Our approach to innovation
High performance innovation
PA can help you make step changes in the pace, output and value of innovation in your business.
Managing innovation is like, but also unlike, managing anything else. It is similar because it does respond to planning, motivation, investment, measurement and training. However, it is dissimilar in that it is found everywhere in the business, and is volatile, and is easy to cripple. To understand it in your company we need to diagnose, and then plan and prioritise change with you.
From PA's work with clients, and our own technology development experience, we believe that the nine dimensions below are essential to world-class innovation performance:
All nine are vital, but the first among equals is committed leadership - the leaders of an organisation must demand innovation consistently and persistently. Without this, excellence in the other eight dimensions is unlikely to arise, or unlikely to deliver its potential.
We have a proven diagnostic tool, the Innovation Footprint, which uses these dimensions to help you measure your own innovativeness.
Measuring innovation performance
Innovation can happen - can be made to happen - anywhere in the organisation. It is probably most visible when it is applied to creating new products, new services, and new ways of producing your products and services. This is an area where measuring the delivered output is notoriously difficult.
There are two reasons for this:
First, the output is delayed because of the steps between the initial concept and its realisation. Companies’ financial cycles are normally measured over a year, but the outputs of innovation may not be paying back commercially for two, three or more years. It can be quite rare to get a real measurable output in the time frame when the cost is incurred.
Second, the output is diluted by the contribution that many other parts of the organisation need to make, before the original concept is realised. How much of the credit for an eventual success can be fairly attributed to the original innovation, and how much to all the rest of the work of its realisation? The fact is, you would not have had your new product (etc) without everyone’s contribution - they were all essential!
It is so much easier to measure the output of a factory or a sales force. Many companies have given up on measuring innovation performance, or never seriously tried. To improve innovation performance, companies need to establish a range of measures covering inputs, throughputs and outputs. And not too many input measures, which would deflect attention from the really important metrics.
So another thread of PA’s innovation service is to establish some pragmatic measures of innovation performance. For example:
Speed of development processes |
% innovative vs me-too products |
Competency metrics |
% revenue from innovative products |
Number of patents |
Value of the patent portfolio |
Beyond measures, however, a business that is growing successfully and rapidly (based on innovation) will have a culture of innovativeness permeating the whole company.A culture of innovation across the enterprise is rare, in most industries and all countries. Achieving it often requires a transformation of the organisation. PA is uniquely placed to help, because we have in one place the essential combination of our own innovation capability and the tools and experience to work with you, to make change happen.Out of an understanding of your current stance (the Innovation Footprint) and your current performance (the throughput and output metrics) we design a change programme. The nature of the change is specific to your company - however there are common threads, and our experience is that we often work in such areas as:
Committed leadership |
Senior management workshops, strategy changes, changes to roles and personnel, communications. |
Market insights |
Design and implementation of market processes, inbound and outbound - understanding and delivering the customers' needs. |
Clear strategy |
Strategy process and content development - business strategy, technology, product, marketing etc substrategies. Communication. |
Supportive infrastructure |
Introduction of design engineering management tools, IT tools to control progress, facilities review, technology outsourcing. |
Creative people |
Review recruitment and appraisal policies, internal transfers, co-location, reward and recognition. |
Innovative culture |
Communications, training for middle managers and engineers, changes in structure, performance metrics, relocation of teams. |
Competitive technologies |
Technology base audit, technology outreach programme, creation of a technology acquisition and integration function. |
Effective processes |
Process redesign, including portfolio selection, PCP, technology transfer, knowledge management. |
Managed projects |
Project management training; planning tools, changes in structure to stengthen the role of project managers. |
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