible idea with high commercial potential and impact before running out of time and resources”

o  Alignment with Organisational strategy: Aligning ideas as per organisation’s strategy and innovation agenda.

o  Alignment with investor/funding body/call/customer request: Aligning ideas with investor expectations (for private funded projects-start-up ideas or aligning project ideas as per funding body expectations and call topics (e.g. H2020, IUK,RFPs) or aligning ideas as per description of work from customer requests.

o  Problem exploration and Need Analysis: Problem exploration and need analysis, evaluating ideas on potential of which one better solve the relevant problem.

“Customers don’t care about your solution. They care about their problems. — Dave McClure, 500 Startups”

“Problem/Need is worth solving if it has a negative Impact”

o  Customers identification and expectations: Identification of potential users/customers of the proposed developed solution or idea and their expectations and how they use it, (design thinking/HCD methods)

“People( customers) don’t know what they want until you show it to them”-Steve Jobs

o  Competition and state of the art analysis: Which market or technological gap proposed idea or solution will cover, (after analysis of competitors and state of the art analysis), if you are developing solution for saturated market , the proposed idea has to work better than competitors.

“Customers won’t care about any particular technology unless it solves a particular problem in a superior way”- Peter Thiel , Zero to One

<At this stage you must have selected and shortlisted the final idea to pursue based on above analysis>

Concept Exploration:

o  Value chain and supply chain development: Value chain development of R&D project idea, connecting all components of the project, and implementation plan development. As per value chain and project components, choosing and developing associated supply chain including partners, suppliers, agents etc.

o  Concept-Customer fit : During supply chain development activities, brainstorming and validation with end users or customers regarding R&D idea and customers fit ( the more interviews the better to further, develop the idea, lean approaches can be one way to validate that)

“We must learn what customers really want, not what they say they want or what we think they should want.”-Eric Ries, Lean Startup

o  Innovation development and Business Model: Unique selling points, unique benefits/value and innovation, differentiation factors and unique non technological innovations or business models if relevant.

“If your product requires advertising or salespeople to sell it, it’s not good enough: technology is primarily about product development, not distribution.” ― Peter Thiel, Zero to one

o  Risks and Challenges analysis : Which challenges and risks are involved in realisation of your innovative idea, complete analysis, and plan to mitigate them or have a contingency plan . Risks impact analysis on resources and budgets.

o  Solution Value creation and impact analysis : How concept will create value for customers or users, and what benefit and impact it will have,

“Value innovation requires companies to orient the whole system toward achieving a leap in value for both buyers and themselves.”- W. Chan Kim, Blue Ocean Strategy

“Impact is benefits derived from project idea addressing Problem/Needs”

<At this stage you must have scoped out your R&D project concept with complete value chain and supply chain with validation with customers>

R&D project Concept Finalisation:

o  Problem-Concept-Impact fit: Connecting the dots, making sure problem-concept-impact fit for your R&D project.

“Life’s too short to build something nobody wants.”-Ash Maurya, Running Lean

“Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value” — James P. Womak and Daniel T. Jones

o  Problem-Concept quantification: Problem and project concept quantification. To which extent the identified customers problems are addressed by developed R&D solution.

o  Concept-Impact quantification: R&D solution and impact quantification. What are the benefits derived by using the developed solution to solve the identified problem and its positive impacts on customers?

<At this stage you should have connected the dots between targeted problem, developed solution and respective impact to move to Implementation stage>

The article originally posted on Medium.