The financial sector is evolving at an unprecedented pace, driven by technological advancements, changing customer expectations, and an increasingly complex regulatory landscape. In an industry where trust, security, and efficiency are paramount, financial institutions must continuously innovate to remain competitive and future-proof their operations.Read more: The importance of agility in financial innovation.

Why Innovation Matters in Finance

Innovation is no longer just a competitive advantage in the financial industry—it is a necessity. The rise of digital banking, fintech solutions, and AI-driven services has transformed customer expectations. Users now demand seamless digital experiences, personalized financial products, and faster, more secure transactions. To keep up with this rapid transformation, financial institutions must embrace new technologies and rethink traditional processes.Read more: How innovation is shaping the finance and insurance sector.At the same time, the industry must navigate stringent compliance requirements, data protection laws, and cybersecurity risks. Balancing innovation with regulatory adherence requires a strategic approach—one that ensures efficiency while safeguarding sensitive customer data and maintaining operational stability.

Challenges in Driving Innovation

Financial institutions face several challenges when it comes to innovation. Some of the most pressing include:

• Regulatory Compliance: Adhering to strict financial regulations while implementing new technologies can slow down digital transformation efforts.
• Data Security & Privacy: Protecting sensitive customer information is a top priority, requiring robust cybersecurity measures and careful data management.
• Legacy Systems: Many financial institutions still rely on outdated infrastructure that makes seamless digital integration difficult.
• Customer Trust: While customers expect innovation, they also need to feel confident that their financial data is secure and services remain reliable.
• Internal Adoption: Encouraging employees to embrace new systems and workflows can be a challenge, especially in well-established institutions with deeply rooted processes.

How Financial Institutions Can Overcome These Challenges

To successfully drive innovation, financial service providers must find the right balance between agility and security. Key strategies include:

• Investing in Scalable Digital Solutions that integrate with existing infrastructure while offering room for future growth.
• Prioritizing Regulatory Compliance from the Start to ensure that innovation aligns with industry standards and avoids legal complications.
• Leveraging Data Responsibly to provide personalized customer experiences while upholding privacy and security.
• Encouraging a Culture of Innovation by empowering employees with the tools and mindset needed to contribute to transformation efforts.

For a deeper dive into how financial institutions can implement agile innovation strategies, check out our whitepaper on Agile Innovation in Finance.

A Practical Example of Innovation in Finance

Navigating the complexities of financial innovation requires strategic planning and the right tools. See how BEKB is tackling these challenges and driving innovation.[vc_single_image image="46327" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" link="https://innosabilegacy.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/innosabi-Case-Study-BEKB.pdf"]

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The innovation process is basically the journey a company takes to turn those lightbulb moments into something real; something tangible – an exciting new product, a helpful service, or even a better way of doing things. It covers all the steps involved, from that first spark of an idea to its launch.Now, in big companies, this process can be, well… more intricate (i.e. bringing together different areas like brainstorming, keeping an eye on trends, and even managing the technology side).But at its core, the innovation process is there to ensure everything runs smoothly and efficiently, so those bright ideas actually become successful innovations.This article will delve into the key stages of the innovation process, providing insights and actionable tips.Learn more: What Is Process Innovation in Businesses? – Benefits, Examples, Case Studies

So, What's Innovation, Anyway?

Simply put, innovation is about bringing something new and valuable into the world. It’s not simply having an excellent idea. Rather, turning that idea into something that makes a difference.Now, innovation comes in different flavors:

1. Incremental Innovation: Also known as continuous innovation.- Think of this as taking something that already exists and making it a bit better. Like your smartphone getting a faster processor or a longer-lasting battery. Small steps, perhaps. But they add up!
2. Disruptive Innovation: This one shakes things up! It's when you introduce something completely new that changes the way things are done, often making older products or services obsolete. Remember when smartphones replaced those flip phones? Yeah, that was disruptive.
3. Radical Innovation: This is the big leagues! Those groundbreaking discoveries or inventions that completely transform industries and even society. Think of the internet or the discovery of penicillin.

Invention vs. Innovation: What's the difference?

People often mix these up, but there's a key distinction:

1. Invention is creating something entirely new that didn't exist before. It's that "Eureka!" moment in the lab.
2. Innovation is taking that invention and making it useful and successful in the real world; something people actually want and use.

So, Why Is Innovation Such a Big Deal?

We’re glad you asked because innovation has a huge impact on both businesses and society.

1. For businesses: Innovation can help companies stay ahead of the competition, attract new customers, and grow their profits. It's about adapting and thriving in an ever-evolving world that never seems to stop.
2. For society: It drives progress. It leads to better healthcare, improved living standards, and solutions to some of our biggest challenges. In the end, it makes the world a better place.

So, whether it's big or small, for businesses or society, innovation is what keeps us all moving forward!

The 4 Stages of the Innovation Process

• Idea Generation

This is the brainstorming stage - where all those creative juices start flowing. It's gathering as many ideas as possible, no matter how wild or crazy they might seem at first.Why is it so important? Well, you can't build a castle without bricks, right? Similarly, you can't innovate without a pool of ideas to explore and develop.Techniques to Get Those Creative Gears TurningThere are tons of ways to get those ideas flowing:

1. Brainstorming: The classic! Get a group together, throw ideas around, and build on each other's thoughts.
2. Mind Mapping: Visualize your ideas by creating a diagram connecting different concepts and thoughts.
3. Problem Reversal: Instead of solving a problem, try thinking about how to cause the problem. This can lead to some unexpected solutions!
4. SCAMPER: This technique encourages you to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse different elements of a product or process to spark new ideas.

And the list goes on! The key is to find what works best for you and your team.

Leveraging Innovation Platforms and Challenges

To streamline idea generation and encourage participation, many businesses are turning to innovation platforms, specifically idea management platforms. These platforms provide a centralized hub for collecting, organizing, and evaluating ideas. They can also be used to host innovation challenges, which are contests designed to solve specific problems. Challenges are a great way to engage employees and generate a high volume of creative solutions, especially when employees are busy with their day-to-day tasks.You can learn more about innovation challenges and idea management platforms here.Learn more: 11 Proven Ideation Techniques and Strategies to Ignite Your Team’s Creative Genius

• Idea Selection And Evaluation

Okay, so we've got a ton of ideas swirling around. That's great! But now comes the tricky part: selecting and evaluating those ideas. Why can't we just go with all the ideas? – Great question!As much as we'd love to, resources are limited. You can't pursue every single idea that pops up. So, you need to choose wisely and focus on the ones that have the most potential.How do we pick the winners?This is where we put on our critical thinking hats and evaluate each idea based on a few key criteria:

1. Feasibility: Can we actually do this? Do we have the technology, skills, and resources to make it happen?
2. Market Potential: Is there a demand for this? Will people actually want to buy or use it?
3. Alignment with Organizational Goals: Does this idea fit with our overall strategy and objectives? Will it help us achieve our long-term vision?

And of course, there might be other factors to consider depending on your specific situation.Who Decides and How?The decision-making process for idea selection can vary, but it often involves a combination of expert evaluation and employee input.

1. Expert Evaluation: A team of experts assesses ideas based on the criteria mentioned above, providing an objective analysis of their potential.
2. Employee Involvement: Employees can play a crucial role in selecting winning ideas through:
   1. Voting: Allowing employees to vote on their favorite ideas gives everyone a voice and fosters a sense of ownership.
   2. Crowdfunding: Employees can "invest" virtual tokens or points in ideas they believe in, simulating a crowdfunding process and highlighting ideas with strong internal support.

Innovation platforms can facilitate this process by providing tools for structured evaluation, voting, and crowdfunding. This streamlines decision-making and ensures that the best ideas rise to the top.Note: When involving customers in idea selection, the approach might differ slightly. You can learn more about engaging customers in innovation here.And of course, there might be other factors to consider depending on your specific situation.Bonus: Data-Driven DecisionsIt's important to be objective and avoid falling in love with a particular idea just because it sounds, well… cool. Gather data, conduct market research, and analyze the potential risks and rewards. Let the numbers guide your decisions!This stage can be tough, as it often involves saying goodbye to some ideas that might have seemed promising at first. But remember, focus your efforts on the ideas that have the best chance of success.

• Concept Development And Testing

Alright, you’ve now got your winning ideas! Now, let's roll up our sleeves and start building something real. 3.1 Make it TangibleTransform that abstract idea into something more concrete. It's like taking a rough sketch and turning it into a detailed blueprint.Start by fleshing out the idea, defining its key features, and exploring how it might work in the real world. This might involve creating mockups, storyboards, or even basic prototypes to visualize the concept and get a better understanding of its potential.3.2 Prototyping and Testing (aka, getting real-world feedback)The time has come to put those concepts to the test! Here, you’ll create prototypes – early versions of the product or service – and get them into the hands of your target users.Why is this so important? Because feedback is gold! By observing how people interact with your prototypes, you can gather valuable insights, identify any flaws or areas for improvement, and refine your concept accordingly.3.3 Leveraging Innovation Platforms for Prototype TestingInnovation platforms can be incredibly helpful during this stage, especially when testing with customers. They offer dedicated features for prototype testing, allowing you to easily share prototypes with your target audience, collect feedback, and analyze the results. This streamlines the testing process and helps you gather valuable insights more efficiently. Learn more about how innovation platforms support prototype testing and customer co-creation here.3.4 Embrace the Feedback LoopThis stage isn't about getting it perfect on the first try. It's about continuous improvement. This means testing, gathering feedback, making changes… and testing again. It's a cycle of learning and refinement that helps you create something that truly meets the needs and expectations of your users.

• Commercialization

Your concept is polished and ready to go! Now, it's time for the grand finale. This is where you take your innovation and introduce it to the world.4.1 Launching into the MarketThis stage is where we get your product to your customer. It involves a lot of planning and coordination across different areas such as marketing, sales, and operations.4.2 Marketing: Tell Your StoryYou must create excitement around your innovation and tell people why they should care. To do this, you’ll need to develop a marketing strategy that highlights the key benefits and unique selling points of your product or service.Determine your target audience, craft compelling messages, and choose the right channels to reach them, such as advertising, social media campaigns, public relations… or even good old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing.4.3 Pricing and Distribution: Getting it to the CustomersYou also need to figure out how much to charge for your innovation and how you'll get it to your customers (i.e. setting a pricing strategy that balances profitability with customer affordability).Also, you'll need to choose the right distribution channels, whether it's through online platforms, brick-and-mortar stores (or a combination of both).4.4 Customer-Centric Approach: Your Secret Key to SuccessKeeping your customers at the forefront is critical throughout this stage. To ensure that your innovations truly resonate with them, you’ll have to deeply understand their needs, preferences, and pain points.

Challenges In The Innovation Process

Okay, fun as it may seem, let's be real, the innovation process isn't always smooth sailing. In other words, get ready, because there are bound to be challenges along the way!

Common Roadblocks

1. Resistance to change: People can get comfortable with the status quo. Introducing something new can be met with skepticism or even outright resistance.
2. Lack of resources: Innovation often requires time, money, and talent. These resources aren't always readily available, especially in smaller organizations or during tough economic times.
3. Fear of failure: Innovation involves taking risks, and not every idea will be a winner. This fear of failure can stifle creativity and prevent people from taking bold steps.

Strategies For Overcoming These Challenges

1. Foster a culture of innovation: Encourage experimentation, celebrate successes, and learn from failures. Make it okay to take risks and think outside the box.
2. Secure leadership buy-in: Get leaders on board with the innovation agenda. Their support is crucial for securing resources and driving change.
3. Empower employees: Give people the autonomy and tools they need to innovate. Encourage them to share their ideas and contribute to the process.
4. Embrace agile methodologies: Break down projects into smaller, manageable chunks and iterate based on feedback. This helps reduce risk and adapt to changing circumstances.

Learn more: 4 Principles of Agile Innovation

Wrapping It Up

The innovation process is a journey, not a destination. So aim to constantly seek out new opportunities, challenge the status quo as you know it, and create a better future.So go out there and innovate! The world is waiting for your next big idea.

Found this helpful? Dive into more resources to continue your innovation journey.

