In this Blog series I will show you that innovation management means much more than simply having an Innovation process in place. The first part will focus on technology management.
For a good innovation management setup you also need strong technology management which supports the identification of new technologies – especially within small niche markets with low margins - and must evaluate them in an accurate way .
Technologies are developing faster than customer needs.
The reason for that is because technology is currently evolving and consumers are not showing any indication of demand. Why? Because they are unaware of it. If the big companies do not keep an eye out for these new technologies and react fast , they will undoubtedly give smaller, more innovative companies the chance to disrupt their business. We have already seen that happen in the different markets e.g. Digital photography vs chemical photograhpy, Downloadable music vs CD/DVD, LCD vs CRT, stevia vs sugar and so on. Think about the following “did you have a genuine need for an LCD TV before they were brought into the market? “
What to do ?
- Identify the current technologies coming up
- Focus your attention on the small, niche markets and their technologies
- evaluate them – not only from a dollar view
- Use a dedicated department (not only R&D) whose purpose is to think about how this technology can be used and to build new business models around it
- Don´t ask your customer, look how they use products currently and ask yourself how a new technology can fulfill a “not visible” need
kind regards
Daniel Brunnett
Business Transformation Services PCI&T
Innovation and Product Development
Daniel.Brunnett@sap.com
