Innovation management and funnel

Innovation management

Innovation management is the process of managing innovations (e.g. ideas) in organisations. The first stage in innovation is for someone to generate an idea. It is typically a technical insight into a product or process or thought about a service. In some cases ideas arises from observed problems either now or in the future. Ideas can also be stimulated by the goals of the organization or an opportunity that appears suddenly. Various stimuli can lead to the generation of an idea from reading magazines and observing problems to visiting other organizations and having informal discussions with colleagues.

Idea generation leads to opportunity recognition where someone can see an opportunity for developing the idea into a new product, process or service. The opportunity recognition stage involves the idea evaluation stage where ideas are prodded and tested. Often ideas are improved, merged with other ideas and in many cases abandoned. An important test for an idea is that it matches the goals of the organization and available resources – people and money.

If an opportunity is recognised then the idea moves to a new stage where it can be developed further. The development phase may involve prototype development and marketing testing. Many ideas wait at the end of the development phase for market conditions to be right. There are currently many new products languishing in the laboratories of Philips and Nokia waiting for their moment to begin replacing or even disrupting existing technology. The final stage of the innovation process is realisation and in many cases exploitation where the customer makes the final evaluation.

Innovation funnel

The innovation funnel provides a solution for explicitly defining the information requirements for managing the innovation process. The funnel illustrates how innovation goals, innovation actions, innovation teams and innovation results interact with each other to create change in any organisation. The innovation funnel can be visualised as containing four arrows flowing around a funnel. Each arrow represents the flow of goals, actions, teams and results. Actions enter the wide mouth of the funnel and represent among other things, alternative ideas for change. These actions flow towards to the neck of the funnel where many will be eliminated. The neck of the funnel is constrained by two arrows – goals and teams.

These constraints loosen or tighten depending on the availability of teams and definition of the goals. Tightly defined goals can be visualised as closing the neck of the funnel with the change of fewer ideas flowing through. The availability of more teams on the other hand can be visualised as opening the neck of the funnel and allowing more ideas to be worked on. The final arrow, results flows from the narrow end of the funnel and represents information concerning the results of execution of goals, actions and teams. This arrow flows back towards goals representing the impact of results on the process of defining and redefining goals.

An important aspect of the innovation funnel is the associations generated between actions and both goals and teams. Ideas, for example, that cannot easily be associated with goals will find it difficult to proceed into the funnel. This has two effects. First, individuals and teams will focus on ideas they believe are in-line with established goals. Second, goals may be re-defined to accommodate good ideas. This is a natural learning process within an innovation community.

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