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What
is Front End of Innovation ?
Activities that come before the "formal and well structured"
New Product Development (NPD) Portion.
We do not use term "Fuzzy Front End" since it implies that the
FEI is mysterious, uncontrollable and cannot be managed.
Why Focus on Front End?
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FEI
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NPD
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Work
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Experimental
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Disciplined
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Commercializ.
date
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Unpredictable
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Highly
certain
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Funding
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Depends
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Budgeted
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Revenue
Expectation
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Great
Deal of Speculation
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Believable
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Activity
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Individual
or Team
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Multi-function
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Measure
of Progress
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Strengthened
Concept
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Milestone
Achievement
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Front End of Innovation
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New Concept Development
Provides a common language and terminology necessary to optimize
the "Front End of Innovation".
1. IDEA GENERATION AND
ENRICHMENT
Idea: The most embryonic form of a new product or service.
It often consists of a high level view of the envisioned solution
needed to solve the problem identified by the opportunity.
What is it?
- Birth, development and maturation of the opportunity into new
ideas
- Translates the opportunity into specific ideas
- An evolutionary process where ideas are built upon, torn down,
combined, reshaped, modified and upgraded
- May be formal (i.e. idea banks, brainstorming, etc.) or informal
(i.e. an experiment goes awry, unusual request from customer,
etc.)
Most Effective Processes
Most Effective Processes for Idea
Generation and Enrichment
Methods for Identifying Unarticulated Customer Needs
Ethnography approaches
Lead User Methodology
Early involvement of customer champion
Discovering the Archetype of your customer
Business-Technology Interspersing
Identifying new Technology Solutions
Increasing linkages both internal and external (Technology
Flow)
Partnering
An organizational culture that encourages employees to spend
"free time" testing and validating theirs own and
others' ideas
A variety of incentives to stimulate ideas
A web-enabled idea bank with easy access to product or service
improvements, including linkages to customers and suppliers
A formal role for someone to coordinate ideas from generation
through assessment
A mechanism to handle ideas outside (or across) the scope
of established business units
A limited number of simple, measurable goals (or metrics)
to track idea generation and enrichment
Frequent job rotation to encourage knowledge sharing and
extensive networking
Mechanisms for communicating core competencies, core compatibilities
and shared technologies broadly throughout the corporation
Inclusion of people with different cognitive styles on the idea
enrichment team
2. IDEA SELECTION
What is it?
- Selection of ideas for allocation of resources
- Selection by individual from self-generated
options or a formalized portfolio methodology
Most Effective Processes for IDEA SELECTION
-Portfolio methodologies based on multiple factors (not just financial
justification) of:
Technical Success Probability
Commercial Success Probability
Reward
Strategic Fit
Strategic Leverage
Use of Anchored Scales
-Screening methodologies are not used on “breakthrough”
projects
Holy Grail”
Obvious
-Formal Idea Selection Process with prompt feedback to the
idea submitters
Enhance methodology by using electronic performance support
systems
Web enable the process
-Use of “Options Theory” to evaluate projects
3. CONCEPT
DEFINITION
Concept: Has a well defined form including both a written
and visual description, which includes its primary features and
customer benefits combined with a broad understanding of the technology
needed.
What is it?
- Development of a Business Case
- Assessment of Technology and Market Risks.
- Determination of Detailed Product Specifications
(may only apply to incremental products)
- Possibility of an Overlap with the NPD Process
- Technology Stage Gate (TSG)
- Utilized for Managing Technical Uncertainty
- Depending on Company's Methodology and the
Level of Technical Complexity, TSG May be
Entirely within the NCD, Overlapping the NPD,
or the Link Between the Two.
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New Concept Development
3. CONCEPT
DEFINITION (continued)
-
Most Effective Processes
for Concept Definition
Goal Deliberation Approaches
Careful Defining of the Project Goals and
Outcomes
Criteria for the Corporation which Describes
what an “Attractive” (financials, market growth,
market size, etc) Should Look Like
Rapid Evaluation of High Potential Innovations
RIGOROUS Use of the TSG for High Risk Projects
Early Involvement of the Customer in Real
Product Tests
Even Before Product is “Completed”,
Staff-up High Potential Projects while Still in Front End
of Innovation
Technology Flow Tools Speeds-up Development
Partnering Outside the areas of Core Competence
Focusing (in contrast to spreading too thin)
Alternative Approaches
Product Champions are needed to move Products
Across Valley of Death if
Adequate Bootlegged Funds are Available
Product Champions Often Champion the Wrong
Project
Business Executive Champion is Needed for
Almost all Projects
4. OPPORTUNITY
IDENTIFICATION
Opportunity: A business or technology need that a company
or individual realizes by
design or default that they might want to purse to capture
competitive advantage,
respond to a threat, solve a problem or ameliorate a difficulty.
