In this topic, we're looking at

The Innovation Landscape, and the way that

I'll cover it, is to gallop through what
I call a very Short Course on innovation.
And we'll cover Some of
the Basic Perspectives to Help
you Interpret Innovation Ideas.
And so while we'll cover some
of these later in the course.
We're also going to give you a taste of,
of what they are.
And give you a feel for
how they might fit.
And sort of have you dip
your toe in the water for
what these what these topics are.
So let's get started.
We're looking at Innovation
as a Concept here.
And when you think about innovation.
I think the fundamental
thing about it is that,
if you think about innovation as
a Process with Identifiable Steps.
That's a very important thing.
So, you want to frame your understanding
of innovation as a process, with steps.
And, in those steps.
People play Roles in the Process.
Every step, different people
play different roles, and so
you have process steps and you have roles,
and you could also say that,
if you look at as I have in a number
of other courses that I've taught,
we've taught this from the perspective
of various different disciplines.
From the discipline obviously
of management here but
also from economics from history,
from sociology, from psychology.
There are all kinds of ways in which you
can look at the field of innovation.
And there are many people out
there who have written books and
done studies, and
have courses that relate.
To innovation or from that own,
their own perspective,
their own disciplinary perspective.
And we could say that innovation is in
that regard part or many, many frameworks.
It's part of the business framework
that's a framework we're looking at.
But it's also the framework for
organizational behavior.
It's the framework for teens.
It's the framework of
individual entrepreneurship.
From all kinds of different frameworks,

and
so we'll be aware of what
those frameworks are, but
we'll also begin to focus on them
as we look at different topics.
But, we can also say that innovation
can be systematic modeled, and
our job is to begin to recognize how.
Those models work and
how we can understand innovation
by looking at how it's modeled.
The other fundamental concept about
innovation is that it produces Results and
it Adds Value.
It's not just that it produces results,
because it just is producing some kind of
result it doesn't add value,
it won't qualify as an innovation.
So let's talk about a little bit
about what innovation is not.
Popular beliefs about what
innovation is and is not are, are,
many many publications many conversations.
Perhaps many courses.
And certainly it's not
just artistic creativity.
Now you might argue that, well,
artistic creativity adds certain value.
It adds some aesthetic value.
And I wouldn't dispute that.
But it doesn't add value in
the marketplace for for customers.
It's not just an invention.
You might say well,
isn't an invention a real breakthrough?
Yes it is, but an invention that
let's say sits on the shelf of
the patent office without actually
being implemented in the marketplace is
not going to produce an innovation.
It doesn't add value in the marketplace.
Innovation is not just a Bright Idea.
We all have good ideas.
But if we don't do something with
those ideas, if we don't take 'em
to the next step, they're not going to
be a res, resulting in innovation.
Innovation is not just Problem-Solving.
Problem-Solving could help fix something
but not necessarily improve it.
What, what innovation does
is it solves a problem and
improves the way in which
the problem was addressed.
Prior to the problem solving effort.
And innovation is not simply
Basic Incremental Improvement.
It's not just making something
go a little bit faster.
Not making some,

some process work a little bit smoother.

Is significant,
in some cases a radical improvement.
So these are things that
innovation is not and
we'll begin to differentiate how
innovation isn't these things.
And how it is something that adds value.
So, also we could say this
is another basic idea.
We can say that innovation
occurs at different levels.
One could argue that with
the individual where you have creative
skills and ideas and, and your,
your active and doing things.
yes.
You can be innovative.
But you're not necessarily
producing an innovation, per se.
The same thing goes at the team level.
you, you're not producing a an innovation
even though you may be engaging in
innovative activities.
When we get to the large unit or
the organization where if you look at
the purpose of an organization something
that is structured, for a particular
mission or particular goal, a particular
purpose sometimes a profit making purpose.
Sometimes a not profit making purpose.
Even a governmental organization has a,
has a mission.
There is where you have innovation
roles that get defined,
and you have an outcome
that produces value.
So at the individual level and
at the team level,
you are doing innovative activities,
but you're not in the realm
of an organization that is ultimately
producing value in the marketplace.
Industries have have
innovation at that level.
The steel industry, the automobile
industry, the computer industry.
All leverage things like new technology to
produce innovative results, and add value.
And at the Societal level, or
at the Marketplace level we're,
we're thinking about large scale
views of the landscape of innovation.
The way you in which you look at
innovation is to see how it is to fuse.
How it is moved and
adopted by different groups, different
organizations, different competitors.
And how that works.
And so those are the ways in which we can

look at innovation at different levels.