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Innovation isn't something that happens in a vacuum, right? Sometimes the best ideas come from looking at the world around you. Whether it's seeing how people are living their lives, spotting new tech, or checking out what your competitors are up to, there's a whole universe of inspiration out there, just waiting to be explored.We've already talked about how to find fresh ideas within your own company, so now let's look beyond those walls. In this article, we're exploring the most powerful external innovation sources that can help your business think outside the box, grow faster, and stay ahead of the game. External sources of ideas are all about finding those brilliant thoughts outside your company walls. It's looking at the wider world – trends, technologies, even what your competitors are up to – and using those insights to spark your very own creativity. Ready to see what's possible from within? Let's jump in!Learn more:Scaling Innovation Processes Through Internal and External Stakeholder Communication

1. Customers

First, let's talk about your existing customers. They're much more than just people who buy what you sell. In fact, they're a powerhouse of valuable and relevant insights! Think about it: who knows better about what they want and need than the people who are actually using your products or services in the real world?Paying attention to feedback, surveys, and online communities can reveal those hidden pain points you might not even know existed. This way, you’ll have a direct line to the people who matter most, telling you exactly what they love, what they hate, and what they wish you offered.Companies like LEGO have mastered this external innovation strategy. They actively seek out customer ideas through their LEGO Ideas platform, turning fan creations into actual products. And those super-fast Amazon deliveries? That came from understanding customer frustration with slow shipping times.Also, keep something very important in mind: it's not just about asking customers what they want. Sometimes, it's about observing what they do and figuring out their underlying goals. That's how Netflix started recommending shows based on your viewing history. It wasn't just an algorithm; it was a direct response to customer frustration with endless browsing (we’ve all been there).

1. Competitors

Okay, let's switch gears and talk about your competitors. Now, before you roll your eyes and say, "Ugh, not them again," hear us out. Keeping an eye on your rivals isn't about copying their every move; rather, it's about gathering valuable intel that can fuel your own innovation.So think of this like a friendly game of chess. You need to understand their strategies, anticipate their next move, and figure out where they might be leaving gaps in the market.Alas, competitor analysis isn't just about seeing what products they're launching - it's about digging deeper:

• What are their customers saying? Are there unmet needs you could address?

• What technologies are they investing in? Could those open up new possibilities for your business?

• Where are they falling short? That's your chance to swoop in and offer something better!

Remember, though, use their moves as inspiration to create something unique, something that sets you apart. For this example, consider companies like Apple and Samsung. As competitors, they're constantly pushing each other to innovate, but they also maintain distinct brand identities and product offerings. - That's the sweet spot for tapping into external innovation sources, all while maintaining your uniqueness.

1. Suppliers

You might think of your company suppliers as those who simply provide the essentials you need to run your business. But what if they could be so much more?Your suppliers are not just your vendors - they’re highly-valuable external innovation sources. In fact, they have a front-row seat to the latest technologies, materials, and processes in their own industries. They know how their customers operate, the potential challenges they face, and where to innovate.Your suppliers might stumble upon a cutting-edge material that could revolutionize your product - or discover a more efficient manufacturing technique that could save you money.Let’s take the food and beverage industry as an example. Have you ever noticed those new, plant-based meat alternatives popping up on supermarket shelves? Many of those innovations weren't dreamt up solely by the food companies themselves. They often partnered with their ingredient suppliers to develop and perfect those plant-based proteins that mimic the taste and texture of meat.These suppliers, with their deep knowledge of food science and ingredient sourcing, brought their expertise to the table (pun intended!). They helped these food companies navigate the challenges of creating delicious and sustainable alternatives, opening up a whole new market segment.

1. Software and Consulting Companies

Let's face it, keeping up with the rapid pace of innovation can feel like trying to catch a bullet train. Software and consulting companies offer a whole toolkit to supercharge your innovation efforts. From trendspotting and market analysis to strategic planning and execution, they've got your back.Software solutions like innosabi, in particular, can be a turning point for any given company. They can help you gather and analyze mountains of data, turning raw information into actionable gold. Plus, software gives you the tools, consulting provides the roadmap - and together, they create the perfect environment for sustainable innovation.But here's the kicker: the earlier you team up with these external innovation experts, the better. They can help you build that technological leadership from the ground up, so you're not just keeping up with the competition, you're setting the pace.

1. Research Institutions and Universities

These are external innovation drivers powerhouses, where brilliant minds are constantly pushing the boundaries of knowledge and technology.Collaborating with these institutions gives you access to groundbreaking research, emerging technologies (not to mention a pool of talented individuals ready to tackle real-world challenges).These strategic partnerships create a symbiotic relationship where both sides benefit. Companies gain access to fresh perspectives and innovative solutions, while universities get to see their research translated into real-world impact.Take Google's self-driving car project, Waymo. It wouldn't be where it is today without close collaboration with universities like Carnegie Mellon and Stanford. These partnerships provided access to top-tier robotics researchers and cutting-edge AI algorithms, accelerating the development of autonomous vehicle technology.

1. Crowdsourcing

Ever wished you could tap into a global network of brilliant minds to brainstorm your next big idea? Well, with crowdsourcing, you kinda can!Think of crowdsourcing like a giant online suggestion box, except it's filled with bright external ideas for innovation, fresh perspectives, and potential solutions you might never have thought of on your own. Suddenly, you're not just limited to your internal team; you've got a whole world of creative problem-solvers right at your fingertips.And crowdsourcing creates a feeling like we're all in this together. People love to feel like they're participating in something bigger, and when you invite them to contribute, you're tapping into that powerful sense of engagement.Look at how Lay's, the potato chip giant, launched its "Do Us a Flavor" campaign. They invited customers to submit their wildest chip flavor ideas, with the winning concept becoming a limited-edition product. As a result, this not only generated both a ton of buzz and engagement, but it also led to some truly innovative flavors like Wasabi Ginger and Kettle Cooked Bacon Mac & Cheese.Learn more: Scaling Innovation Processes Through Internal and External Stakeholder Communication

1. Social Media and Online Communities:

No, social media isn’t just for cat videos and memes – they're bustling hubs of trends, and insights. In fact online communities are the world's biggest virtual watercooler, where people gather to chat, share ideas, and, of course, vent their frustrations.And this is your business's hotspot for trendy insights and opportunities. Tune into online conversations and get a real-time pulse on what your customers are thinking, feeling, and talking about. This is your direct access into their brains, revealing even their wildest dreams.But don’t think about it only as eavesdropping. In fact, this is a two-way street. Through actively engaging with your audience, you can build relationships and even co-create products with your most passionate fans.Look at how Glossier, the beauty brand, built its entire empire on social media. They actively engage with their community, listening to feedback, incorporating user-generated content, and even co-creating products based on popular requests. This way, their social media presence has become a core driver of their innovation strategy.

1. Startups

Startups are the disruptors, the rule-breakers, the ones currently pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. They're the window into the future of your industry - a contemporary source of bold experimentation.Keep a close eye on the startup scene to get a sneak peek at tomorrow's trends and technologies. But don't be fooled, just as with social media, observation is just the beginning. In other words, you can also join forces. Collaborating with startups, whether through partnerships, investments, or even acquisitions, can inject your company with a much-needed dose of entrepreneurial energy and out-of-the-box thinking.Consider OpenAI's groundbreaking GPT-3 language model. While not a direct acquisition, Microsoft's exclusive licensing deal for this technology has supercharged its sources of external innovation efforts across various products. From enhancing the natural language capabilities of its search engine, Bing, to integrating GPT-3 into its suite of productivity tools, Microsoft is leveraging this partnership to deliver AI-powered solutions that transform how people work and interact with technology

1. Government and Regulatory Agencies:

Lastly, let's not forget about the government and those regulatory agencies. Sure, they might seem like a bit of a buzzkill sometimes, but they actually play a pretty big role in shaping the innovation landscape.Staying abreast of upcoming regulations and potential funding opportunities can make or break a business. That’s because governments often play an active role in fostering innovation, offering grants, tax breaks, and even partnering with businesses on research and developmentJust look at the rise of electric vehicles. Government incentives and emissions regulations have played a huge role in accelerating their adoption, pushing automakers to innovate and develop cleaner, greener technologies. It's a win-win for businesses…and the planet!

Wrapping it Up

In conclusion, the world is brimming with external innovation sources waiting to be tapped into. From customers and competitors to suppliers and startups, each offers unique insights and opportunities to fuel business growth and stay ahead of the curve.Through active engagement with these external sources, companies can unlock a wealth of creative ideas, accelerate their innovation efforts, and achieve sustainable success.

FAQs

What are external innovation sources?

External factors of innovation are ideas and opportunities for innovation that come from outside a company, such as customers, competitors, and research institutions.

Why are customers considered an external innovation source?

Customers provide valuable insights through feedback, surveys, and online communities, revealing unmet needs and potential improvements for products or services.

How can suppliers contribute to innovation?

Suppliers often have access to new technologies and processes that can enhance product development and manufacturing efficiency.

Why is competitor analysis important for innovation?

Analyzing competitors helps identify market gaps, emerging trends, and technologies that can inspire unique innovations for your business.

What role do research institutions play in external innovation?

Research institutions provide access to cutting-edge research and technologies, enabling companies to collaborate on groundbreaking innovations.

How can social media fuel innovation?

Social media provides real-time insights into customer desires, frustrations, and trends, making it a valuable source for idea generation and product development.

Like what you read? Don't miss these other valuable resources to inspire your next big innovation.

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In our previous exploration of discontinuous innovation, we delved into the transformative power it holds and shared real-life examples that have shaped our world. Now, it's time to equip you with the tools to not just understand this phenomenon, but to master it. Keep reading to discover the top 10 best practices that will empower your organization to become a beacon of discontinuous innovation.

What Sets Discontinuous Innovation Apart?

Forget progressive developments and safe bets. Discontinuous innovation is about shaking things up, rewriting the rules, and creating entirely new markets. Unlike incremental innovation, which focuses on gradual improvements to existing products or services, discontinuous innovation involves radical breakthroughs that fundamentally change the way we live and work. It's about creating something entirely new, something that challenges our assumptions and opens up a world of possibilities.But how can organizations harness this transformative power and drive groundbreaking change? Let’s find out!

Top 10 Best Practices of Discontinuous Innovation Management

To tackle the power of discontinuous innovation, companies need to adopt a new mindset and a new set of practices. That said, here are ten essential strategies for fostering a culture of radical innovation and turning bold ideas into reality:

1. Create a playground for great ideas

Forget the boring old "innovation team" – instead, build a culture where everyone feels empowered to dream big, take risks, and challenge the status quo. The trick here is to celebrate the wild ideas, not just the safe ones.… These might just hold the seeds of the next big thing.

• The Old Way: Top-down innovation teams, stifled creativity, playing it safe.
• The New Way: A company-wide culture of innovation, where everyone is encouraged to dream big, brainstorm without boundaries, and challenge existing conditions.
• How-To: Implement idea management software, host regular brainstorming sessions, create a "no idea is a bad idea" atmosphere, and reward risk-taking.

1. Invest in the unknown

Don't just throw money at incremental improvements. Dedicate resources to exploring technology and science. You never know what breakthrough might be lurking around the corner.

• The Old Way: Focusing solely on short-term gains and incremental improvements.
• The New Way: Dedicating resources to exploring uncharted territories, such as emerging technologies, scientific breakthroughs, and niche markets.
• How-To: Establish a dedicated innovation fund, partner with research institutions, create skunkworks teams, and encourage "moonshot" projects.

1. Build your dream team (and make it diverse)

Diversity fuels creativity and leads to the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that drives discontinuous innovation.Gather a crew of brilliant minds from all walks of life – different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. This mix of ideas is your secret weapon for groundbreaking innovation.

• The Old Way: Homogeneous teams with similar backgrounds and perspectives.
• The New Way: A diverse team of thinkers and doers from all walks of life, bringing together a rich tapestry of experiences, skills, and ideas.
• How-To: Actively recruit from diverse backgrounds, foster an inclusive workplace culture, and create opportunities for cross-functional collaboration.

1. Embrace the unknown

Discontinuous innovation is a high-stakes game. Accept that there will be risks and failures along the way, but those are just stepping stones to greatness.The trick here is to see these setbacks as valuable learning experiences and use them to refine your approach.

• The Old Way: Fear of failure, risk aversion, sticking to the tried and true.
• The New Way: Accepting that risks and failures are inevitable, but also recognizing them as valuable learning experiences and stepping stones to success.
• How-To: Encourage a culture of experimentation, create a safe space for failure, and celebrate lessons learned from setbacks.

1. Think long-term

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is a groundbreaking innovation. Be patient and persistent. Big ideas often take time to develop and gain traction. But they’re well worth the wait.

