Innovation Styles
An innomation briefing by Stewart McKie.
Content:
Innovation Styles
Introducing two styles of innovation.
Top-Down Innovation
The process and technology of top-
down or strategy-driven innovation.
Bottom-Up Innovation
The process and technology of
bottom-up or idea-driven innovation.
Introduction
May 2006
When you approach innovation from a process and
technology perspective it becomes clear that innovation is
not one kind of process supported by one technology
“landscape” - it depends on the style of innovation that you
intend to focus on in your business.
Here we use the term innovation “style” as a means of
differentiating what we are talking about here from other
ways of categorizing innovation, for example:
• Incremental innovation that has a sustaining impact
in the marketplace.
• Radical innovation that has a disruptive impact in the
marketplace.
The two styles briefly outlined here are top-down or
strategy-driven innovation and bottom-up or idea-driven
innovation. It is important to note that they are not
mutually exclusive styles in that idea-driven innovation is a
way of assisting with strategy-driven innovation.
The aim of this briefing is to help readers to understand
the differences between the two styles in terms of their
process and process support technology.
Top-Down Innovation
Driven by Strategy

Process
Intentional and sustained
innovation cannot depend on an
ad-hoc process. Instead it must
be driven by a strategy to
innovate.

Strategy-driven innovation is a
top-down innovation style that
reflects upper management’s
vision for the development of
the business in the future.

The process involves envisioning the strategy; creating a strategic plan to execute the strategy,
developing the innovation deliverables demanded by the strategy and realizing the value of
those deliverables in the marketplace.

Technology
The technology landscape for
strategy-driven innovation is
dominated by roadmapping -
both the technique and tool.

Creating roadmaps to reflect

the strategic plan helps you to
envision the strategy, plan its
execution, manage innovation
deliverable development and
the realization of value in the
marketplace.
A wide variety of other software tools have their own part to play to support the roadmapping
effort at different phases of the process, but all are essentially contributing to the view
represented by the innovation roadmap that in turn reflects the organization’s strategy.

(c) Stewart McKie, 2006 -2- www.innomate.biz

Bottom-Up Innovation
Driven by Ideas

Process
Idea-driven innovation
supports strategy-driven
innovation but comes from
the bottom-up rather than
the top-down.

This innovation style

reflects the fact that ideas
are often stimulated by
deliberate campaigns
intended to improve or
solve a problem that could
involve a wide range of
internal and external
stakeholders in the business.

And these improvements or problem solving requests are often prompted by the need to
change strategy in response to outside events, such as a competitor initiative or the availability
of new knowledge or technology for example

Technology
The technology landscape for
idea-driven innovation is
dominated by idea management
- both the process and tool.
Again there is a wide universe of
solutions to help with the
process activities of generating,
qualifying, developing and
realizing the value of ideas. In
essence managing the idea
pipeline (quantitative) and idea
portfolio (qualitative).

Idea management manages a process that includes idea

• Stimulation and collection

• Screening and adding value
• Qualifying and evaluating
• Dispatch

(c) Stewart McKie, 2006 -3- www.innomate.biz

 • Reward and recognition
Three Steps
for Success
1. Decide which style to focus
attention on and conduct a
people/process/technology
audit of competence and
capability
2. Make sure that everyone
involved with your style of
innovation understands the
process and the technology
support available.
2. Ensure that the core
technology is in place to
support each process, namely
Roadmapping and Idea
Management.
(c) Stewart McKie, 2006
About the Author
Stewart McKie
Stewart McKie is an IT innovation consultant with over 20
years industry experience. He has an MSc in Organizational
Consulting from Ashridge, a leading UK business school.
Stewart’s service offering includes:
• software selection process management
• application due diligence for M&A activity
• idea management introductory workshops
• white paper/article/web content writing
• application prototype development
You can contact Stewart:
• by email at sm@tripos.biz
• by telephone at +44 (0) 1747 852659 (GMT).
-4- www.innomate.biz