I would argue that innovation
at the individual and
the team level is really
mostly creativity.
When you get into a,
at the organizational level,
where organizations have missions and
purposes,
that's when you begin to see innovation
producing value for a user community.
So, we can look at 3 Views
of Innovation as a Process.
There are New Product Success Factors,
and the, the process that you
can use to get to a New Product.
Has innovative success factors.
And you can look at Innovation
as New Product Development,
which is the very common.
Way in which innovation is looked
upon because we usually look at and
identify an recognize innovations as
products, the products that we use.
the, the smart phones
the the televisions the the clickers
the all the different tools that
we have that are products we can
visualize them we can put our hands
on them they are recognizable.
So Innovation as a Product Development,
New Product Development
is easy easy to spot.
Innovation as a New Technology
isn't really as easy to spot for
those of us who are let's
say people on the street.
For people in research and
development labs, there they would
begin to see new technologies.
It could be bio technologies,
they could be information technologies,
they could be other kinds of technologies.
Where they you can begin to view
innovation as a process that will
produce these technologies.
And then finally Innovation as
a Management Improvement this is
The whole world of making organizations
run better, is really driven by taking
advantage of innovation opportunities
to make organizations run better and
more effective.
So let's first look at.
New Product Development as, as Innovation.
And you can see in this list of steps.
The steps that it takes to run through
to ultimately get down to the bottom.
Which is to support some problem
solving and improvement.

And add value of that new product.

That new product.
The demonstration of whether that new
product adds value in the marketplace is
whether or not it is being used
by lots of people and, and
ultimately whether it's being
sold to lots of people.
Another way is to look at new
technology as a trigger of innovation.
So the steps there are that you
recognize a break through technology or
you discover it.
Or you recognize the user need, and
you respond to that need with an idea
that has the technology application.
And you translate that into
some form of solution.
And you ultimately have it be adopted by
users and, and I think we see this daily.
Management Practice as an Innovation
is another way to look at innovation.
Where you you can go into an organization
and observe needs and opportunities.
Management consultants
do this all the time.
They walk into organizations and, and see.
That there are things missing.
There are things that aren't working.
Sometimes the idea is simply to fix them.
Another way is to bring innovation
into the process and say,
how can we improve the way in which
we do this, and do things better in
a different way and add value to the way
in which the organization operates?
So, looking at all these things and we'll
look at this in subsequent presentations.
But, I wanted to put in front of you
a Generic set of Process Steps for
Innovation.
And.
You know there are whole
range of them scanning,
recognition, ideation, concept
development, prototyping, testing and
evaluation, actually producing
the product or the service.
Positioning it adopt getting it adopted in
the marketplace or in the user community.
Supporting and refining its,
its ongoing the effectiveness, and
recreating it if it needs
to be revised and improved.
So its a cyclical process, but
it is the, these are the generic
steps in any innovation.
You can map any innovation along these,
these process steps to understand it.
And then likewise the we're,

we're going to be talking about innovation

role players and what we'll find and,
and we're going to be dealing with
this in a, in a subsequent discussion.
But Role Players are have different.
Functions and different roles
in the process of innovation.
And they they maybe don't have
these as organizational titles, but
they do play these roles.
People spot opportunities,
they scan for opportunities.
People invent.
I mean, we recognize that term.
There are the creators of an idea.
People test them.
For feasibility, people champion them to
make them work inside an organization or
inside a market segment.
There are gatekeepers
who broker knowledge and
information and
talent to make things work.
There are process managers that
orchestrate the innovation process.
There are sponsors.
That provide resources,
they're protectors that
insulate the creative teams
the skunk works if you will.
In organizations that allow
them to be creative and
to produce the innovative work that they
do, and then finally there's the seller.
The role that helps make the innovation
work in the marketplace.
So these again are, are, is a framework
for understanding roles in the innovation
process that you can begin to layer onto
understanding how an innovation works.
I want to talk a little bit about
the notion of Innovation Diffusion.
This was founded or
really defined by Everett Rogers.
This was a communications sociologist
who really studied how different
rural communities adopted
different agricultural practices.
That's how it began.
That's how the.
Look at Innovation Diffusion
began as a study.
And, so Innovation Diffusion is
the process by which a discovery or
innovation is communicated
through various channels or
communities by members of,
of that community.
So it is a process where a new idea
is accepted in the marketplace.

