Creating a Sustainable Innovative Ecosystem Is Crucial to Business Success
Innovation has contributed immensely to the growth and development of society in the 21st Century. Science and technological advances have increased the productivity of industry, and vastly improved living standards and quality of life. Countries, regions, and cities all over the world experience major structural changes as waves of socio-technical development shape the innovation landscape. To mange this structural change and support innovation, it is crucial to innovate continually for improving performance. This makes it imperative for every business to create a “Sustainable innovative ecosystem”.
What is an Innovative Ecosystem?
This is a term used to describe a dynamic, interactive network that breeds innovation. It involves the various players, stakeholders and community members that are crucial for innovation. Organizations innovate in different ways. Some have internal experts on idea generation, while others use external consultants who work with groups within the organization to generate new innovative ideas.
Why does having an innovation ecosystem matter?
Smart organizations realize early on that if they will disrupt their industry/sector, there will always be a need to shake up the way that it operates. Why? Marketplaces have become highly competitive and this is as a result of wider access to technologies, and knowledge sharing opportunities. To be continually successful every organization has to make changes in business structure and technical ways of onboarding while deploying new technology.
It is important to not only consider a temporary innovative idea but a strategic sustainable vision with your team. To continue the growth of the innovation ecosystem, it requires planning, strategy, and organizational cultural buy-in.
How then can one create a sustainable Innovative Ecosystem?
So far, we have understood what an innovative ecosystem is and why is matters, now to the core of this piece. How can I create a sustainable innovative ecosystem for my business?According to Dan Toma et al in the book Corporate Startup, there are 5 key principles that companies use to develop an innovation ecosystem;
2. Innovation Portfolio
Build a product portfolio that reflects your thesis, a portfolio of well established products, and high potential transformational creations. In many organizations, innovative ideas are not managed effectively or not managed at all. An innovation portfolio enables you manage core products and see where your company is lagging behind in developing fresh goods
3.Innovation Framework
This is the basics of how your company makes investment decision and develops new product. It’s a strategic approach to innovation from the inside out that provides a way to act on new ideas. And without a framework, you would just have a collection of ideas. Three steps: creating, testing and scaling ideas.
4.Innovation Accounting
Innovation accounting enables business owners to create useful metrics that offer insight into user engagement, product market fit and scalability. It is important to have the right metrics.
There are three types of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that your business should be tracking;
- Reporting: Track the ideas been generated from ideation to scale (validation)
- Governance: Focus on making informed decision on investing in an idea (Product market fit)
- Global: Focus on helping the company examine the overall performance of their investments in context of broader company goals (Revenue percentage)
5.Innovation Practice
Development of products have to be aligned to the innovation framework. Product teams need to understand the best strategies when searching for innovations and developing outputs. The Lean Product Lifecycle has important tools and resources that could be used by your team to develop the best strategies.
Designing a sustainable innovation ecosystem?
Your company can choose the approach that works and incorporate the aspects you need the most…
By Ramo Ayoka
Business Development Associate