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Founded as the New Bauhaus in 1937, Chicago’s Institute of Design, IIT is a center for advanced study in human-centered innovation. Learn more: www.id.iit.edu

Vijay Kumar

Innovation Planning Toolkit

Paper presented at FUTUREGROUND International Conference Melbourne, November 17-21, 2004

Vijay Kumar, Innovation Planning Toolkit

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Introduction To maintain leadership position, companies need to be continuously proactive in exploring new opportunities for innovation. Focusing on core offerings, customer support, and relationship management is a safe way to sustain business and maintain continued revenue flows. But complacency with the successes of core offerings and eagerness to serve the core customer base frequently leads to inaction in the search for new opportunities. Companies deliberately need to be in an active sensing mode during which new opportunities are continuously sought. An active innovation culture needs to evolve within organizations. This should be predominantly characterized by continuous exploration and search for opportunities that may not be central to their business objectives. At the core of the emergence of such an innovation culture are the ‘planning processes’ that innovators systematically and collaboratively use to uncover unexplored opportunities. Robust planning processes that are commonly understood, continuously practiced, and collaboratively applied by innovation teams are likely to increase the success rate of innovations. ‘Innovation planning’, although it may seem like an oxymoron, is really not, as the current growth of the industry providing sophisticated tools for research, analysis, and ideation tells us. Innovations can be planned to ensure their successful uptake. To plan innovations, it is possible to benefit from well-developed processes to foresee people’s needs and the nature of contexts within which those innovations fit. Powerful innovation tools are needed to empower this planning process. Scholars...