Planning an innovation strategy.

"Innovation on call" - this well-known phenomenon can be observed in many companies. Because a large customer expresses a special wish. Because a new trend inspires everyone. Or because someone happens to have a "great idea", someone who has a lot of persuasive power within the company.

However before you start a complex project, you should make some fundamental considerations and clarify some preliminary questions so that your innovations do not miss the needs of the market. The same applies if the development department has enough products in the pipeline, but is still unclear which innovation strategy you will use to meet the needs of the market.

What is an innovation for your company? Which markets, which trends, which technologies are relevant for you in the long term? To what extent should, and might, your products be innovative from a market perspective? Do your customers expect new products or complete solutions? Will the service sector become more important in the future and even merge with your products? How will the industry and its environment develop in the next 15 years? What suits your brand, what do you think it will do?

Which product groups need to be rejuvenated, when, and in what order? What resources are necessary to successfully position the planned innovations in the market? Is your sales department also ready? Will your market tolerate a breakthrough innovation, or would further development in small steps promise more success?

Advantages of a Roadmap

A new development only becomes an innovation when it brings more into a company than it costs. This calculation sounds quite simple at first. It is, however, only if the costs and revenues can be allocated accurately to that innovation and, above all, can be objectively presented.

As practice has shown, this is rarely the case, because a new product always has an effect on the turnover of existing ranges, as well as on the cost structure of the company. Therefore, it is possible, and indeed customary, to easily calculate the costs, and success, of a new product to show the answer you want to see.

Why are roadmaps so important?

An innovation strategy is the core of innovation management and a basis for innovation success. There are thousands of innovation topics that an organization can deal with. But only a few of them can really bring the company forward and have a high potential for revenue and success.

A strategy process is used to identify the issues that harmonize with the company's business model on the one hand, and that are a great lever for future success on the other. But it should be noted that an innovation strategy is only successful if it starts on the right track. This requires commitment from all internal stakeholders, so that everyone pulls in the same direction and supports the development and implementation of the issues. This is precisely where the Innovation Roadmap comes into play.

Innovation history

There is no future without origin. First of all, it is important to understand what has made a company successful in the past, in order to gain valuable insights for the future.

Trends of the future

Knowledge of future trends and their effects on your company is indispensable for successful roadmapping.

Search fields

From the knowledge of the past and the future we derive your future search fields for product, process, service, market and business model innovations.

read more about search fields

It is not uncommon for an innovation project to generate ideas that are immediately thrown out by the client with the words: "We already have. It was a flop! What has been dropped does not get a second chance.” Psychologically this is understandable. From the point of view of the innovation manager, this is a serious mistake. Top or flop are not qualities that are magically inherent in a new product. Rather, they are the result of a large number of factors, both from the initial internal and external conditions. But no matter what the decisive reason was, the innovative product is automatically found guilty.

One of the most important factors for the success or failure of an innovation is time. Of course, a product can come too late, but it may just as well have come too early. To ensure that it comes at the right time, innovation management uses the "Roadmapping" method. All influencing factors are determined, evaluated and put into a temporal order that covers several years. The strategy can then be developed on this map, which represents the path that leads innovations to success. All you have to do is follow this path at the planned speed. Then one does not come too early or too late, but instead you will be first, not in a race, but in the market.

The modules of the LEAD Roadmap consist of 4 steps.

Analysis of the past:

Key figures and success models are derived from previous innovation activities and an innovation family tree is created.

Trend survey & trend evaluation:

Through appraisal interviews including recommendations and secondary research, using an internal team, and respected industry experts, in the context of a panel of experts as well as a panorama of assumptions.

Search fields:

The currently relevant search fields result from the information from the past and future.

Roadmap 365: Updating:

The roadmap must be updated every year in order to be able to use the project results for concrete development projects in the long term. In 4 quarterly meetings, the search fields are modified, and the trends are continuously monitored.