Innovation management is the discipline of managing processes in innovation. It can be used to develop both product and organizational innovation. Without proper processes, it is not possible for R&D to be efficient; innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers and engineers to cooperate with a common understanding of goals and processes. The focus of innovation management is to allow the organization to respond to an external or internal opportunity, and use its creative efforts to introduce new ideas, processes or products. Importantly, innovation management is not relegated to R&D; it involves workers at every level in contributing creatively to a company's development, manufacturing, and marketing. By utilizing appropriate innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative juices of the whole work force towards the continuous development of a company. The process can be viewed as an evolutionary integration of organization, technology and market by iterating series of activities: search, select, implement and capture.
Innovation processes can either be pushed or pulled through development. A pushed process is based on existing or newly invented technology, that the organization has access to, and tries to find profitable applications to use this technology. A pulled process tries to find areas where customers needs are not met, and then focus development efforts to find solutions to those needs. To succeed with either method, an understanding of both the market and the technical problems are needed. By creating multi-functional development teams, containing both engineers and marketers, both dimensions can be solved. The lifetime (or product lifecycle) of new products is steadily getting shorter; increased competition therefore forces companies reduce the time to market. Innovation managers must therefore decrease development time, without sacrificing quality or meeting the needs of the market.
Common tools include brainstorming, virtual prototyping, product lifecycle management, idea management, TRIZ, Phase–gate model, project management, product line planning and portfolio management.
Read more about Innovation Management: Measuring Innovation Management, Manage Complex Innovation, Universities Offering Innovation and Product Management, See Also
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