• The Old Way: Short-sighted focus on immediate results, sacrificing long-term potential for quick wins.
• The New Way: Cultivating a long-term vision, investing in research and development, and nurturing ideas that may take years to bear fruit.
• How-To: Develop a strategic roadmap for innovation, set ambitious goals, and create a culture that values patience and perseverance.

1. Break down the silo

Innovation often thrives at the intersections where different fields of expertise converge.Encourage collaboration between departments and disciplines. Often, the most exciting innovations happen when people from different backgrounds come together and spark new ideas.

• The Old Way: Departments working in isolation, hindering communication and collaboration.
• The New Way: Encouraging cross-functional collaboration, breaking down barriers between departments, and creating a sense of shared purpose.
• How-To: Implement cross-functional teams, create shared workspaces, and encourage open communication and knowledge sharing.

1. Look outside your walls

Don't be afraid to partner with universities, research labs, or even other companies. Their expertise (and resources) can help you turn your ideas into reality.

• The Old Way: Relying solely on internal resources and expertise.
• The New Way: Partnering with universities, research labs, startups, and even competitors to leverage their knowledge, technology, and networks.
• How-To: Seek out strategic partnerships, participate in innovation ecosystems, and foster open innovation initiatives.

1. Imagine the future

Think like a sci-fi writer! What could the world look like in 5, 10, or 20 years? Simply by envisioning different scenarios, you can better anticipate and prepare for discontinuous shifts.

• The Old Way: Reacting to change rather than anticipating it.
• The New Way: Thinking like a futurist, envisioning multiple scenarios for the future, and preparing for disruptive shifts.
• How-To: Conduct scenario planning exercises, monitor emerging trends, and engage in strategic foresight activities.

1. Test, tweak, repeat

Don't get bogged down in endless planning. Build quick prototypes, test them out, and iterate based on what you learn. Agile development is key to staying ahead.

• The Old Way: Over-planning and over-analyzing, leading to delays and missed opportunities.
• The New Way: Embracing agile development, building rapid prototypes, testing them in the real world, gathering feedback, and iterating quickly.
• How-To: Adopt a "fail fast, learn fast" mentality, prioritize experimentation over perfection, and use customer feedback to drive continuous improvement.

1. Be flexible, be bold

The world is constantly changing, so be ready to adapt. Don't be afraid to pivot your strategy or even your entire business model.

• The Old Way: Sticking rigidly to existing plans and strategies, even when they're not working.
• The New Way: Embracing change, adapting to market conditions, and being willing to pivot when necessary.
• How-To: Foster a culture of adaptability, encourage employees to challenge assumptions, and be willing to take calculated risks.

The 6 Typical Stages of Discontinuous Innovation

The path to discontinuous innovation isn't a straight line; it's a winding road full of twists, turns, and unexpected discoveries.Here's a closer look at the key stages involved in bringing a groundbreaking idea to life:

Step 1) Recognizing a Fundamental Need or Opportunity

Unlike incremental innovation, which focuses on improving existing solutions, discontinuous innovation begins with identifying a fundamental need or opportunity that hasn't been addressed.This could be a problem that current technologies can't solve, a market that's been overlooked, or a completely new way of thinking about an existing challenge.

Step 2) Conceptualization and Exploration

This phase is all about exploring the possibilities.Researchers, engineers, and designers collaborate to brainstorm potential solutions, drawing inspiration from diverse fields and pushing the boundaries of what's considered possible.The goal is to develop a clear concept for the discontinuous innovation, outlining its potential benefits and how it would work in practice.

Step 3) Research and Development (R&D)

This is where the rubber meets the road.Scientists and engineers delve into the technical details, conducting extensive research, experimentation, and prototyping. The idea now is to overcome technical hurdles, refine the concept, and create a working prototype that demonstrates the feasibility of the innovation.

Step 4) Pilot Testing and Validation

Before launching a discontinuous innovation on a large scale, it's key to conduct pilot tests in real-world settings.This helps identify any unforeseen challenges, gather feedback from early adopters, and fine-tune the innovation to ensure it meets the needs of its target market.

Step 5) Scaling and Commercialization

Once the innovation has been validated, it's time to scale up production and launch it to a wider audience. This involves marketing the innovation, building distribution channels, and educating potential customers about its benefits.

Step 6) Market Adoption and Diffusion

The final stage is all about gaining widespread acceptance and integrating the innovation into the fabric of society.And yes, it can be a slow and gradual process, as people and industries adapt to the new way of doing things. However, if the innovation is truly transformative, it can spark rapid change and revolutionize entire industries.

Tired of Playing Catch-Up?

The pace of change is only accelerating, and discontinuous innovation will continue to reshape industries and our lives in ways we can't even imagine. Equip yourself with the knowledge to unlock its power and translate its potential into a roadmap for future success.But how can you ensure your organization isn't just keeping up, but leading the charge?The world doesn't wait for those who stand still. Don't be left behind by the next wave of discontinuous innovation.Explore how innosabi can empower your business to uncover groundbreaking ideas and lead the next wave of industry disruption.Request a demo today.

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Idea management is a central component of modern organisations that strive for innovation and continuous improvement. But how do you create an effective system that motivates employees and brings about real change? I.K. Hofmann GmbH provides an impressive example of how to successfully overcome the challenges of idea management and create a culture of innovation. This article highlights the best practices that I.K. Hofmann GmbH has developed to optimise its idea management.

Introduction: The “Ideenhof” as an innovation centre

I.K. Hofmann GmbH realised that its existing company suggestion scheme and continuous improvement processes were not efficient enough in its decentralised, process-oriented organisation. The solution was the “Ideenhof”, a centralised platform that was launched at great expense during the biggest internal event of the year, the company seminar. A hologram show and QR codes for registration attracted attention and initial participation.

Transparent communication motivates

A key element in the success of the”Ideenhof” is transparent communication. A simple submission form lowers the threshold for employees to submit their ideas. The option to submit ideas anonymously encourages honest feedback. Ideas are also clearly categorised and evaluated so that employees always know what happens to their suggestions and who is responsible for them.

Efficient idea process: submission, categorisation and evaluation

The “Ideenhof” makes it easy to submit and classify ideas. There are seven tags for classification, which provide a clear structure. The ideas are evaluated by two experts according to defined criteria for potential and feasibility. This ensures a fair and transparent evaluation and prevents ideas from getting lost in the shuffle.

Incentive schemes to encourage submissions

Motivation and incentives are key to encouraging active participation. I.K. Hofmann GmbH uses a points system where submitters can collect 'nuggets'. These nuggets are converted into tickets to win valuable prizes in an annual raffle. These prizes range from gadgets such as a Nintendo Switch or an iPad to trips. Such incentives create a fun competition and significantly increase participation.

Transparency and regular communication

Traceable processes and regular updates on the status of submitted ideas are essential for employee satisfaction. This transparency means that submitters always know where their ideas stand in the process and feel that they are taken seriously and valued.

Rotate evaluation teams to avoid power imbalances

Although the teams that evaluate ideas are specialised in certain topics, I.K. Hofmann GmbH is considering rotating these teams. They are currently testing this model for their innovation challenges. This will help to avoid power imbalances and ensure that the evaluation remains fair and impartial.

Added value through exclusive content and communication

The “Ideenhof” offers exclusive information and opportunities for interaction that are not available on the intranet. This includes updates on ongoing projects, collaboration with start-ups and live demos of new technologies. This exclusive content makes the platform attractive and increases usage and interaction.

Knowledge management and avoiding duplication

Another important aspect of the “Ideenhof” is knowledge management. Ideas are often submitted for which solutions already exist. An effective system for identifying and communicating these solutions avoids duplication of effort. This saves time and resources and helps to make better use of existing knowledge.

Direct communication with management

Anonymised challenges such as “Mrs Hofmann said” created a direct communication channel to management. Employees were able to ask questions anonymously, which were then answered by management. This direct interaction promotes trust and transparency and shows employees that their concerns are taken seriously.

Regular newsletters to encourage interaction

Regular newsletters, published monthly or quarterly, help to increase performance and interaction on the platform. These newsletters provide information about new ideas, progress and successes, keeping employees up to date.

Challenges before launching the “Ideenhof”

I.K. Hofmann GmbH faced several challenges before implementing the Idea Hub. The existing idea management system was not transparent, with no clear deadlines or responsibilities. Ideas were evaluated in meetings, but without clear roles or responsibilities, resulting in a chaotic process. Many ideas ended up with the same people who already had other important tasks, giving the impression that things weren’t moving forward. The submission of ideas was hampered by unclear categories and there was a lack of strategic innovation communication.

The role of the “Ideenhof” in addressing these challenges

The “Ideenhof” has created a single point of contact for innovation that addresses these challenges. Clear structures and processes, transparent communication and an effective incentive system have motivated employees to actively participate and submit ideas. This has not only increased the number of ideas submitted, but also improved their quality and feasibility.

Conclusion

The implementation of the “Ideenhof” at I.K. Hofmann GmbH shows how well-thought-out idea management can contribute to promoting innovation and continuous improvement. Transparent processes, clear communication, attractive incentives and a central platform have created a culture in which employees are encouraged to actively participate in the improvement and innovation of the company. These best practices provide valuable insights and inspiration for companies looking to improve their own idea management.[vc_single_image image="45286" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" link="https://innosabilegacy.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/innosabi-Case-Study-I.K.-Hofmann-GmbH.pdf"]

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In France, FDJ Group has exclusive rights to operate offline and online lottery games, and point-of-sale sports betting. FDJ Group is also extending its online gaming offer open to competition and capitalising on its expertise to create new revenue sources: marketing solutions internationally, local cash collection and payment services, and the entertainment sector.Interview with Pierre Tramon, Senior Analyst @FDJ Group.

What led you to implement an Open Innovation Strategy?

Large groups are generally looking at the changes they need to make in order to sustain and develop their business. Typically, what needs to be accelerated? Who are the new users? What new technologies should we be using?We are convinced that proximity to the tech ecosystem is essential to help us answer these questions. The FDJ Group's open innovation approach was initiated in 2015 to detect new trends early on and gain privileged access to relevant start-ups. And then, ultimately, to be able to integrate their solutions into our offerings, our pathways, and our services. To do this, we rely on our ecosystem. We have forged numerous partnerships with capital sales funds, i.e. investment funds, start-up accelerators, associations, think tanks and academic partners. Thanks to them, every year we identify around 1,000 new start-ups, 500 of which are studied in detail and 20 of which are taken through to the experimental stage. We also invest beyond these partnerships with these start-ups on business issues. With FDJ Ventures, we invest more than €100 million in CVC funds and start-ups. So we're actively participating in the hatching of the French tech ecosystem, and that's also one of our key messages. We are convinced that, especially in an increasingly complex and competitive environment, even if FDJ Group has a monopoly, we must continue to create new growth opportunities. And innovation is necessary precisely to anticipate these risks and look ahead to new models. We need to constantly adapt our consumption patterns. Not only that, but we need to anticipate regulatory changes, particularly in our competitive environment. And that inevitably requires a faultless connection with the ecosystem, both directly and indirectly, with all our partners.

How did implementing an Open Innovation platform change your approach?

We started working with innosabi in 2018, and it has had a real impact on the successful implementation of our innovation strategy for several reasons:The first is that it's a web app platform, which is fairly intuitive and user-friendly, so we have easy access to all the information we need about a start-up. Not just about the start-up, but also about the whole funnel. We've set up statuses so that we can keep track of the stage we're at with the start-up. Typically, we have nurturing, study and hot deal, and we have lots of categories. Having these helps us to categorise start-ups and to have a clear funnel. We also add the actions we need to take on these files, so that we can find our way around more easily, organise things more efficiently and have a centralised point of information.A second point is that it also allows us to monitor all the data in real time. Whether it's where the start-ups are coming from, which partner has brought them to us, which theme is most represented in the sourcing of this deal flow, the gender of the founders, etc. innosabi can provide us with this data in real time very quickly, both in Excel format and in Power BI format, which helps us enormously with our quarterly and annual reporting. Another point is that the platform is collaborative. We made it available to all the innovation representatives of our business lines in the various departments, which are roughly over 50 people. This allows them, if they have questions about start-ups or need some information, to go and look it up in our platform. That way, they can talk directly to these businesses. It's a very collaborative approach.And we also give these representatives access to all the trend reports and strategic reports that our partners produce and that we put on the platform in the monitoring section. So they can look at these reports and gain insights and data and so on. And the last one, the platform serves as an entry channel for start-ups to contact us. We've set up a form with innosabi called the Start-Up Link, which we communicate both externally in our signature, and via a QR code when we're present at trade fairs. They directly can submit their application on this page, if ever during an event, for example, we did not have time to meet. This way, we still can add their profile in our database and process this information later on.

