Chapter 1 Breakthrough Innovation Types: The art of innovation is that it involves new ways of bringing together ideas and resources to create something novel. Breakthrough innovation is disruptive, with high returns and high risks. There are many areas within a company where innovation processes can be applied to create value, from product innovation to service innovation, from process innovation to business model innovation, etc.
Chapter 2 Innovation Framework and Key Success Factors: Innovation is not serendipity. Working in an innovation garden not only takes passion but also needs processes and hard work. A systematic innovation approach is to depict innovation as a system, rather than a traditional process. Innovation performance depends on the alignment of its various components such as people, process, resources, actions, controls, or measurement, etc.
Chapter 3 Business Model Innovation: A business model is a description of the way in which an enterprise intends to make a profit. It’s an entire frame of elements that describe the intents and constraints of an organization. Business model innovation is often breakthrough. Tuning business models is all about foreseeing and applying the emerging trends, that’s where you win the competitive advantage.
Chapter 4 Breakthrough Innovation Best Practices: Innovation is the core activity of human evolution to change the environment for making collective progress. In the business setting, innovation is what differentiates the leader from followers. Often, innovation is disruptive and risky. The challenge is about how to develop the best and next practices, proactively search for breakthrough innovation to build long term business advantages.
Chapter 5 Breakthrough Innovation Risk Management: Digital brings both unprecedented opportunities and risks to businesses today. Innovation becomes simply” creating value by solving simple or complex problems.” Innovation comes with a risk of failure; many say that innovation won’t happen without enough failures. Every innovation pursuit has risks in it. Therefore, it is important to set guidelines for monitoring innovation pulses and handling risks in a structural way.
Breakthrough innovation is the most important concept in innovation because it can be demonstrated virtually that all real economic growth or societal progress is driven by disruptions. Here are three aims of breakthrough innovation.
Respond to a true human need: Responding to the true human need is the very goal of doing innovation. With the unprecedented convenience that digital technologies bring to us, business leaders and professionals should ask themselves: Why is innovation so important or even more important whereas technology becomes more advanced?
The matter of fact is that the pace of change is significantly increasing, innovation is the only path and the core activity of human evolution to change the environment for unlocking business performance, for profit, for resource optimization, and for customer satisfaction, etc. The speed of change is expedited, so does the speed of innovation.
The breakthrough innovation has to respond to the true human need. People must be the center of innovation. Innovation is both art and science. Thus, customers should always be involved. It is not a question of whether customers are right or not, it is more of whether you are truly and proactively listening to their needs and gaining a deep understanding of the customer through empathy.
Ride on emerging trends to figure out a better way to do things: Nowadays, often technologies are the disruptive forces behind digital innovation. The highly innovative organization depends more heavily on its technological knowledge and market capabilities to develop and commercialize innovation.
Innovation is the differentiated business capability enabling the organization to ride on emerging trends and beat down competitions effortlessly. From an entrepreneurial perspective, innovation is the essence of new and independent companies that act as the agents of changes in either emergent or traditional industries.
The essence of innovation is made of trying the new combination of known things to create new stuff and figure out a better way to do things. By introducing new products or new methods of production, by opening new markets or utilizing new resources, by leveraging digital varieties for brainstorming and gaining new ideas, highly innovative organizations can seize precious business opportunities to innovate.
Business model innovation is often breakthrough because if an established firm identifies a new business value proposition that requires a change in the business model or the creation of a new one, and then, it’s strategically important to develop the new venture for improving organizational growth and profitability depending on the company’s competitive environment, their impact perhaps increase over time.
In fact, with the hyper-competition we live in, no competitive advantage is set forever. So, any operational advantage in creating value is likely to be copied fast. To avoid this fast obsolescence, besides focus on execution or incremental improvement, the business model needs to allow space for innovation.
The purpose of Innovation Management is to prepare everything for maximizing the value achieved from the transformation of an idea. The goals of innovation, especially breakthrough innovation, should focus on people and the long-term trends and business vision. All humans are naturally creative. Create and nurture an environment in your organization where humility is appreciated, curiosity is encouraged, and creative thinking is rewarded.