Delivering innovation is not as easy as it seems. It is not about having ideas, it is about creating a new viable offer solving problems that matter. Most successful companies innovating have a clear innovation pipeline, and there are different steps in the process. In this article, we present 8 steps to help you innovate, from strategy to execution. 

1. ALIGN WITH STRATEGY : Set the direction of the innovation pipeline to match the company’s strategy, and then mobilize people and resources, raising the level of ambition and commitment.

2. DEFINE THE PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED : The why is always the key. This key step is about identifying the problem to be solved, and for who (it can be internal or external). Innovation is about solving problems that matter, that can make a real difference. 

3. GENERATE IDEAS : Develop a flow of original ideas that can solve the problem. And many stakeholders can be involved, employees, customers, partners, academia, startups, and more. You never know who will have the best ideas.

4. EVALUATE AND SELECT IDEAS : Evaluating is not easy, and it has to be rational, not subjective. An idea evaluation matrix will help you rank each idea based on the score it receives for various factors or criteria, the ones that are the most important to your organization.

5. DEVELOP : To test ideas and learn, you want to develop fast, and “fail fast”, building at first a prototype that can be used to get feedback from end-users.

6. IMPLEMENT : Once development is done, first feedbacks learnings have been used to get a prototype, it is time to launch on sample scale, involving key internal and external stakeholders, strengthening the business plan, and making it happen.

7. MONITORING : Peter Drucker is credited with the following quote: “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. Make sure you use well define metrix to evaluate your actions and learn from data to identify ways to improve. Data will speak to you.

8. SCALE : It is the process of expanding tested prototypes to maximize the impact. Impact can be revenue or profit, as well as it could be number of customers or users etc. It is about implementing the solution at a wider scale to solve the problem that matters to your organization and drive key results.

➡ Of course, this article is a short summary. If you are interested in developing innovation strategies, happy to connect and jump on a call to understand what you have in mind and how we can help.

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