What are FDJ Group’s best practices for successful Open Innovation?

The first one is that we're part of the Group's strategy department. This puts us in a control tower that gives us a 360° view of all the Group's activities. This is a real asset, and we have implemented a prioritisation strategy with the strategy team.Currently, our focus is on 6 major verticals: 1/ Future of gambling: How do we design the next generation of gambling. 2/ Future of player experience: Simplifying and personalising the player experience and strengthening responsible gambling systems through better knowledge of players.3/ Future of omnichannel distribution: Modernising FDJ Group's distribution towards a model that is increasingly omnichannel and closer to the French people. How can we design innovative solutions for tomorrow's points of sale? 4/ Web 3: Understanding and anticipating trends linked to the new decentralised Internet based on blockchain. What new activities based on blockchain can we suggest? 5/ Tech for Good: Set FDJ Group as a pioneer in sustainable, responsible and positive-impact innovation, for the benefit of its activities and the whole society. How to use technology to reduce our environmental impact? 6/ Artificial Intelligence: Finding solution to improve our productivity, to make it easier to find information both internally and externally, notably with the Generative AI.Another best practice is to take an ecosystem approach. We have a fairly extensive network of funds, incubators, and accelerators. We were supported by two pioneering investment funds, in France and internationally, such as Partech, to help us with our deal flow and share their investment expertise with us. Thanks to them, we can really benefit from a watch on emerging markets and technologies. We're also a Limited Partner in specialist funds like Level-Up, which specialises in the mobile games studio sector, or Trust ESport, which specialises in e-sports, or Sparkle Venture, which specialises in Web3. The ecosystem we've built is highly complementary, giving us access to high quality deal flow, co-investment opportunities and the ability to monitor emerging markets and technologies. And lastly, I'd say that we have an evolutionary approach: in 2015 we began our open innovation approach. Then we set up an entrepreneurship programme, with the Innovation Lab, to encourage in-house staff to create innovative projects linked to the Group's challenges. And now, more recently, FDJ Ventures has launched its own direct investment fund. The whole process we've built up around these major partners has enabled us to develop our skills in cultivation, experimentation and now in investment. It's a model that we've iterated over the years and which is now a model of sustainable innovation serving the Group.

What is crucial in open innovation?

The FDJ Group's raison d'être is to see France win, and FDJ Ventures raison d'être is to help FDJ Group win while helping French tech win. We're a huge supporter of the French tech ecosystem, we're a partner with France Digital, with the French tech mission, with the French Tech Corporate Community and with all these institutions that help to promote the growth and success of the ecosystem. And this proximity and close relationship between start-ups and major groups benefits an entire ecosystem. For us, it's fundamental, and because major groups are the natural customers for start-ups, they contribute to their growth. Through our Ventures approach, we directly or indirectly support over 500 French and European start-ups, including 23 start-ups from the 2023 French tech Next40/120 class. We're pretty proud of these metrics! And we're continuing, through direct or indirect investment, to keep a close eye on the success of this ecosystem, by working with them as natural customers and enabling them to spread their wings nationally and internationally.[vc_row_inner css=".vc_custom_1712836786267{background-color: #f7f8fa !important;}"][vc_single_image image="45115" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" link="https://innosabilegacy.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/innosabi-Case-Study-FDJ-Ventures.pdf"]

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Our habits and behaviors have changed dramatically in the recent past. The only way to really stay on top of your clients’ needs is to engage them in a constant dialogue and make them part of your development process. Easier said than done. But with the help of our toolsfor customer communities, structured co-creation projects, and scalable ideation, we have everything you need to start getting true customer-centricity done.A company that has put its clients first when it comes to new product development is Deutsche Telekom. Today, over 18,000 of their customers have participated in shaping and improving future products and services. In our webinar, Lara Löhrer, Project Lead for this exemplary initiative, will share Telekom’s key to success and learnings.

In the webinar, we cover several formats for customer collaboration, explain how the right software can assist you, and provide examples from companies who have already turned their customers into partners for innovation.

Watch the webinar video below and learn how to turn customers into innovators!

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innosabi and the Technische Universität München (TUM) have always been closely connected. All four founders were once students at this prestigious institution, which not only gave them a world-class education, but also vital support and guidance when founding the company. Even as an internationally recognized leader in its field, innosabi has always stayed true to its roots and maintained close ties with the TUM ecosystem. Over the years, in many guest lectures and mentoring programs, the innosabi team tried to pass on their first-hand lessons to TUM students and the next generation of entrepreneurs. In this history of fruitful knowledge exchange, we have now reached another exciting and significant milestone: The TUM School of Management is writing a case study about innosabi and its most recent history, with a focus on its evolution to become Questel's dedicated innovation portfolio and business unit.

After a previous case study about innosabi and its path to becoming a SaaS business, this will be already the second case study written by TUM about important phases in the company's history. With teaching cases like these, TUM professors and researchers pick relevant, real-life scenarios and shape them into problems to be solved and discussed by students in dedicated courses.

Prof. Dr. Oliver Alexy, Professor of Innovation and Organization Design at TUM, will write the case study together with his colleague Nicole Beaven. To him, it is now just about presenting a real-world example to his students. It is also about connecting students – and potential future entrepreneurs – with the greater TUM ecosystem:

„innosabi is a great example for the entrepreneurial spirit and mindset of the TUM ecosystem. It's amazing to see success stories like theirs unfold and thrive, knowing that all four founders were once students here. But we don't just want to watch – we want to stay connected and collaborate with these companies! They are an invaluable source of information for our own research and offer many first-hand lessons for the next generation of entrepreneurs and business professionals. That's why we are working with innosabi to turn some of the defining decisions in their journey into teachable case studies for our courses. Soon, our students will discuss and try to solve exactly the same challenges that innosabi was facing just a couple of months ago.“

Catharina van Delden, co-founder of innosabi, is certain that the ecosystem of TUM and its focus on fostering entrepreneurial talent has helped to kickstart innosabi's success story:

„innosabi surely wouldn’t be where it is today without the Technische Universität München. Not just because us four founders met there as students, but more importantly because of the amazing network and support it provided us as young entrepreneurs. We’ve always stayed in close contact over the years and love every opportunity to share some of our experiences with future entrepreneurs and leaders. The whole ecosystem of TUM and its close ties to innovative companies and startups makes it so exceptional – that’s why it’s a great honor to for us to contribute to the curriculum with yet another case study about innosabi’s expansion and evolution.“

The teaching case study will be drafted, tested, and refined throughout the upcoming semester. We are looking forward to seeing the final result and sharing it with you as soon as possible. And as always: We are very proud to be part of the TUM ecosystem and appreciate the chance to share some of our experiences with the next generation of innovators!

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Technology cross-pollination and globalization, along with the demise of silo mentality, have put significant pressure on the front-end innovation process to identify ideas worthy enough for development and commercialization. The most efficient innovation processes include Design Thinking and Stage-Gates. We propose a new model where software will help manage data integrity, quality control, multiple outputs and open collaboration. When the chaos serves the efficiency, the ability to get better at innovating will not be lacking.

We wrote an extensive whitepaper on this topic to help you in planning or expanding your innovation programs. Download it here and read how Open Innovation and IP can go hand in hand.

Download the whitepaper

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More and more seeds consider the challenges of climate change, and the market calls for agricultural production systems to achieve better agronomic and environmental performance, which requires innovation.
As an agricultural cooperative owned by farmers and an international seed company, Limagrain takes on these challenges through genetic progress and sustained R&D activity.

Not surprisingly, the Information Research and Analysis team is strongly called upon to deliver landscape reports and competitive analysis. Géraldine Lecomte, research analyst, and Sylvain Liogier, patent librarian, have seen an evolution in the requests sent by the group’s other entities. “In our positions, we see more and more needs for prospective studies for a year. Decision-makers want to get a large view of what’s going on and try to anticipate more the market shifts.”

This trend leads to changing the traditional way of doing market intelligence, exploring more unknown technologies for Limagrain, and gathering a lot of different types of information. “We are solicited more upstream of projects”, said Géraldine.

With the introduction of innosabi Insight, Limagrain has been able to speed up its internal process to feed decision makers with global insights on technologies and market segments. “innosabi Insight is fast, easy-to-use”, explained Sylvain. “It is well-indicated to clear the way and start a study. It helps to quickly get names, companies, and an idea if the market is IP-centric or not.”

In addition, to save time, innosabi Insight brought solutions when innovation intelligence requires going beyond just patent information. “The tool intervenes when the analysis of different sources comes under consideration to outline the evolution of a market,” said Géraldine. “At some point, analyzing just patents or scientific papers separately is not relevant. You need to merge and consolidate mixed information.” Some projects impacted by cross-industrial technology are particularly indicative of the need to break the walls of the databases to identify the opportunities emerging in the market. “You can use the buzz metric to make a link between the R&D of the company and what they are selling. The numerous filters help to focus our work and identify relevant companies or potential partners”, continued Géraldine.

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Exactly ten years ago, on 7^th December 2010, the innosabi GmbH was officially founded and registered as a business. Obviously, we wanted to celebrate this occasion together with all our friends, clients, and people who have supported us along the way. Since this is currently not possible, we have to put a pin in that and wait a little longer to have a proper party.Nevertheless, we want to share our joy and excitement on this day. To many others, ten years might not sound like a lot, but for us, it is a huge milestone. Over the past ten years, we have made so many memorable experiences, overcome uncountable challenges, and learned invaluable lessons – so many, in fact, that they would easily fill 20 or 30 years.Innosabi evolved from a mere idea of the four founders to a successful business with 55 employees.When we started, the people we talked to never heard of innosabi before and were usually more interested in the meaning of the name than what we actually do. Today, most people working in our field have heard of us and value our work.Ten years ago, we didn’t even have an own innosabi office. Today, we work from our wonderful “Innovation Mansion”.That is why we would take this anniversary as an opportunity to look back and take a few moments to appreciate what we have accomplished so far. Not only to show the world how much we have grown, but also for ourselves – after all, most of the innosabi team have not been part of the journey from the start. And as a picture is always worth a thousand words, we dug through our archives to find some good ones!

The Founders

The Office

The Team

The Logo

The Daily Business

The Software

The Coffee

What a wild ride the past 10 years have been! The pictures we found can't even do it justice. So if you have any other old historical innosabi artifacts (pictures, videos, documents, gifts etc.), feel free to share them with us or drop them in the comments on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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On December 28, 1951, the American Comedian-Duo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis concluded their popular NBC network television show with a special appeal to support muscular dystrophy research. Why? To promote awareness for people and families whose lives had been turned upside down by these diseases. Paul Cohen, diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and founder of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, knew that creating awareness was an important step to support the cause of his newly founded Non-Profit Organization. With this, he and several others laid the foundation for an Organization that for more than 70 years now aims to transform the lives of people affected by muscular dystrophy by funding research, supporting families, and providing care and medical services. Why do we tell you this? Because this is the beginning of a story. The story of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. And stories have power: They grab hearts and minds, transport feelings and experiences, help to understand and to connect. The platform “my POWERFUL STORY” is all about the power of stories. By launching this platform, the Muscular Dystrophy Association wants to give people and families affected by neuromuscular diseases a channel to share their story. A channel to tell the story of their community.

“As one more way to advance our mission, we are activating the power of story to create connection, inspire self-advocacy, and build understanding for what it’s like to live with neuromuscular disease.”

Emerged from a cooperation with Collaboration.AI, theDifference and innosabi, the platform will collect stories about living with neuromuscular disease and support those who are affected. Over the next several weeks, everyone affected by these diseases can submit their very own story, focusing on one of the four-story categories:

• My Advocacy Story: Stories about moments when standing up for oneself or others.
• My Meaningful Story: Stories about an impactful moment, an event, or realization.
• My Diagnosis Story: Stories about what it was like receiving a neuromuscular disease diagnosis.
• My Summer Camp Story: Stories about the MDA summer camp and the magic of being part of it.

From all of these amazing stories, some of them will then be selected to be brought to life by artists. These stories will help to draw attention, to build understanding and support the overall mission of the Muscular Dystrophy Association by fostering future initiatives and upcoming campaigns. As a software provider and tech partner in this collaboration, we are very proud to be part of such a great and inspiring initiative.

