INNOVATION PROCESS

How are customer needs identified? What role does design thinking play in the process of cocreation? How can existing stage-gate processes be made more agile and open without neglecting relevant steps? Which phases and which control points must be included? How are breakpoints between agile innovation teams and product management prevented? Which specifications and metrics must be taken into account in process organization to ensure the targeted use of resources?

In today’s innovation processes, the customer is at the center. Not only the explicit but also the latent needs of the customer must be captured. The constant alignment of the innovation process with the needs and wishes of the customer is therefore a necessary prerequisite for successful solutions. Progressive companies are therefore beginning to include their customers (and other stakeholders) directly as valuable innovation resources and to assign them an active role in the innovation process.

This active integration of the customers into the value chain and their direct involvement in the development of ideas and solutions avoid translation errors. In this way, the customer’s elusive experience and user knowledge flow directly into the innovation. Instead of trying to understand the customers as well as possible and aligning our own value creation with them, the aim is to integrate them into part of the value creation process and to incorporate their experience and know-how directly. New information and communication technologies enable virtual interaction with the customer.

The level of processes and instruments that lie behind innovation activities serves to formalize workflows. For an idea to have significance for a society, the organization or the environment, it must be developed further with various bodies to market maturity. Thus, only practical application and economic implementation turn an idea into an innovation. Therefore, in the early phase, the systematic identification and exploitation of opportunities is of great importance. Later, identified opportunities or “problems” must be translated into possible solutions (problem-solution fit), which should be then tested for their acceptance in the market (solution-market fit). However, the ability to develop and test new solutions in an explorative and agile manner is often insufficient in established companies. This is because the transfer from the “Explorative Portfolio” to the “Exploitative Portfolio,” i.e., to the established business units, then follows. Only there is the further development into a scalable solution and ultimately the market launch. Workflows and processes must therefore be established in such a way that agile approaches can minimize risks quickly and efficiently without losing the connection to the core organization.

Our experienced innovation team helps you to define your innovation processes or to switch to new agile approaches and to avoid well-known mistakes right from the start.

We offer

• Definition and implementation of innovation processes
• Implementation of agile innovation processes in the early phase (e.g., test methods)
• Setting up open innovation processes in the sense of the open innovation philosophy
• Accompaniment of creative processes and problem-finding expeditions
• Rapid prototyping and minimal viable product development
• De-risking of business models

We look forward to hearing from you.