Reinventing Edison

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It was, in effect, a standalone, skunk-works function not tethered to any commercial mother ship. Moving inventions from the lab to the factory and then to the marketplace was always a struggle.

What was missing were cross-functional teams capable of shepherding lab projects through from wishful musings to tangible merchandise. So today, instead of tightly restricted admission to the product development process, an open innovation model has emerged involving not only representatives from each of the company's internal departments but also its customers, suppliers, channel partners, and other stakeholders.

Tools That Can Help

Applying that model effectively can help improve the hit rate, compress the time to market, increase customer intimacy, and ease the transition of projects through to commercialization. But it also raises the noise level associated with managing requirements and can force product executives to make investment decisions based on only a surface familiarity with each project.

Fortunately, advanced technologies are now available to help in virtually every phase of the innovation management process. These powerful tools can help increase the transparency for each project, improve interactions among the different interests around the table, and guide investment decisions by their fit with overall corporate strategy.

But unlike the mindset that marked the prerecession economy, this emerging model of product development is tilted less toward creating big breakthroughs than it is toward incremental innovation, sometimes in combination with elements of new discovery. Its success requires the right blend of skills, technologies, tools, and processes. But it doesn't take a massive development organization to get there. If it did, there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley. A three-person business working in a garage can have essentially the same processes as a $100 million company.

Today, as the Great Recession recedes into history, the model of innovators detached from the enterprise whose business they were created to advance is also fading away. Its lessons:

• Apply a portfolio, rather than product-by-product, approach to R&D investment.

• Invest in a mix of incremental and breakthrough innovations.

• Link the development process transparently with its internal and external stakeholders.

• Engage cross-functional teams in collaboration.

• Provide visibility for all stakeholders to establish traceable decision-making.

• Employ technologies and operational strategies for end-to-end innovation management.

• Keep company road maps and product strategies aligned in real time.

Christine Crandell is senior vice-president for marketing at Accept Corporation in Santa Clara, Calif. The company makes on-demand innovation management software.

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