Introduction
Innovation management is an area of management that involves managing processes and innovation in research and development. In the absence of the appropriate processes, it is quite impossible for research and development to realize efficiency. This area of management includes a set of tools that enable the managers as well as other operators in the business organization to work together with an understanding that is shared of the processes and goals of the organization. Innovation management focuses on allowing the organization to respond to opportunities (both internal and external), and utilize creative efforts at its disposal to come up with new ideas, processes as well as products (Kelly and Kranzburg, 1978).
Key Issues in Innovation Management and strategy
The organizations that are involved in manufacturing as well as those that are involved in offering services are required to be more innovative. But in the first place, those organizations are supposed to be aware of what innovation is all about and how to about it. Research gives an indication that innovation management calls for performance in five main areas (Goffin, 2010).
The rising competition in the global market is pushing manufacturing organizations to seek ways to turn out to be more innovative. For instance, taking the case in the United Kingdom, the business organizations are facing criticism in regard to having the best ideas but being unable to achieve success in bringing them to the market. On the other hand, in Germany, there have been great arguments on the issue of whether the high costs of labor are bringing down competitiveness, and innovation is viewed to be the most effective mechanism to deal with this. Great fresh research, however, has revealed that managers in these two companies are encountering remarkably the same issues. Some of the key issues in regard to innovation management include; misunderstanding the role of innovation, having too many development projects,s, and perception of innovation as a single discipline (Goffin, 2010).
Perceiving innovation as a single discipline
Innovation calls for the managers’ never-ceasing attention that is long-term. The notion that innovation management is high performance in just one area is very wrong. Research shows that innovation management calls for good performance in five main areas that are different from one another. These areas include; innovation strategy, creativity and ideas management, portfolio management, project management, and human resource management (Goffin, 2010).
Innovation strategy
This involves communicating the role of innovation in the company and coming up with decisions on the way to employ technology and driving the improvements in the performance through the relevant indicators of the performance.
Creativity and ideas management
Enhancing the best ideas that address the customer needs is quite critical. Because innovation comprises new products, new services as well as new processes, the range of the ideas is broad and thus the employees, in general, are supposed to employ their full participation.
Portfolio management
At the point when the ideas would have just been set up, there is a need for a process that is efficient in order to make a selection among these, of the best ideas so as for them to be implemented. The focus should be the priorities since the resources are always limited in their availability. Successful; business organizations make sure that the innovation portfolio they have comprise a reasonable balance of the products that have just been developed as well as the new processes and the service and business innovations.
Project management
The ability to convert ideas in to new products, processes as well as services at a faster rate is quite vital. The typical goal for the business organizations is to have the first time products that are of high quality whose development requires the costs that are acceptable. The most common manner to acquire this goal is to employ cross-functional teams though problems do come about. However, post-project assessments are rarely utilized to make the identification of the areas that requires improvement.
Human resource management
The basis of innovation management lies on the need to come up with a culture in which the employees of the business organization are given motivation to make their contribution to innovation.
Too many development projects
The products that have just been developed play a very big role in terms of generating the revenues and those organizations that are market leaders employ measures like the revenues generated from the products that have just been developed as the main indicators of performance.
However, in attempt in making forward progress in product innovation, many business organizations fall in to a particular trap. In order for the organizations to engage in new product development process at a faster rate, they are supposed to turn out to be adept at putting in place their priorities and making improvements on the process of development from one project to the other. According to Goffin (2010), one company involved in manufacturing of the electronics that was studied in which about 90 percent of the total revenues is obtained from those products that have just stayed on the market within a period of less than three years, reviews the way the project was accomplished successfully and puts in practice this knowledge to make forward progress in the development in the new product. By just forcing more and more projects in to the department of research and development does not lead to realization of an increase in output and doing this, in most cases, yields the negative results.
Misunderstanding the role of innovation
Most of the companies view innovation as being identical with breakthroughs and inventions. The most dangerous thing here is the idea of viewing the department of research and development as the only and only department that is having the direct responsibility in innovation with concentration being basically on the innovation of the product. However, the business organizations are supposed to compel all types of innovation. More innovations can be done other than just innovating new products. The organizations that have been successful seek contributions from other areas as well.
For instance, the main role of process innovation as a starting place of competitive advantage is in most cases not considered seriously. In the same manner, those organizations that are involved in manufacturing can derive advantages from the services that offer differentiation to their products.
Conclusion
With the rising competition within the local and international market, business organizations need to come up with strategies that will have to make them remain competitive on the market. In this case, effective innovation management and innovation strategies can play a major role in enabling the organization to gain a competitive advantage by coming up with new products, processes and services.
References
Goffin K. (2010), Competing in the innovation pentathlon. Web.
Kelly, P. and Kranzburg M. (1978). Technological Innovation: A Critical Review of Current Knowledge. San Francisco: San Francisco Press.