Innovation Platforms – Bringing Viable Business Ideas to the Market
Inventors, business gurus and leaders across the globe have been discussing and debating the need for innovators. It is a clear fact that innovation processes need not be static, something that many companies are already practicing, but instead they should be dynamic, something that combines short-term goals with long-term plans. All too often companies are stuck on a one-year innovation plan, which seems to be adequate enough when it comes to the short-term, but not when it comes to sustained strategies. In the end, a company’s strategy has to include both short-term and long-term goals, along with a well-structured innovation process that is flexible enough to accommodate all of them, but also innovative enough to see where innovation fits within the overall business strategy.
Innovation has become the talk of the town, the question of the day and the topic of discussion at the highest levels of government globally. Many innovators, however, remain unclear about exactly what innovation ideas work, especially when it comes to creating businesses that can sustain themselves over the long term. It takes more than simple technology, engineering and market development to create a sustainable business, something that is why every innovative idea needs to be examined in the light of a company’s entire strategic plan, including a description of the market and a description of the company’s competitive positioning. The most successful businesses have an integrated design that takes innovation ideas from the lab and brings them to the market. One of the most powerful ways to do this is through the use of an innovation platform, especially one that is designed to enable innovation across the entire organization using a set of common methods.
Companies looking to implement innovative ideas need not reinvent the wheel, but rather can build on proven innovation models that have been tried and tested. These innovation models have the capacity to make the whole innovation process a lot easier for the company and allows it to test the waters before experimenting with more complicated processes. This kind of testing allows innovators to find out whether their innovative idea will actually yield benefits, as well as see whether or not the market trends will support their innovation ideas. An innovation platform is capable of gathering and organizing the data on market trends and helping the company to determine whether or not they should move forward with their innovative idea, or if they should shelve it for another time. In the end, innovation platforms help companies test their ideas effectively so that they can come up with a sustainable innovation process.