Why establish an innovation strategy?

Many companies create goods or services on a daily basis, without necessarily knowing how to innovate. Having a predefined innovation strategy enables entities to cope with a wide range of economic, social and environmental hazards.

Want to get your innovative projects off the ground? Start by improving your innovation management with a clear strategy.

How do you select and prioritize the “best” ideas?

Most companies don’t take enough time to really know where they want to go. This prevents them from finding the right resources or tools to succeed and properly develop their innovative projects, while adapting to changes in the market.It is vital, however, to prioritize ideas during so-called “creative” workshops, so that they take on their full meaning and generate profitable action for the company in question. Once these ideas have been generated, it will be easier to implement the appropriate tools and steer the innovation strategy in the desired direction.

Innovation strategy at the heart of the company’s development process

Managing and building an innovation strategy enables us to set the framework for the thematic areas on which we need to focus, such as skills, technology, financing, internal and external communication, and so on.
This same strategy must above all be flexible and adaptable to the risks encountered as R&D projects evolve. It must be adaptable in the short, medium and long term, capable of rapidly integrating new technological or market opportunities.

Innovation management is the tangible part of implementing an innovation strategy, since it relies on :

• innovation acculturation activities,
• key success factors,
• monitoring tools,
• KPIs,
• decision-making processes,
• etc.

The correlation between innovation strategy and the generation of new ideas

Themes rooted in the company’s innovation strategy, and linked to its overall vision or strategy, will be used to classify the ideas generated during the brainstorming sessions.

• Are ideas moving towards diversification?
• Do they support short-term gains in competitiveness?
• In the long term?
• Do they consume resources or not?
• Do they leverage untapped resources (talent, intellectual property, etc.)?

The implementation of these indicators, based on axes linked to strategic orders, will enable the most promising ideas to be prioritized. In this way, the company moves away from the path of visionless opportunities and onto the path of anticipation and control, which is reassuring for managers, employees and other external stakeholders.