Boost Revenue with the Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem

September 17, 2009

During a recent trip to Europe, I had the opportunity to meet with more than a dozen clients. It was great to listen and learn from executives and engineers on how they are navigating through today’s challenging times and what they are doing and need to do to maintain their innovation edge. It was also gratifying to see how our innovation software is helping drive their innovation initiatives and hear rave reviews about our next technology release.

Now, as I mull over these conversations, two key items rise to the top. First, every company has multiple groups of innovators and each group needs relevant intelligence to drive their innovation tasks. Secondly, every company must have an Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem to drive sustainable innovation and revenue. Let me explain.

The innovation community

Global companies have multiple communities of innovators. In most, about 10-20 percent of innovation workers are master innovators who focus on driving disruptive innovation and strategic innovation initiatives. These projects include designing new products to increase competitive-edge, redesigning existing products to cut costs or identify new markets to drive revenue. This small group of scientists and engineers takes full advantage of advanced innovation technologies.

The second group consists of every day innovators who work on smaller innovation tasks, ranging from solving problems for customers and resolving field situations to researching competitor landscapes and ways to reuse existing technology. In addition to engineers and scientists, they could also be members of new business development, strategic planning and competitive analysis teams. This group of every day innovators represents 70-80 percent of employees, and while they may not make headlines, their innovation ensures their companies’ success.

Collectively, both master and every day innovators are responsible for maintaining a company’s innovation edge. In order to drive optimal success and help the community of innovators do their jobs effectively, each individual needs access to the right intelligence. Precise innovation intelligence can validate concepts upfront and help them deliver the right products the first time as well as solve every day problems faster.

Precise intelligence is the heart of innovation

To knowledge-empower these innovation communities, every company should design an Innovation Intelligence EcosystemTM – a framework for delivering precise and critical information from a variety of sources that lead to increased productivity. Internal innovation intelligence can come from legacy product design, best practice and customer usage while external content includes competitive intelligence, technology trends and scientific theories. Giving the innovation communities access to such critical information empowers them to deliver on strategic and every day innovation tasks and initiatives effectively.

Let me give you an example. One of our life sciences customers recently reported that by using Invention Machine Goldfire to drive their Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem, the engineers reclaimed more than 20 percent of their time, effectively increasing productivity by more than 30 percent. Invention Machine’s innovation platform allowed the engineers to devote more time to revenue-generating activities and deliver more products to market, faster.

Drive revenue with Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem

By knowledge-enabling the innovation community with an effective Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem, a company can successfully:

  • increase productivity and cut development costsInnovation Intelligence Ecosystem
  • drive and sustain a continuous innovation process
  • design cutting-edge products repeatedly and
  • increase growth, revenue and market share.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on creating and supporting an Innovation Intelligence Ecosystem. Do you think it will help boost and sustain productivity, innovation and market share?

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Posted by Mark Atkins, Invention Machine

Looking up in a down economy

June 2, 2009

I have been writing about and providing tips on what companies could do to innovate in a down economy even before the market crashed.  Now that economists are predicting that the end of the recession is in sight and that the U.S. manufacturing orders are rising, it’s time to focus on what companies should do to thrive in a rebounding economy.  

Survival of the fittest
Over the last 12 months, companies and people have been put to the test. The recession has hit the manufacturing industry hard, among others. Yet, best-in-class companies have survived despite budget cuts and reduction of innovation workers.  In fact, these companies have become leaner and learned to do more with less as well as embraced smart technology to sustain the innovation process. In short, the best companies have right-sized themselves, focused their business agendas and retained their best and experienced people to keep innovation moving forward.  These are the people who have been chartered to accomplish the most innovative deliverables in half the time, and help their respective companies attain global market leadership positions – from alternative energy to life sciences.

Innovation mandate
Now that the fittest companies have survived and new leaders emerged, here are some tips on what CEOs should do as the economy stabilizes and emerges from the recession:

  • CEOs must continue to drive the innovation agenda.  Reward employees for their leadership and creativity that has impacted the bottom-line.  
  • CEOs should take inventory of its operating paradigm, get new perspective on what’s viable and adapt quickly to today’s changing environment.
  • Capture and remember the lessons learned from this recession and continue to run lean, innovation-focused organizations.
  • Empower innovators with collaboration and knowledge-enabled platforms to boost the innovation economy.

As I tell my employees, every cloud has a silver lining. Even though we have been surrounded by negative news, the recession has made us stronger, smarter and street savvy. Best-in-class companies have retained people with attitude and aptitude to drive innovation. They should be nurtured, given the right innovation platforms and environment. And together, we as a “global nation” can look up in a down economy and prepare to enter a decade of innovation excellence.

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Posted by Mark Atkins, Invention Machine