Innovation: Project management (I)

Innovation within the company

From a business-management point of view innovation is a process (set of systematic activities) which aims to obtain competitive advantages by incorporating scientific, technological or organizational improvements, or advances in knowledge or design into a company's products, services or ways of operating.

We don't innovate à Risk: we fail to adapt to market requirements and lose competitiveness

How can we innovate?:

1. Organizing and assigning responsibilities
2. Self-diagnosis: identify innovative capacity (knowledge management, culture of innovation, generation of ideas, product development, redefinition of production process, redefinition of sales processes)
   1. Generation of ideas and preliminary projects
   2. Selection and evaluation
   3. Project specifications
   4. Project planning
   5. Project execution.
   6. Diagnosis is only the first step. The fundamentals elements of the innovation process are: leadership, creativity, focus, efficiency.
3. Define strategy focus
4. Execution of innovation projects

Getting the organization ready to innovate

• Culture of innovation: there must first be a culture of innovation within the company that incorporates several differentiating values, one of which is innovation. (people, values, vision of the future)
  • From a hierarchical and functional structure to a process-based organizations.
  • Vertical structure + horizontal structure à matrix structure
• Appropriate organizational structure
  • Every process needs a leader to take responsibility for it, monitor its evolution and lead it from start to finish across the barriers of functional departments.
  • In the innovation process the flow unit is the project
  • Roles in the project:
    • Sponsor
    • Customers
    • Project manager
    • Functional managers
    • Administrator
    • Team
    • Suppliers
    • Others involved

Definition and different kinds of innovation projects

A project: is a single process consisting of a set of coordinated and controlled activities with starting and finishing dates carried out to achieve an objective in accordance with specific requirements, including time, cost and resource commitments.

A successful project:

• Achieves the objective set (products, service, plan or knowledge specifications) and satisfies the customer
• Is carried out in the stipulated time
• Is carried out within budget (use of resources)

A project must:

• Be identified (tittle, date, proponent….)
• Set out its aims
• Have the necessary resources and be feasible
• Have an action timetable
• List of signatures and approvals

Innovation projects could involve:

• Organizational architecture: aimed at modifying the organization to make it more efficient or creating teams to systematically generate new concepts or innovation projects.
• Basic research
• Development of new products
• Development of new production process
• Redefinition of sales and distribution process
• Knowledge and technology management.

Innovation as a flow of projects

The challenge faced by innovate companies is to know how to continuously plan and execute different innovation projects simultaneously. Proper management of innovation involves a continuous flow of projects, which are successfully devised, executed and concluded.

• 1.       Generation of ideas: creative techniques are used to come up with projects
• 2.       Selection: the projects most in keeping with the company’s strategy are selected
• 3.       Specification: the selected projects requirements are defined in detail
• 4.       Planning: The project-execution stages are planned
• 5.       Execution: execution of the initial plan is monitored and controlled
• 6.       Conclusion: deviations from the initial plan during execution are analyzed.

The chance for diversification: when the question arises of the different options for investing money any financial advisor will advise diversifying the type of investments. Similarly, when it comes to selecting a portfolio of innovation projects, company management should consider allocating resources to more than one kind of project and value the cost of lost opportunities in alternative projects.

How the projects pass successfully through the different phases: stages gates. Theses fixed mechanisms decide which projects will go through to the next phase.