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The great treasure of the 21st century is data. Thanks to digitization, we produce tons of it and an infinite amount of data can be stored - but only a fraction of them is really used. All the data out there provides useful information. You just have to know how to extract relevant information from unimportant ones.This is of course very different for every company and every branch. But data is also useful for innovation initiatives across the board: changes in user needs, technological advances, other ideas. All of this is data on which innovation can build.The big problem is the sheer amount of data. Finding exactly what you need is almost impossible. At least as a person. Artificial intelligence is now able to search huge amounts of data in a short time. This makes it easy to find the right data.

What data is particularly useful for innovation?

It makes sense for innovation managers to deal with different types of data. Not all of them are freely accessible or available in a huge pool. You can only find out the changed needs of customers of your own company if you speak to these people. Dialogue and exchange create this information - but first you have to give your customers the opportunity to tell you.Other data is freely accessible. Patent databases can be viewed by everyone, startups can be found on platforms such as Crunchbase. But how can you really use this information for innovation in your company?

Let's talk about trends

There are trends everywhere, in every country, in every industry. There are also macro trends and megatrends that affect society across the board. They include topics such as artificial intelligence, Industry 4.0, future work, big data and mobility. But in every major trend there are various small micro-trends that have a more direct impact on companies.In order to be able to identify whether new trends are relevant for your own company, regular trend scouting is necessary. But how many thousands of people do you need to assess all trends by relevance? Here is the moment when artificial intelligence makes life easier. Search for specific topics and get access to suitable options. So only a fraction of all trends have to be assessed by hand and you can find currents that are of interest to you more quickly.

In this way, suitable and relevant trends in your company can be easily picked up and used. Internal experts can evaluate these trends and pour them directly into new innovation initiatives. With the right software, new innovation projects can be started from trend topics, in which ideas arise. The innosabi technology enables trends to be transferred directly from our Trend Radar app to new, internal innovation projects.

Patents as inspiration for further development

Patents are also particularly exciting because they always contain something completely new. It does not matter whether it is from the ground up new innovations or innovative improvements in existing processes or products. Patentable always means that there is a new idea behind it. This is why patent databases can be a valuable source for innovation departments. Maybe there are opportunities to buy patents or to incorporate them into new products? Or do they provide the impetus for new research in your own R&D department?But in Germany alone, over 180 new patents are registered every day. If you extrapolate this for Europe or even worldwide, there are really many new patents every day. How should such quantities be sensibly screened and assessed according to their relevance for the company? Again, the answer is technology. Intelligent search algorithms are able to collect and search a huge amount of data in a short time. This is exactly what is needed here. Use search and topic fields that you have defined to find patents that are relevant to your company. In this way, experts in your organization can screen patents from their specialist area, assess the potential and initiate new innovation projects based on this. This is exactly what innosabi technology enables with the Patent Scout.

Startups. Search, find, grow together.

Digitization often demands flexibility and adaptable processes. Both are things that are usually easier to implement for startups than for large companies — especially because startups that emerge in the digital age know their idiosyncrasies well. Companies that have been around for longer often have a certain size and established processes. Precisely these factors, which were important for the long-term existence, can now inhibit adjustments.In general, you can say what works well for startups, does not necessarily work for large organizations - and vice versa. That is why collaboration becomes all the more valuable. But how can both sides benefit from collaboration? And more importantly, how do you find suitable partners? Companies struggle to find exactly the startups with which they would like to cooperate. Conversely, it is very opaque for startups which companies might be interested in their products, services, or ideas.As always, when it comes to a large amount of data, search algorithms and artificial intelligence can help. The innosabi startup radar supports you in finding exactly the startup that is of interest to you. Evaluate their potential and get in touch with them directly. In this way, you can bring the innovation potential of aspiring startups into your company.

Collaborating with larger companies is also an advantage for startups. The experience and mentoring opportunities that such a partnership offers startups are important for their development. The prospect of close cooperation in terms of product development or increasing reputation through successful showcase projects with established companies are also drivers of such a partnership. It is not for nothing that there are many startup campuses and accelerator programs.However, these activities often shift to the analogue world and take place offline. This break between digital finding and contacting an analog startup campus can lead to delays. In the worst case, startups will have to relocate to participate in an accelerator program. Why not just use the technology and build a digital startup campus? Can't partnerships with startups take place as digitally as developing new ideas from trends found online? Or working with your own customers? There are now so many ways to drive innovation digitally - regardless of the target group. Why not also with startups?

Data is important — the right evaluation is even more important

No matter who you work with and which data you want to evaluate, the real linchpin is how. The most beautiful data is of little use to you if you cannot evaluate it correctly and efficiently. For this reason, innosabi technology offers you a powerful semantic engine that supports you in the evaluation. With the apps Trend Radar, Patent Scout and Startup Radar you can find what you are looking for. Our software makes it easier for you to evaluate the data found and gives you the opportunity to seamlessly pour it into further innovation initiatives. #keepinnovating

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Change is happening much faster today than it did a few years ago. Digitalization and new technologies emerging are affecting not only our lives, but also our expectations and needs. This behavioral change has a particular impact on companies targeting consumers and end customers.Therefore, companies must constantly adapt to the changing user needs by improving services and performances and introducing new products. The increasing speed of change means that companies also have to make ever faster adjustments to their product and service portfolios. For this to succeed, a regular exchange between companies and customers is necessary. After all, who knows best about the needs and expectations of users than the users themselves?Our experience shows that collaboration and customer proximity are much more successful than classical market research. The latter is usually time-consuming and costly - and cannot replace a real dialogue between company and customer. After all, dialogue is not a one-way street, nor is collaboration. Rather, both sides must be prepared to work together on the products and services of the future.Such cooperation can happen in small workshops with selected customers. Yet, with the help of digital tools, companies can involve significantly more people in their development – customer or not. Everyone can participate in collaborative idea generation and work on products or services together.innosabi customers rely on collaboration with consumers and users. With the help of now established structures, customer proximity and focus can be accomplished throughout the entire company. Innovative ideas emerge with crowd innovation, while they are then checked for user-friendliness in prototype testing. In addition to companies' own community, the Supercharger can be used to survey people worldwide about their opinions, expectations, and needs. In this way, customer-oriented products or services are created in a real dialogue – in co-creation with customers.

Postbank: Together into the future

What features should a banking app provide to meet the needs of its users? How do people imagine the bank of the future? What has to be improved on the new chatbot so it offers real added value?Since 2014, Postbank has been discussing such questions together with its customers in the Postbank Ideenlabor (German for “idea lab”). There are collaborative innovation projects on the platform, in which customers are involved in every step of product development. It begins with the discussion and consolidation of the entire communities' needs. Possible solutions are then developed in several steps. Depending on the project, this may also include testing a real prototype and continuous improvement up to a finished product. In this way, around 50 projects are launched on the platform each year. All have a direct influence on the development or improvement of a product or service.

In total, more than 8,000 suggestions and contributions from customers were collected in these cooperation projects.From the very beginning, the Postbank Ideenlabor served as a holistic cooperation platform for customers, integrating them from the initial idea all the way to the implementation of the results. The platform forms the central interface for all areas of the company to reach the customers. As of now, the more than 12,000 members of the Postbank Community know that their ideas and feedback are taken seriously throughout the organisation. This way, a positive, constructive environment for feedback developed.

“If you are willing to ask your customers, you absolutely have to make sure that their answers will be heard. Something has to happen when users clearly voice their opinions. That’s why our goal is always to tackle questions holistically. Start with an idea, work on a concept together, and eventually come up with a minimum viable product. We want to take the participants with us on the whole journey. Because in large organizations like ours, the path from new insights to new products can be a little less direct than we would like it to be. And this also means that you have to be willing to let go of your own assumptions and plans if the community thinks differently.” - Martin Brings, Head and Strategic Lead of Ideenlabor

Martin Brings supports this statement with an example. Postbank planned a finance app for children and young people, which they could use to track their spendings and thus learn responsibility in dealing with money. Finding the right target group within the Postbank community — namely parents who wanted to work on such an app with their children — was a challenge. But it was worth it. Even in the early stages of the discussion about the needs of young users, it became clear that the ideas of the adult product managers were going in a completely different direction than the children's expectations. On the basis of the children's feedback, the project team took a step back and revised the entire concept from the scratch. With success! Regular feedback loops and prototype tests resulted in the finished app Young Money.

Telekom: Accelerating decisions and strengthening customer focus

A product portfolio that is always up-to-date means constant development and adjustments. Good customer service means constant adaptation to customer needs. Exactly this focus on the customers' expectations is central for new ideas and innovations.

"Our customers have a clear idea of what they need and expect from us. So what could be better than asking our customers what is important to them and what they like" - Anke Courtial, Project Owner Telekom Ideenschmiede, Telekom

For this reason, Deutsche Telekom has decided to proactively ask its customers about their needs and expectations. With the Telekom Ideenschmiede platform (German for “forging ideas”), which was launched in January 2018, the company is giving its customers the opportunity to actively shape products and services. More than 6,000 members can be surveyed on a wide variety of topics, producing representative results in less than four days. The platform enables Deutsche Telekom to obtain both quantitative and qualitative feedback from customers and non-customers in an uncomplicated and timely manner. Classic market research is more time-consuming and protracted in a direct comparison. With the help of the Telekom Ideenschmiede, decisions that affect customers are accelerated.The Ideenschmiede team is firmly anchored in the company and is the point of contact for all areas of Deutsche Telekom. Projects are implemented on the platform together with experts from the respective departments and the results are fed back into the departments. In this way, needs, expectations and opinions are continually incorporated into Telekom's various projects – and ensure comprehensive customer orientation.

Deutsche Bank: Identifying needs early

In spring 2018, Deutsche Bank organized a hackathon together with the FinTech Incubator FinLeap. The challenge of this female hackathon was: “To develop a solution by women for women: It should support women to overview and plan their financial situation from starting a career, starting a family, re-entering the job up to their retirement”.29 female hackers faced this challenge in seven teams. Within two days, ideas and prototypes were developed. In the end, the best three projects were rewarded. All this is quite characteristic for a hackathon. But what made this one so special was the opportunity for the participants to use the innosabi Supercharger to obtain immediate feedback on their ideas. The teams asked a total of 43 questions to the community and received answers from 180 people virtually overnight. This way, the participants could be sure that they were on the right track.“We used the Supercharger to ensure that we were developing our idea in the right direction – to suit user needs,” says Team SpaceHamster. Another team even completely changed their original idea. The Supercharger survey showed that the needs of potential users went in a different direction than the participants thought.With the innosabi Supercharger, it can be determined at an early stage of idea generation whether the product idea matches the needs of potential users. This ensures that resources are used purposefully.

Federal Agency: Developing target group-oriented services with prototypes

As a public administrative authority, the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (German Federal Employment Agency) does not face the challenges of competition on the market like a private enterprise. But state enterprises are also confronted with changing expectations and needs of their target group — especially with regard to digitalization. The special challenge for the Bundesagentur für Arbeit lies in the variety of topics: from the handling of unemployment benefits to advice on career choices, and the establishment of training programs together with companies. These topics are all rooted in very different customer groups.In order to find out what the expectations and needs of its customers are, the Federal Agency has launched the platform Ideenwerkstatt (German for “Workshop for Ideas”). There, digital solutions and services are developed in direct cooperation with various target groups such as jobseekers or companies. With the help of the Ideenwerkstatt, the Bundesagentur für Arbeit is well-connected with both sides and can tailor its work to the respective needs.

“The danger is always that you do not know the needs on the customer or employer side. And then maybe develop something only in one direction but have not noticed important details. With the direct collaboration in the Ideenwerkstatt, we avoid such undesirable developments."– Christina Bulenda, requirements management online, Bundesagentur für Arbeit

Since November 2015, the Ideenwerkstatt platform has shown that the benefits of collaboration apply to both jobseekers and employers. For cooperation with companies, this means developing new solutions and services in the field of digital recruiting. New offers for jobseekers are also being created. A good example of this is the Federal Agency's App for Young People looking for an apprenticeship. During the development process, the Bundeagentur für Arbeit implemented the first drafts of the functionalities in a digital prototype. This prototype was tested in iterative loops with young people in search of an apprenticeship. Thanks to the fast, qualitative feedback on the platform, the Federal Agency was able to ensure that the app meets the needs of the users optimally. In this way, the Ideenwerkstatt bundles the needs of employers and jobseekers for a digital, user-centered future of the public sector.Our experience with companies such as Postbank, Telekom and Bundesagentur für Arbeit shows that collaboration with external stakeholders is a central component of innovation. In co-creation with customers, products and services can be created that are perfectly tailored to the needs of consumers. In this way, organisations as well as customers benefit from cooperation.

