At BSI Solutions innovation is our primary pillar of operation and we utilize each step in the innovation process among our teams to ensure the success of our clients.
Innovation is a collaborative process by which organizations abandon old paradigms and make significant advances. Innovative ideas come from several sources, including “unreasonable” demands or goals and time pressures. However, there are many blocks to innovation. An innovative idea is not helpful to an organization unless it is tested and implemented. This article presents the six steps in the innovation process.
There are six stages in the process of innovation: generating ideas, capturing ideas, beginning innovation, developing a business-effectiveness strategy, applying business improvement, and decline.
1. Generating Ideas
Generating ideas is the exhilarating part of the process. It is best to do this in teams, rather than individually.Innovative ideas generally come from a vision, an unreasonable demand, or a goal.
2. Capturing Ideas
Capturing the ideas from the first stage is done by means of team discussion or discussion among peers. It is important to record the ideas.
3. Beginning Innovation
Review the list of ideas and develop them into a series of statements of ideas. Next, quantify the benefits of each idea to be pursued. Do this in reference to the department, the organization, and/or the customer. Describe how the statement fits with the organization’s strategy, mission, and objectives. Finally, estimate the business potential—the expected outcomes of implementing the idea. These steps are designed to capture the idea and have the team members agree on a statement of feasibility before presenting the suggested innovation to management.
4. Developing a Business-Effectiveness Strategy
Innovation implementation begins here. It usually means rethinking an existing process, product, or service. This is not the same as looking at an existing process and improving it. It is describing what a future process (such as building a house in three hours) will look like.
The team first develops this “picture of the future.” This usually is where the innovation resides. The easiest way to start is to have the team members list their basic assumptions about the way things are now done (which the innovation is intended to overcome). Then they brainstorm, record, and discuss every idea that arises about a possible future process. It helps to use yellow self-stick notes to record ideas individually and then to consolidate them all. The team concludes by writing a paragraph that describes the innovation and illustrating it on a flowchart. This provides the team with a look at the entire future process.
Essentially the team will have detailed how to go about the process without concern for current thinking or typical procedure. This is similar to what Mary Peter did with her inventory system in the example at the beginning of this article.
5. Applying Business Improvement
Once the innovation is applied, it is necessary to continuously examine it for possible improvements (to the process or product or service). In the example of building a house in three hours, how could the team improve the process by using fewer people or less money?
The team starts this process by identifying the business-process gaps between what is done in the present and what is done in the innovation. This is followed by identifying the blockages and barriers to implementing the innovation. Estimating the difficulties, benefits, costs, support required, and risks is necessary before the team can refine the innovation process. Then it will be ready to apply the improvements identified.
6. Decline
In time, it often becomes obvious that what was once an innovation no longer fits. Continuous improvement of the existing process, product, or service is no longer of value; the former innovation has become outdated or outmoded. It is time to let it go, abandon the existing thinking, and set a new goal to start the innovation process once again. It is time for new innovations in response to external pressure.
For more information about our innovative solutions for your business visit www.bsisnc.com.
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