Corporate Innovation Strategy Template

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling (1902)

Here is a simple template to create your company's innovation strategy:

• WHAT:   
  
  • Determine what business lines are to be innovated.
  • Determine what products or services within those business lines need innovation.
  • Establish a portfolio model that compares innovation output from one business line to another.
  • Rank order business lines based on the strength of their innovation portfolio pipelines.

• WHY:    
  
  • Determine how much innovation is needed.  Use a tool like Map-the-Gap.
  • Tie innovation to a strategy framework such as The Big Picture. 
  • Focus innovation exercises to link directly to the strategy framework. 
  • Use the framework to identify market adjacencies.

• WHEN:  
  
  • Schedule innovation workshops at the front end of the business cycle to help determine what projects will get funding in the next budget cycle.
  • Schedule innovation workshops after the planning cycle to jump-start new initiatives for the upcoming year.

• HOW:    
  
  • Choose specific methods of innovation to be used based on efficacy and results.
  • Combine different methods to leverage the strengths of each.
  • Integrate the methods by using the output of one as inputs for the others.

• WHERE: 
  
  • Set aside space with the specific purpose of conducting innovation workshops.

• WHO:    
  
  • Form innovation "dream teams" to maximize the success of innovation efforts.
  • Schedule training on how to use innovation methods.
  • Examine the company's innovation culture to diagnose where it is weak.
  • Establish an innovation competency model.
  • Designate and empower commercial leaders to drive innovation efforts.

Comments

[Dodi Medo]

Hello, I wanna know ur feedback about what are the best methodological approaches to conduct innovation capability measurement for the innovation & research center of a university. tq

[Drew Boyd]

Dodi, to measure the capability of a center in terms of innovation, I would measure two things: capability and activity.

Capability means how many people have been trained in innovation methods and to what degree have they been trained.

Activity means how many innovation workshops are conducted each year.

These two factors, taken together, would measure your capabilities year after year.