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Good ideas should be rewarded. But what can companies do to ensure that these good ideas don't gather dust on a shelf but are implemented? The answer is: Create idea management that is digital, transparent, and user-friendly.

Most organizations have already implemented a process that collects and evaluates suggestions and improvement ideas from employees and awards prizes to chosen submissions. When exchanging the classical company suggestion scheme for a digital and smart idea management system, the first step will be to achieve greater user-friendliness and simplified submission. Although this might sound quite simple, the effects of these two aspects are enormous.In our experience, the high usability of idea platforms positively influences the quality and quantity of submissions and the motivation of employees to participate in the idea process. However, an easy-to-use platform is not only advantageous for employees who want to submit proposals. The reviewer also experiences a simplified evaluation of proposals. Ideas can be assigned thematically to the appropriate reviewers, so evaluation and decision-making can be made more quickly. The increased speed in the ideas process and the possibility for the submitter to understand where an idea is in the process have positive effects on the motivation to participate and the perception of idea management within the company.Apart from idea campaigns on specific topics, the platform generally offers the opportunity for interaction and open discussion of individual ideas. All employees can contribute to the submitted suggestions and further develop them. The entire organization is involved in idea management. In addition, the assigned likes for an idea can serve as a first pre-selection for the reviewers.

Munich Airport: Collaboration with the Digital Idea Management

Shortly after the launch of the new idea platform Innovation Pilot, Munich Airport recorded a significant increase in the number of ideas submitted — in the first two months alone, 300% more ideas were handed in than in the same period last year. Munich Airport's goal is to replace its existing internal pool of ideas and use it to modernize its idea management and make it more effective.

"We want to establish the idea management of the future that will enable us to stimulate innovation rather than simply manage proposals. The innosabi software offers the ideal infrastructure for this".Sarah Wittlieb, (former) Head of Innovation Management, Munich Airport

The innosabi software enables Munich Airport to permanently open topic clusters. Employees can submit their ideas in a targeted manner and then forward them directly to the right contact persons in the company. But temporary idea campaigns are also a proven method of complementing traditional idea management and promoting a culture of innovation.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8Kel-v-TcUApart from modernizing the processes of the classic company suggestion scheme, the platform also offers the opportunity to carry out open innovation projects. These are characterized by collaboration. An open discussion of ideas within the employee community promotes transparency in all aspects of idea management and increases internal interest in new ideas. In addition, collaboration leads to a higher quality of ideas. In 2018 alone, more than 40 of the ideas submitted were implemented at Munich Airport.But digital and smart idea management was just the beginning. With the LabCampus, Munich Airport is planning one of the most promising and largest innovation centers in Europe — a place for innovation and bringing people together.

"By bringing together a diverse group of thought leaders, philosophers, innovators, smart city planners, technology wizards - and actual part-year residents - we at LabCampus plan to build a true innovation ecosystem at Munich Airport.”Sarah Wittlieb, Vice President Innovation & Creation at LabCampus GmbH

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Good ideas are hiding everywhere. You just have to know where to look. Often these ideas can be found more easily as you might think, you might just have to look in your own company. Every employee has a broad technical knowledge, experience and knows the company. Optimal conditions for a brilliant flash of genius that takes the company a step further into the future.But why is this valuable source of ideas so rarely used? Especially large companies are faced with the challenge of not only collecting the ideas of their employees but also making them usable. Missing internal structures are then replaced by external consulting. Although an external view is certainly not a wrong approach (keyword: operational blindness), external suggestions can never be as well tailored to the structures and processes of an organization as internal suggestions.Our experience shows that innovation with employees forms the core of modern innovation management. In the course of digitalization, internal networking and collaboration is not only possible across departments, but even across national borders. Digital tools facilitate structuring the cumulative expertise and make it available to the company in order to keep up in a rapidly changing world.innosabi customers rely on the ideas of their employees. With newly established structures, they promote internal innovation management. They use methods such as internal Crowdfunding, Solution Scouting and collaboration to generate new ideas, prioritize them and network knowledge. However, the big goal is not to create one idea, but to create and anchor an innovation culture in the company.

Bayer: Interlinking Knowledge in a Global Company

Global companies like Bayer need global structures to drive innovation. This is precisely the goal of the company's innovation initiatives — to establish organizational structures and processes to ensure that innovation is sustainably anchored in the company's culture. To further promote the transformation of innovation culture, it is necessary to strengthen bridges between employees, departments, countries, and continents. Employees must have a chance of contributing to innovation processes across the Group, regardless of language, location, hierarchical level or area of expertise. The technical foundation is laid with the Bayer WeSolve digital in-house platform.In 2014 Bayer AG has built with WeSolve the technological base for agile networks for innovation. The methodical basis for the projects on WeSolve is, among other things, the principle of Solution Scouting. The platform offers employees the opportunity to submit problems or specialist challenges and motivates them to “contribute to solutions for specific technical or commercial problems” (source: hbr.org).For example, a submitted Challenge is made accessible to all employees or can be sent by using targeted search only to employees with particular expertise. They can then submit or discuss solutions. In this way, knowledge is efficiently shared within an organization and the appropriate people are connected with each other. Therefore, synergies are created between the more than 100,000 employees and problems do not have to be solved many times over.Its success proves Bayer WeSolve's “business experiment” right. In the first year, the number of users of the platform more than quadrupled. But the company does not only use Bayer WeSolve for a sustainable innovation culture. They rely on an informal network of innovation ambassadors and innovation trainers. In this way, innovation becomes part of the corporate culture.

Daimler: Combining Online and Offline Methods for Innovation

“We have a special feature that we use in our Challenges: the combination of offline and online.” This is how Frieder Munk of Daimler Digital Life describes the development of innovation at Daimler AG. The DigitalLife Crowd Idea Platform is a key element by enabling all employees to participate in the innovation process.Daimler uses the link between offline and online methods throughout the entire innovation process. New Challenges are often introduced with an analog event, the OpenSpace, in which 100 participants from various units work on a specific topic for one day. Resulting ideas are then published on the DigitalLife Crowd Ideas Platform and offered for voting or funding. The most promising ideas are selected by a vote of all employees, be it by likes or by the distribution of budgets. This already shows the close connection between the offline generation of ideas and the online prioritization of them. But this is not the end of the innovation process at Daimler. The selected ideas are then used for implementation in one of the company's incubator programs, for example. The progress of the implementation can be tracked by all employees via the platform.“The platform allows us to establish the necessary transparency into the implementation processes of innovations. Decisions are no longer made in secret, but employees have the opportunity to track what is happening with their own ideas at any time.”Frieder Munk, Daimler AGThe aspect of collaboration also plays an essential role in the company. At the Daimler DigitalLife Days 2018, Frieder Munk emphasizes that the comment function on the platform is very popular with employees. This results in good, substantive discussions, which advance the ideas and from which the submitting teams can draw added value.

Our experience with customers such as Siemens, Bayer or Daimler shows that innovation with employees is and should be a central component in companies. The approach of making ideas visible, driving overarching collaboration forward, and involving employees in decision-making can be crucial to success. We have implemented this knowledge in the innosabi software and continue in this way to drive internal innovation.

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The finance and insurance industry has dodged disruptive innovations for a long time. But now, like many others, it faces a major change: digitization. Although the digital age only started a few years ago, the speed with which new technologies are created and outdated is enormous.Digitization is creating useful trends that have made life easier for both customers and businesses, as well as many challenges associated with the accelerating pace of new digital innovations.

Keep up with FinTechs

Especially for established finance and insurance companies that have emerged in an offline world, the transformation to a digital enterprise is challenging and challenging. Mainly regarding the size and solid structures, fast changes are impossible. In contrast, FinTechs have emerged in a digital world and are competing with market leaders with new business models. Their advantage lies in their flexibility to react to new things. If you compare FinTechs with major corporations, they look a lot like a sailboat compared to a cruise ship. As a large company, this means staying up to date and implementing innovations.

How to be innovative

Which innovations should your company implement? What trends can you use to meet the needs of your customers better? How can large, established corporations become more flexible and agile?Find out how your business can be fit for a digital future. Read more in the innosabi report Agile Innovation in the Financial Industry.[vc_single_image image="26770" img_size="full" onclick="custom_link" link="https://innosabilegacy.wpenginepowered.com/finance-agile-innovation/"]

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No matter the company’s size or industry: there is always at least one person talking about “making things more agile”. But what does it exactly mean? And how can it actually be put into practice and become more than the buzzword that every c-suite seems to enjoy using?Well, first of all in business context agility is synonymously used to say that something is flexible, proactive, and quick – characteristics that come in handy in a fast-paced and transforming world. But beyond this descriptive meaning stands an entire mindset and philosophy. A way of looking at challenges and doing things that goes a lot deeper than simply putting the agile label on everything that differs from traditional waterfall processes. In short: being truly agile is a question of corporate culture and perspective.

A Short History of Agile

With the digital transformation of all areas of life, not only the needs of people are changing by the minute. Also, the emergence of other new technologies is accelerating. The world is evolving faster and faster. Obviously, companies need to adapt to this pace and rapid shifts in market situations in order to be successful. Therein lies the need for being agile.To become agile, it helps to have a look at a shining example. One industry that is characterized by agility more than any other – and has been so for the last decades – is software development. It can serve as a model for every other industry wanting to be agile. While many areas are only now realizing the full impact of digital transformation, software development has been at the very heart of this development from the beginning. The way in which it understood the need for new approaches in a quickly evolving world can be best seen in the Agile Manifesto. It was published in 2001 after 17 leading figures in the software industry had met in the Utah mountains. Their common goal was to find the best possible workflows for software development. During their stay, they managed to identify and formulate common beliefs that are defined in the Agile Manifesto. Today, almost two decades later, it is more relevant than ever. Especially for other industries.The guiding principles formulated in the Manifesto are the essence of the software industry’s capability to keep up with the fast-paced, digitalized world. So, the most important questions that all other industries affected by this transformation have to ask is: What is software development doing differently and how is it able to turn the challenges of speed and flexibility to become part of its very nature?[vc_single_image image="26663" img_size="full"]

The key values of agile software development

At the heart of the Agile Manifesto lie four key values that represent a departure from how new products were previously developed. They are the starting point for transferring “agile” into other areas.

• Individuals and interactions: The development team is the focus of the Agile Manifesto. True collaboration, personal communication, and an ambitious, trust-based work environment make successful problem-solving possible.
• Working software: Behind this value stands a strong "hands-on mentality", which leads to efficient and effective software development. Instead of lengthy documentation, the focus lies on real problem-solving. Minimum viable product instead of a polished end product.
• Costumer collaboration: Often the specifications change during the project. The team has to react fast accordingly. Open communication and cooperation with the customer help to respond optimally to constantly changing requirements. Direct customer feedback on prototypes or new features in a product can help you move things forward quickly and in line with your needs.
• Responding to change: Technology is changing, demands are changing, people are changing. Software development must be able to respond quickly to these changes and integrate them into the current processes.

While these principles were originally formulated specifically for software development, they hold true for any other industry today. All it takes to make them fully applicable to other processes apart from software development are a few adjustments to broaden their scope.

Why agility is so important today

The speed at which new possibilities emerge is breathtaking. Virtual Reality, Blockchain or Artificial Intelligence have already become the new normal. The technological foundation for many potential game changers has been set over the past years. The practical applications will without a doubt follow at an exponential speed. But even as these “new” technologies are beginning to reach the mainstream the next big things are already in the making. Consequently, reacting to such developments is only one part of the challenge companies have to face. Keeping an eye on the horizon, identifying potential game changers, and understanding their implication is the second part. The pervasive nature of the advancements in digital technologies makes things especially important. As everything is becoming digital, it becomes even harder to anticipate the full extent of the impact of new developments. Companies who are not prepared to adapt to these new requirements will quickly fall behind. Therefore, it’s not only necessary for companies to become more digital but also to become faster and more agile. Nothing shockingly new here. So, the real question is: How to start and how to go beyond the buzzwords?

