Why these five tasks?
Essentially because firms that do these five tasks well are more likely to be successful with their innovations. There are many tasks that I might have put in the book. However, after an extensive review of best practice and research evidence I concluded these are the heart of good innovation management.
What are the five tasks?
1. Chartering innovation within the organization.
This chapter is all about setting direction and fixing the rules for innovation within the firm. The chapter has two parts, one about the overall road map for, and governance of, innovation within the firm, the other about setting up of specific projects. In particular, the latter looks at how to define the project objective correctly, including tools that can help with this.
2. Selecting, preparing and supporting the right team.
The right team is the key to successful innovation and the firm needs to invest in selecting them and making them work together well. Unfortunately firms often do this task poorly and the chapter offers some suggestions for ways firms can overcome this. Tools here include criteria for team selection.
3. Co-creating the innovation with customers.
The best innovations come from partnerships between customers and developers—but it needs to be the right customers at the right time. The chapter outlines which customers to involve for which tasks and how to go about getting the best result from this. The tools for this chapter focus on getting a true picture of the value of the innovation to lead customers.
4. Changing the organization to deliver the innovation.
In the new environment firms need to change themselves to deliver new services or business models effectively. So innovation development is also change management—but change management adapted to the needs of successful innovation. This chapter thus adapts good change management principles to innovation projects. It also looks at complex projects and how firms can manage these better. Tools here include criteria for assessing the extent of change necessary.
5. Building the market for the innovation.
Managers need to design and create the markets for major innovations with a thorough understanding of how customers accept or reject innovation, and a medium to long-term strategy. Firms need to break out of the annual planning straightjacket and think more strategically about market development. Fortunately there is a wealth of evidence that firms can do this better. In this chapter the tools focus on market design, positioning to the more innovative customers and reaching out to the mass market.
How the tasks link together
Each of the five tasks come from a different business or academic silo—strategy, teamwork, market research, change management and marketing. The Innovation Manual adapts the ideas of each silo to the overall goal—better innovation—and links each into a powerful sequence of steps to achieve this. The final chapter—putting it all together—identifies what better practice might be for firms, both in general and for the different circumstances they may find themselves.
