Innovation management | Formal Approach | Part 2

Managing innovation requires a process that shepherds ideas through different stages of validation. This process must include the capture and continual evaluation of each idea, culminating in the ‘kill or progress’ decision. Moving too quickly through the stages of validation will yield suboptimal results, as the accelerated process may not account for all factors, and those involved in the process may feel that their ideas are not being treated seriously.

• Generating new ideas

?Innovation begins with ideas, and managing innovation means encouraging, effectively communicating, and appropriately assessing these ideas.

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The first task when managing innovation, therefore, is to establish ways for stakeholders to communicate improvement ideas. Some of the best ideas come from the staff working with technologies and processes, rather than from strategic planners. Cooperation can and should span wider than research laboratories, and even wider than one organization.

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In 2019, HPE announced the launch of the HPE Digital Life Garage, which ‘will be a business accelerator based on a co-innovation model, operated in collaboration with local market and global partners to create innovative technological concepts, develop them into an actionable Proof of Value and accelerate the idea-to-production lifecycle.’ The name of the initiative refers to the HP Garage in Palo Alto, a private museum where Hewlett-Packard was founded, now considered the ‘birthplace of Silicon Valley’.

?Idea generation does not only depend on stakeholders communicating their ideas. For it to work effectively, every stakeholder must know that their idea will be seriously considered. This means that there should be a formal idea evaluation channel that includes sending feedback to the idea’s originator.

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Some examples of formal idea-generating approaches are:

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• Dedicated brainstorming sessions
• ?Design thinking sessions "We can talk about this more details in a separate articles"
• ?Innovation fairs, where employees exhibit their ideas to other employees and a panel of judges
• ‘hackathons’, where the organization poses a challenge and ideas are proposed and discussed by stakeholders from every part of the organization
• Innovation competitions, where employees are encouraged to propose an idea that, if implemented, will earn them a reward
• Innovation mailboxes or walk-in centers, where anyone can engage with an innovation leader to raise and develop an idea.

?If an idea is rejected, it is important to explain the reasons for rejection. The submitter should also be encouraged to continue generating ideas or get involved with other innovations.

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• Filtering ideas

?When faced with a good idea, the first question to answer is, ‘Do we understand our customer, and is this something they care about?’ Practitioners must talk with and observe customers (face to face as far as possible) so that they understand customer needs and identify legitimate problems.

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Other elements that matter when determining whether an idea is a potentially viable innovation include:

• The size and potential growth of the market
• ?Alignment with organizational goals
• ?The investment needed
• ?Time to market
• ?Return on investment.

?All innovations should be tested against these criteria.

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At this early stage, there might not be enough information to fully evaluate the ideas. However, those that fall outside of an organizational policy, do not support the organization’s strategic objectives, or are clearly unfeasible should be filtered out.

?If an idea needs further explanation, this should be communicated and guidance provided where appropriate. However, stakeholders should be discouraged from spending further time or resources on developing an idea that is not in the organization’s best interests.

?If there is enough information available, the ideas are categorized (by type, business need, process, or business challenge) and evaluated. If there is not enough detail about an idea, further information may be requested from the submitter, or it might need to be incubated.

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