Agile in the field of innovation

We believe that there is one area which benefits most from agile methods: innovation. But why is that? Simply put, the act of innovating often comes down finding a new solution to a problem. Not just any problem but a problem that often lies in the future. For this reason, the requirements for a solution can change again and again. Planning a project from start to end, and then adhering strictly to this plan is in many cases no longer the direct route to success. The circumstances are changing too fast. Whether these are changing user needs, technological requirements, consumer habits, or market dynamics: changes and the accompanying new challenges are inevitable. Nevertheless, words such as unexpected or unforeseen are red flags in classical project management. In contrast, they are no problem for agile teams.[vc_single_image image="26660" img_size="full"]

Four Principles of Agile Innovation

As described earlier, the key principles of agile software development provide a blueprint for bringing agility to other areas. We are in the fortunate position to have experienced first handedly how agility works in software development and how it translates to the field of innovation management. innosabi develops software solutions for innovation management in large companies. From day one, our developer team has worked with agile methods. Not long after, our marketing team adopted this mindset and started to work in sprints and tasks with great success. Today, all of innosabi is working agile. What allowed us to access tremendous potential and growth inside our own company is what we try to implement in the innovation management of large organizations. Solving complex problems, defying unpredictable changes and achieving great results – this is what agility is all about. As a guide, we adapted the Agile Manifesto and formulated our own principles: the Agile Innovation Manifesto.

• Openness over Secrecy: Openness means a sustainable dialogue in a large network of different people, including end users, external specialists, employees of other departments or even the general public, as well as employees in innovation management. It benefits from access to more knowledge, ideas, and perspectives. But this also means that corporate structures with impenetrable borders between different departments, indeed a total of silos, can be a hindrance. Thus, openness and transparency can help to implement innovations better and faster.
• Prototypes over Finality: Changing products after launch is a difficult task. But sometimes improvements are needed to better serve the needs of users. Instead of developing an idea all the way to its market entry, prototype testing provides important feedback and reduce the risk of failure on the market. With iterative loops, in which consumers can try out and evaluate unfinished versions, innovation processes can set the foundation for success early on. In addition, this also helps to avoid putting too many resources into an idea that eventually would turn out to be a dead end.
• Collaboration over Transaction: Collaboration promotes innovation. It's not just about customer feedback; it's about collaborative exchanges between companies, employees, stakeholders, and customers – the entire ecosystem. Boundaries between teams and departments are dissolved, even the division into manufacturers and users is softened. But keep in mind, we are talking about real collaboration here! Conducting a quantitative survey with customers or awarding large prizes in idea contests is not enough. The focus is on working together towards a common goal. To solve a problem in order to achieve a better result that benefits everyone involved. The principle can be used both with external stakeholders and within a company. Why should companies painstakingly transfer knowledge and know-how from other departments to innovation management if there is the possibility of involving all employees in a common innovation process? Embrace the dialogue!
• Adaptability over Resistance: Change cannot be avoided in a world that is always changing. But an agile approach is about not just reacting to change but acting proactively. The added value in the adaptability of a company is thus not only in the output. When we speak of the application of agile principles in innovation management or product development, we do not only speak of methodology, but also of a change in corporate culture. Because only when it is anchored in the culture that changes or adjustments to a product are no problem as well as certain flexibility in the innovation processes, companies can face new challenges.

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Cultural change in the Age of Agile

The paradox of the modern corporate world is that almost every industry feels threatened by uncertainty and disruption but at the same time there is more information and data available than ever before. So the problem really is that information and knowledge are often not properly used or included in decision making. Adopting agile principles and aligning your organization with them is the first step to solving this challenge. An agile mindset deeply embedded in the corporate culture enables a constant look beyond the own organization. At every point along the creation of new products or services and by all individuals involved. With the right agile processes and mindset incorporating or reacting to these insights should not be a problem.This is only possible when agility is understood in its entirety. When going beyond the buzzword and mere process optimizations. For software development, the idea of agility became the central element that defined the identity of an entire industry. It helped to establish a shared foundation for software developers across organizations and nations. And at the same time set the industry apart from the processes of the analog world. In doing so, the agile principles defined a new type of work culture perfectly aligned with the requirements of a digital environment. A transformation that the world outside software development needs to catch up with.

“At the core, I believe Agile is […] about delivering good products to customers by operating in an environment that does more than talk about "people as our most important asset" but actually "acts" as if people were the most important, and lose the word "asset". So in the final analysis, the meteoric rise of interest in—and sometimes tremendous criticism of—Agile Methodologies is about […] values and culture.” – Jim Highsmith, co-author of the Agile Manifesto

What better time to start than now?

In our experience, the Principles of Agile Innovation can only be successfully practiced with the right tools. To enable an agile mindset across entire organizations and ecosystems a scalable digital infrastructure for the right forms of collaboration and knowledge exchange is paramount. Whether it is internal collaboration in highly technical innovation projects or external collaboration with consumers: the desired outcome and the characteristics of the target audience determine how agile principles can be best put into practice. This means that agile innovation with your customers might function entirely different compared to one with your employees.This might sound like a huge effort and investment. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to do it all at once. Find the right starting point and go from there. Do you already have an accelerator program for employee ideas? Then just make it agile with the right platform for large-scale collaboration, resource funding, and prototype testing. What about customer panels? Why not use these contacts and invite them to a continuous exchange and ideation projects instead of isolated focus groups or surveys? There are many more groups and individuals within your ecosystem that can be engaged in agile ways along all steps of the innovation process: suppliers, research institutions, or even the general public.Fully transforming your company and imprinting the agile mindset inside your culture like in the software industry will take time. But the only way to get there is by simply starting it. Living it. And by setting the first examples for all others to follow.This article was originally published on LinkedIn by Catharina van Delden.

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The innosabi panel at the Daimler Digital Life Days 2018 provided the perfect opportunity to exchange an in-depth discussion with Frieder Munk about the use of the innosabi software at Daimler AG. Frieder Munk is responsible for corporate culture and innovation at Daimler Digital Life and was one of the organizers of the event. With the help of a Crowd Ideation platform from innosabi, he also supports various departments in the company in innovation projects together with employees. DAIMLER IDEAS is a platform for collaboration and virtual crowdfunding. Through the Innovation Funding approach, innovation becomes the task of all employees: from the generation of ideas to the distribution of budgets to their actual realization.

“The platform gives us the necessary transparency in the implementation processes of innovations. Decisions are no longer taken in a quiet room, but the employees have the opportunity at any time to keep track of what’s happening with their ideas.”Frieder Munk, Daimler AG

Watch the complete interview with Frieder Munk and innosabi CEO, Catharina van Delden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6TGshQ1M3c

Discover the Possibilities of innosabi

Implement organization-wide knowledge exchange and innovation culture with agile innovation management into your company. Utilize the expertise and ideas of your employees to innovate faster than ever before. Benefit from the specialized funding and solution scouting functions of the innosabi software.

Dr. Bettina von Stamm is a renowned expert in innovation, product development and design. She has been researching and working on innovation for over 25 years, calling herself an innovation philosopher, storyteller or catalyst. In 2004, she founded the Innovation Leadership Forum, a Think & Do Tank that helps organizations understand, unlock and improve their innovation potential and performance. In an interview with Julia Schmidt, Business Development at innosabi, she is giving an exceptional overview of how innovation concepts and our perspectives have changed in recent decades: “Of course people have always innovated. What has changed over time is the degree to which we deliberately and proactively seek to create these various types of innovation.” As the most important piece of advice, the innovation expert gives organizations the following task:

“Define what innovation means to you and why you want that specific kind of innovation to happen in your organization. Most companies I talk to think and claim that innovation is important to them, while most do not even have a company-wide definition. How can you expect innovation to happen, when you do not even know what it means?”

According to Dr. Bettina von Stamm, there is no “one right” definition of innovation: “Understand and define what innovation means for your organization, in your specific context. This will not be only one type of innovation, it is most likely a hole innovation scape. Organizations have to be very clear on where they want to innovate and why they want to innovate there. Success factors vary, depending on the company and the kind of innovation.” [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdqPS8eXAU[/embed]

The Changing Concepts of Innovation

The overview Dr. Bettina von Stamm can give on the changes in the concepts of innovation within the past 30 years is remarkable. She says that each kind of innovation has always been done in a way, just not as a deliberately promoted concept, but unconsciously, accidentally or even out of emergency situations. Initially, the concept of innovation management only evolved around product innovations in the early nineties. It was simply about improving own products through research and development. Since then, in particular, the breadth and perspective of the concept of innovation has changed. When one saw fewer possibilities in pure product innovation, process innovation followed. For example, cost-efficient machines, simplified processes and intelligent warehousing have been implemented. After this potential seemed largely exhausted, the service innovation followed. Thereby the end of the sales process and the user experience were optimized. In the early 2000s, the targeted business model innovation came along. Thus, the issue of innovation within companies has grown from the smallest unit, the single product, to the largest possible unit, the business model. However, Dr. Bettina von Stamm says that this is just another piece in a much bigger puzzle:

“One thing is for certain: The path of innovation does not end there. It is an endless journey where there is always something else around the corner.”

We thank Dr. Bettina von Stamm and everyone involved in the making of this great interview and look forward to finding out together which concepts of innovation will prevail in the future.

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As part of the innosabi Customer Panel at the Daimler Digital Life Days 2018, we had the opportunity to talk in detail with Nicolas Limbach about the use of innosabi software at Bayer AG. Nicolas Limbach is responsible for the promotion and implementation of innovation in the procurement process in the strategic purchasing department – especially for the areas of health and crops. In doing so, Bayer AG relies on its huge network of suppliers and integrates them into innovation projects with the help of the THRIVE platform. Innosabi’s supplier innovation approach makes it possible to harness the knowledge and innovative strength of external stakeholders to initiate collaborative problem-solving.

“Compared to the traditional process, the ideation process with our suppliers on the platform shortens the time-to-market by about 7 months — which of course translates into additional revenue.”

Nicolas Limbach, Bayer AG

Here is the complete interview with Nicolas Limbach and innosabi CEO Catharina van Delden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9ZdipsnndE

With our Supplier Innovation approach, it is possible to establish a protected, virtual environment in the company to invite selected, relevant experts and to exchange sensitive information.

“Selected suppliers help us to work on problems in the business that we can only describe. For the solution, we lack the specifications, the knowledge or the resources.”Nicolas Limbach, Bayer AG

The structured solicitation and evaluation of ideas quickly result in suitable solutions that can be implemented directly with the respective suppliers. This provides solutions to challenges in the innovation process, even before they arise.

“With the help of the innosabi software, we can quickly give our partners feedback on their ideas and commission them with the implementation. This motivates the suppliers to favorably implement innovative technologies, as they in turn benefit from long-term business relationships.”Nicolas Limbach, Bayer AG

Discover the possibilities of the innosabi software

Take advantage of the knowledge and competence of your suppliers and partners for innovation projects. Shorten the time to market and accelerate the internalization of new technologies. Increase the relationships in your network with Supplier Innovation and gain competitive advantage through collaborative ideation with your ecosystem.

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There has been a lot going on with the innosabi software over the last couple of weeks. Not only did we rebrand our entire CI and introduce a new product portfolio. We also implemented a bunch of new features and updates. To give you quick overview, we want to show you the three most important ones in this article.