And it the rate of diffusion is the speed

at which it spreads and is used.
So you could think about the spread
of something as basic as a,
as a smart phone and
how it has spread and really we'll,
we'll talk about this in another
presentation the creative destruction.
Of the of the standard dial telephone.
Or the push button telephone.
The desk telephone.
And how it has been, in effect,
displaced by, and by a smartphone.
And displaced by the use
of a new innovation.
And so, the idea of innovation,
and in this figure here.
What we're looking at here is a figure
that is a kind of a bell curve, and
this is a standard way to portray
the Innovation Adoption cycle.
And down at the bottom you can see the.
The types of people who adopt various
things, and the volume under the curve is
really the volume of people that
have adopted that innovation.
And so what we see on the left hand
side its the, the Innovators or
we could call them the Techies.
Who are the people who first adopted.
Apple computers back in the 80s.
they, they, they were the hobbyists,
the people who tried things.
Even today,
we have we have people who are using
various innovations way ahead
of whoever else is using them.
And then we have a larger segment
under the curve, the Visionaries,
the people who are the first.
adopters, Early Adopters.
And then we have the Early Majority.
And then gradually over time, so
there's a time frame and a timeline that
goes across the bottom of that curve.
And over time gradually
every adopts something.
And it may be that some
people never will adopt.
Let's say a smartphone.
You know there are people who say
they're just not going to do it.
And, and so there's always going to
be some segment of the market.
And some segment of the population that
is not going to adopt an Innovation.
But this is a a hypothetical
way of understanding,
how innovations are adopted
in the marketplace.

And so it's a framework for

you to understand how that works.
And we'll we'll dig into this
later in the course, but
I wanted to give you a taste of what this
vision is about the innovation process.
Managing Innovation Value is an essential
ingredient of understanding innovation.
There're various ways in which
innovation value can be captured.
It could be Intellectual Property
Management in terms of patents.
It could be Intellectual Asset Management
in term of talent you have in
your organization obviously or.
The real talented organizations
that even the Proctor & Gambles,
I mean we can talk about Google and
say well they really got talent there.
But, what we've really also found
in in ordinary organizations,
consumer based organizations, places
like Proctor & Gamble have an incredible
base of very creative people
in both intellectual assets.
And the creative assets
that they have are,
are are really what helps
make that company run.
And then Intellectual Capital Management,
where you harness the hidden value of
an innovation and you, you leverage
that that innovation as capital that helps
make your, your organization work better.
Ultimately we want you to
Act like an Innovator.
There's a,
there's a book out there that is,
is looking at innovation from
the perspective of Leo, Leonardo Da Vinci.
And so these are the, the seven principles
of Da Vinci that we have captured.
And this is a way that you
can begin to act, act out.
And be effective as an in,
as an innovator.
And what you want to do is to scan and
look and
see opportunities and and
basically recognize relationships.
And frameworks, and so
there's some systems thinking here.
There's some opportunity recognition here.
There's, there's seeing how things
work and seeing what the effects are.
So it's a, it's an overall
framework of understanding area
in which you're operating in.
Well, here's a brief summary
of what we've talked about.

This is again a, a quick gallop

through the Innovation Landscape.
We want you to understand basic
innovation vocabulary and concepts.
I would suggest strongly that you
explore the textbook's index,
that will build your
innovation vocabulary.
You know?
Not everything is going to be programmed
in a, a chapter, and, and section.
process.
But you can explore that index and,
and dig in there.
you, you'll recognize the three
basic forms of innovation.
New Products, New Technologies and
New Management initiatives.
And then you want to ultimately
understand how to manage these processes.
And that's really what innovation
management is all about is
managing the innovation process, but to
manage it you first got to understand and
so that's what our job is.