Everything in the business world is focused on creating a business that therefore has its life cycle. Innovation is not a business model in itself, although it is the basis of many of them. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the phases that must be followed to convert a new industrial or business approach into a marketable product. For the expert Nina Simosko of the NTT Institute, this process consists of four steps: Open Innovation, Applied R&D, Product and Platform Development and Commercialization.
In each of these stages, the sum of the different people involved and the developments themselves can give rise to even bigger new ideas.
The principle: Open Innovation
Henry Chesburg, professor at the University of Berkley, encouraged sharing the risks and benefits of research beyond the limits of each laboratory with the conviction that “Nobody has a monopoly on knowledge and when it exists not only in companies but in private individuals or non-profit organizations, sharing it generates useful products and services”.
The first phase, Simosko proposes, requires this open spirit, seeking to open up to the outside world and willing to surprise. Some of the considerations and challenges of this phase are to discover the idea, identify the resources and initial prototypes. Define the criteria for decision making, identify key partners and assign the role of the company in terms of investment and infrastructure.
Second step: Apply R&D
It is important to get user feedback from the first prototypes as well as from the partners chosen to create them. A partner with the same ambition and patience is needed to contribute their collaboration in the innovation process. The flow of information between all those involved is vital. In this phase, the challenges are to define the skill of the company, free access to information between parties, the divergence of skills that converge on the technology or the objective, and the criteria to continue advancing such as Industrial Property or patents.
Next: the product and its platform
If the previous phases can be defined as successful and represent a scalable opportunity, we will see that the “guest list” will be growing. It is time to start making tangible what we call Innovation.
“Implement or die… You have to get things in the real world for it to really count.” – Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab
The commercial or technological contacts and partners that we have been able to accumulate are now essential. It would be rare for a single company to develop something truly innovative on its own. This is when the biggest challenge is to ensure the right collaborators in the technological, logistics or commercial areas. This is a critical moment in which it is necessary to assess the real possibilities of scaling the prototype, find the sales arguments and the different marketing packages.
The goal: launch sales
This is when ambitious ideas become reality and have to overcome three aspects: initial feasibility, sale and growth. The first of them should be guaranteed by the R&D team that participated in the prototypes and tests, while the remaining two require new expert partners. The resulting teams must be able to keep an open mind to the evolution of a new product while waiting to see how the market reacts. The final challenges of the life cycle of an innovation consist of identifying the impact of the product on customers, responding to objections, monitoring the competition and maintaining the trust of new audiences. But above all, being able to measure success or failure beyond how good the initial idea was.
Source: Open Innovation Community