What is it?
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Activities and methods that a company uses
to identify opportunities to pursue
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Can be a breakthrough opportunity,a problem
or a customer need
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Will lead to a new offering, new process,new
service, new product platform,
new market thrust or new product
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Facilitated or unfascilitated pathways
Most Effective Processes for Opportunity
Identification
Projects typically get started with a trigger (High innovative
rents?)
New Competitor Movement
Fire in Plant
CEO initiatives (ex: innovation initiative, fire in
plant, lower revenue,
holy grails, strategic intent, proposal requests)
Issue: How to create more opportunities for triggers.
Envisioning the future
Customer Trend Analysis
Competitive Intelligence Analysis
Market Research
Scenario Planning
Road maps enable this process
5. OPPORTUNITY ANALYSIS
What is it?
- Accessing the opportunity to confirm that it is worth pursuing
- Understanding unmet customer needs
- Competitive intelligence and trend analysis would be used
extensively
- Business capability and competency would be assessed
- Business and scientific sponsorship would be evaluated
- Despite effort, significant technology and market uncertainty
will often remain
Most Effective Processes for Opportunity
Analysis
Envisioning the future
Customer Trend Analysis
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Knowledge Creation
The main goals of Knowledge Creations are:
- Create new knowlege within the community
- Connect, aquire, exchange and build new knowlege
- New science occurs through the process of building upon internal
and external knowledge communities.
1. Technology Based COMMUNITIES
OF PRACTICES
Goal: Create a real and virtual environment for continuous
learning by and for key inventors to provide them with a broad
repertoire of both technical and business management techniques
for achieving breakthrough Products and Services
Papers on Communities of Practice
- Knowing in Community: 10 Critical Success Factors in Building
Communities of Practice
by Richard McDermott
- Knowing is a Human Act: How Information Technology Inspired
but cannot Deliver Knowledge Management by Richard McDermott
- Communities of Practice: The organizational Frontier
by Etienne C. Wegner and William T. Snyder Birth, development
and maturation of the opportunity into new ideas
2. KNOWLEDGE MAPPING
 
Technology maps which define the core capabilities, competencies
and gaps of the organization
Technology Knowledge Strategy should be based on Core Competencies
and Capabilities of the Organization
Core Competencies and capabilities are more enduring than
product and market knowledge
3. Shared FUTURE VISION
Where will the new products of the future come from?
- “ Nothing happens until there is a vision”
- “Genuine energy, enthusiasm and preference occurs, even
in the face of setbacks,
when people understand the vision of the future”
- “It is a process of continually focusing and refocusing
on what one truly wants”
4. Project
Snapshot
"Collaborative"
Project Snapshots
-LiveLink
-NetMeeting
-WebEx
-E-room
- Captures the current and past learning of the projects
- Approaches, insights and outcomes are captured from
experiences of:
-What is working?
-Has worked?
-What hasn't?
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Knowledge Creation
5. IT TOOLS - Better Enable
Knowledge Creation
Intellectual Property
Aurigin
MapIt
Delphion
Technology Search Engines
Semantic search engines allow one to more quickly
search technology literature
Co-Brain
Ex-Caliber
Co-citation Literature Searching
Method for analyzing vast amounts of literature and
identifying promising new scientific areas based on
relatedness and age of primary citations used.
Vx Insight
Visualization Tools
ClearForest
SpotFire
Inventing Tools
Methods of Problem Solving using IT tools to support the methodology
TRIZ (the Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive
Problem Solving)
Tech Optimizer
Ideation International
Mind Mapping
Tech Optimizer
Mind Manger
Intellectual Property Patent Factory
Methods and software for increasing the quality and quantity of
patent “real-estate” using existing companies intellectual
property and competitors and building higher patent fences
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