The authors believe that an innovation success rate does not need a higher innovation investment budget. And yet many innovation projects end up in vacant premises, frustrated employees and exhausted budgets. Furseth and Cuthbertson observe this mainly in companies that invest a lot of money in the so-called innovation capacity, i.e. personnel and equipment, and hope for an innovative breakthrough as a result. This is a problem that we have addressed in our blog post “The Lab is dead, long live the Lab”.
There is no doubt that innovation capacity is only the first step on the way to successful innovation. If one does not take the second step, namely the ability to innovate – Innovation Ability – the innovation effort is as empty as the faces when innovation fails and budget is wasted. Potential without added value is a toothless tiger. Nokia, Kodak and others: You have certainly read the examples of failure yourself!
That innovation is indisputable. HOW innovation is the question.
Open Innovation & Service Design can be the answer to the question of successful innovation. Xerox’ CEO Anne Mulcahy had already focused on dialogue with consumers in 2006 in order to get the technology company back on track. With the AppStore, Apple built a new business model and thus delivered a new customer experience that was convincing.
Through service design, you gain deep insights into the customer experience, identify innovation opportunities beyond traditional product offerings, and create a holistic experience across physical and digital touchpoints. The change from a product-oriented to a service-oriented business model is indispensable today.
Anna Marchuk, Senior Researcher and Service Designer at HYVE
In the April issue of Harvard Business Manager with a focus on innovation, CEO and board members of HYVE, Volker Bilgram and Johann Füller deal with successful innovation and the reasons for the failure of innovation projects
They complement the optimal phases of set-up and value creation with the phase of successful commercialisation. If all phases are successful, innovation can be labelled as truly successful. Füller and Bilgram also define obstacles to successful innovation as measures to skip stumbling blocks in the innovation process.
One possible approach: Innovation Labs
Those who manage innovation budgets must think projects holistically and end-2-end. Find a partner who supports implementation and who not only masters various innovation methods and approaches from ff, but unites them under one roof. Drawing on an ecosystem of experts. One that offers project management, method consulting, design services, software support and market research not as a consortium of experts from various agencies, but from a single source, which significantly accelerates processes and makes procedures flexible and agile. An approach that proves us right: Innovation Labs
Long story short and back to Ability and Capacity. Those who have an innovation budget should not spend it on individual innovation projects. This would leave ability without capacity and only a first step would have been taken. So let’s go. Take the second step towards capacity and make your innovation successful.