Pairwise Voting

Imagine this scenario: you have collected over a hundred great ideas and maybe even went through a first screening step. You are now left with this large number of potentially game-changing suggestions. How do you find the one that truly stands out from the rest? The one that really deserves your attention and resources? We now have just the right thing for you. Our new pairwise voting feature!Basically, you can select any number of ideas from a suggestion or ideation project and move them to a pairwise voting phase. Similar to a classic voting, it is then up to your selected target group to rate them. But here's the twist: users only ever see two ideas (the eponymous "pair") at once. The task is to select the one which they consider superior. Once selected, a new pair is presented and the game begins anew. From experience we can tell you that this is actually a lot of fun. During development and testing with real platform data, we caught ourselves clicking happily through dozens of pairs without even realizing it.The simplicity for the user and the great gamification design is only the surface. The real magic happens underneath the hood. We adapted a so called ELO rating algorithm which is commonly used to rank professional chess players. The great thing about it: the scoring does not depend on the number of votes a suggestion received. So even in a short voting phase with limited participants – for example selected experts – you can get sound, meaningful results for a large number of ideas. And not just after completion of the voting but in real time.[vc_gallery type="nivo" interval="0" images="26016,26017" img_size="large"]

User Tagging

We are very happy to present the brand new user tagging functionality! The perfect way to bring people together and address the relevant users in your innovation projects. All it takes is a simple "@".Imagine you see an idea in one of your projects which is relevant for one of your colleagues. You could pick up the phone and call or write an email to tell them about it. But that seems quite tedious, doesn't it? Or what about this scenario: You come across a discussion and you know just the right user who can contribute the missing expertise. How would you engage him or her in the ongoing discussion?We took a lesson from all the popular social media platforms and adopted their way of tagging other users. Whether it is twitter, facebook, or instagram: the @ connects people! We are soon starting the rollout of the same functionality across all our platforms. Once you get the update, you can simply tag other registered platform users in your suggestions and comments via a simple @ followed by their name. The user who gets tagged will receive a notification via email with a direct link to the discussion.[vc_single_image image="26185" img_size="full"]

New Blog Interface

We are very proud to present you the new platform blog interface for all innosabi platforms. We have reworked the article overview as well as the article view to optimize the user experience. We received a lot of feedback that users do not always read articles in chronological order but actually want to sort them by topics or screen them in one condensed overview. We took both of these aspects as the basis for our new blog overview. As you can see in the screenshots and stylized layouts, your platform blog will now also use our typical tile view. Each tile will contain title, image, as well as a short preview of the article. Main articles can be easily pinned to the beginning of the page in full width. In addition, all articles can be filtered by tags which you can easily assign to the individual entries via the backend.Of course, we want the users to have the same great experience after clicking a tile in the blog overview. So we also redesigned the article view. We updated the rather outdated layout to a more modern look. Instead of displaying blocks of running text across the full width, we applied the design cues conveyed by the tiles in all other parts of the platform to the articles. Blog posts now also resemble large tiles which are nestled in buttons for social sharing on the left and tiles for recommendations of similar articles on the bottom. In terms of user experience, this greatly improves the typical flow of interactions with the blog.[vc_gallery type="nivo" interval="0" images="26007,26008" img_size="large"]

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Innovation. A word that moves the world. Literally. Because without innovations, there would be neither progress nor change. Big, drastic changes in the world would not have been possible without innovation. The industrialization needed the invention of the steam engine, digital transformation the internet. Humans always strive for further improvement and change. With this, mankind is the origin of innovation.

But what is innovation? What exactly does this word mean? One definition of innovation that we think is one of the best comes from Jürgen Hauschildt (2016):

"Innovations are qualitatively new products or processes, which differ "noticeably " - however that is to be determined - compared to a comparison state."

For us, innovation means change, reform, introduction of something new and often the realization of a novel, advanced solution to a specific problem.

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There seems to be a fair amount of meanings for this one word. Even science seems to be disunited on this: These are the two opposing sides:

• Innovation is a novelty or renewal of an object or a course of action
• Innovation is change and application, which means innovation must first be invented, but introduced, used and applied too

This is precisely where the crucial difference between innovation and invention lies. Especially in English-speaking countries, "innovation" and "invention" are often used interchangeably. However, looking more closely at the meanings, it becomes clear that an invention can only be the basis for innovation. Inventions begin with an idea and the development of a prototype. For an innovation to emerge, the prototype must become a product that is brought to the market and used.

What are the different types of innovation?

Without innovation, no company can survive longer then a few years. Just because a corporation is big, does not mean it is undisruptable.In addition to the object of innovation, it is also useful to distinguish for which scope an innovation. Additionally, product, service and business model innovations can be divided by their market impact. These two attributes can be used to differentiate the following types of innovations:

• Performance innovations are new ideas for a already well-known market. Often an improvement of the existing offer is made possible by new technologies.
• Application innovations open up a new market for an already existing idea. New and additional customers can now use an existing offer.
• Incremental innovations are advancements/ the optimization of existing products, services or business models. The adjustments often serve to reduce costs, optimize customer benefit or reposition the market.
• Radical innovation means that completely new ideas are translated into never seen before products, services or business models. Their impact on hole markets can be extreme.
• Sustaining innovations help companies defend their own market position and remain competitive. Any innovation that enhances a supply is therefore a sustaining innovation, whether radical or incremental.
• Disruptive innovations are those that shape new markets or disrupt established ones. Frequently, disruptive innovations are possible through new technologies. The car for example was a disruptive innovation regarding transportation 100 years ago. Whether an innovation is disruptive often depends on the perspective. While the electric car is a radical but sustainable innovation for the automotive industry, it can be disruptive to the petrol industry, because their product is no longer needed.
• Agile innovation means implementing ideas through collaboration and iterative prototype circles/ loops. With the adaptability of agile innovation processes, innovations can be brought to market faster and implemented more seamlessly.

In addition, the trigger for an innovation can be distinguished. So what triggered the innovation? Two main possibilities: Market-pull, where innovations are initiated by customer request, and technology-push, where new technologies enable new applications or products which then are marketed accordingly.

How can innovation processes be implemented in a company?

Agile innovation management is key to innovation success. This is where the different types of innovation come together. There are differences in the people and resources with which ideas are collected and implemented. In Closed Innovation, organizations only involve internal resources in the innovation process. This can be done in classic idea management or via internal innovation projects and knowledge sharing using innosabi Idea. If a company also opens its innovation processes to external partners, this approach is called open innovation. With innosabi software, customers (innosabi Community) or suppliers and research institutes (innosabi Partner) can be involved in developing innovations that way. Interested? Request a demo!

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The innosabi software accelerates innovation processes and enables innovation management with the entire ecosystem of a company. But which innovation methods are behind the innosabi products? And in which use cases can our software be used? In just two minutes, our CEO Catharina van Delden clarifies these two questions and introduces the company innosabi.[vc_video link="https://youtu.be/_At1Xx37g3s"]Are you curious now? Then we recommend the webcast hello world_ this is innosabi! Catharina van Delden vividly explains both the method of agile innovation and the use cases of our products.

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Agile principles like openness, collaboration, rapide prototype testing and adaptability can be implemented in the innovation management processes in various ways. While methods differ, all share a common goal: to bring higher speed into the development of new products and services of large corporations.Depending on the use case and the group of participants addressed, we have so far distinguished between the following possible applications for agile principles:

• Crowd Innovation
• Prototype Testing
• Idea Management
• Crowd Supercharger
• Solution Scouting

However, just as the innosabi technology continues to evolve, so are the possible applications for agile principles in innovation management. In this regard, we would like to present two further applications, which have now also been implemented in the innosabi crowd platform:

• Supplier Innovation
• Corporate Internal Crowdfunding

Supplier Innovation

A Supplier Innovation Platform is a place for specialized departments to collaborate with possible external partners in early stages of development. For example, suppliers can submit proposals for solutions according to the requirements of a certain project and can get assigned with solving them afterwords. This is not explicitly a tender platform, but a collaborative approach. The time to develop a new product ("Time to Market") is significantly reduced by the efficient processing of the search/solution scouting. The innosabi software provides all necessary processes and workflows for this use case, and above all, a highly secure environment for this dialogue.One of our customers summarized his experience with the innosabi Supplier Innovation Platform as follows:

"Supplier Innovation Platforms are primarily designed to enable collaboration with suppliers at an early stage. Due to the close cooperation, time to market is significantly reduced in many cases and high additional revenues can thereby be achieved."

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Internal Crowdfunding

The principles of internal corporate crowdfunding enable ideation, selection/prioritization and realization to be seamlessly combined within the innovation process. As a first step, ideas that can be submitted, commented on and developed by the engagement of the crowd. As a second step, a virtual budget can be distributed to the relevant ideas by the crowd, ie the employees. Ideas with sufficient funding will receive actual resources to develop a ''minimum viable product'' or digital prototype. Optionally, this procedure can also be connected to so-called Accelerator programs.Virtual crowdfunding motivates to work collaboratively on innovation projects throughout the company. This promotes positive change in corporate culture.Frieder Munk from the Corporate Strategy & Digital Life Team of the Daimler AG reports on his experience from the use of the innosabi crowd platform within the framework of internal crowdfunding at Daimler:

"On our Crowdsourced Innovation Platform we have a greater reach for Ideation processes, and also more interaction and comments compared to traditional workshops. In such events, we typically had about 100 participants. In a comparable project on the platform, we reach up to 20,000 people. With each additional participant we can access more knowledge and experience regarding the respective topic."

In addition to the range, he also focuses on activity and participation:

"Participation rates vary by country and subject. The biggest success so far we had with a funding challenge in India: an incredible 95% of the approximately 4,000 employees came to the platform."

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“Daimler Ideate” is a collaboration platform that aims to involve Daimler employees throughout the world, regardless of internal silos, in innovation projects. On this platform, ideas for new products and technologies are generated and further developed. To this day, more than 33.000 users from various business units are registered. Starting with the collection and elaboration of ideas, until the funding and construction of first prototypes, all activities are carried out via a central innosabi platform. Time for us to ask about the experiences made and the value added so far. To seek answers to these and many more questions, innosabi CEO Catharina van Delden recently talked to Frieder Munk, Corporate Strategy Manager from Daimler AG’s DigitalLife Team:

How do you describe the innosabi platform to your colleagues? With our Crowd Ideation Platform at Daimler, we give all colleagues the opportunity to actively participate in the innovation process. Important principles for the platform are collaboration, transparency, and motivation. On the platform, ideation contests can be carried out in the form of so-called challenges. This takes place in several predefined phases, which work towards an initially defined objective. During this process, the ideas are further developed and improved by impulses, comments, and suggestions by the crowd, i.e. Daimler employees. I describe an intuitively-to-use software for the interested departments, which is also very easily accessible via single-sign-on or mobile phone. We currently use the platform exclusively internally; The goal is, however, to use it externally too, in order to carry out ideation projects with customers, suppliers, or university partners. The most important features are the transparency along the entire process and the collaboration in the community. What is the role of funding on the Daimler Ideate platform? In a funded project, teams can submit ideas in video form. Daimler employees can then finance these ideas with a virtual budget. Project initiators can determine whether a funding goal must be achieved or not. The most successful teams are then given real resources to implement their ideas. Depending on the idea, it’s possible to take advantage of the Daimler Incubator program to validate the approach or to develop a minimum viable product. Through the funding, we see a high motivation for implementation by the applicants – because of the support of all the employees involved in the funding process, a high visibility of the projects naturally arises. Additionally, the funding helps to ensure a fast and accurate prioritization of innovation projects according to the accumulated knowledge and experience of many Daimler employees. The teams of the individual business units configure their homepages and challenges on the platform in self-government. These do not necessarily have to include a funding. Depending on the individual requirements of the projects, certain phases – such as ideation, voting, or even funding – are included in the process and others are left out. In the bigger picture, we see that the funding projects seem to be very successful: Since the start in May 2017, we see a large number of prospects for our challenges with funding on the platform.

Figure 1: Source: https://twitter.com/Daimler/status/897820632712392704

What makes a Innovation Challenge successful in your eyes? Primarily, we measure success by reach and participation. We therefore check the percentage of invited people who actually registered on the platform. India was the most extreme, but at the same time the best example. An incredible 95 percent of the workforce at the Bangalore site registered, voted and collaborated on the platform. This value is, of course, phenomenal and incomparable. In Germany, we have more than 20,000 users signed in on the platform. Since participation is, of course, also dependent on the respective country culture, this too is a success for us. Now, in the next step, we are trying to further expand our user base and to integrate the existing community even more strongly in the entire innovation processes. To measure the success of the entire platform, we are not only guided by the figures of the number of new challenges on the platform. Since they constantly involve and motivate our employees, there is also a change in the overall innovation culture. The more departments start competitions, the more multidisciplinary collaboration takes place – for us, this is the most important success factor. How would you generally describe the benefits of the innosabi platform? Before we used innosabi software, we have been running ideation projects through different channels, such as conventional workshops or in specialized committees of the individual divisions. This was not very transparent, only appointed experts and managers could participate. Now we are online instead of offline, everyone can see the ideas and help shape them. This gives us a much greater reach than in a workshop. In addition, we interact immediately with the relevant groups of people and activate a huge pool of available knowledge and experience. I can reach an enormous number of people and actively integrate them into the value creation process. Thus, we are not only talking about cultural change, but realizing it daily in various situations. I am particularly pleased with the fact that individual projects that started as small ideas do now go into operational implementation. After the ideation phase, we accompany promising ideas and control the necessary implementation steps – depending on the requirements, the close cooperation with our Acceleration and Incubation programs are possible. In general, however, we are not yet at the end of this exciting journey – based on feedback from our users at Daimler locations worldwide, we are continuing to develop the platform together with innosabi. We look forward to the next steps and many successfully implemented innovations!

Figure 2: Source: https://twitter.com/alecmcint/status/869862048892694530 Digital Life Day

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