The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business



INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

Application: New Revenues, New Products and Services, New Strategies

The Concept

Innovation is a management process, the mechanism by which an organization captures, cultivates, and exploits initiatives. It is different from creativity itself which is the source of initial insight or ideas on which innovative new offers are founded. Traditionally, people have thought that there is a need to innovate in offerings, process, and market. There are, though, well researched projects and many anecdotal stories about the need to bring innovation to many aspects of businesses. They suggest that innovation in functions like strategy, governance, management, NPD/NSD, operations, marketing, and sales is vital in fast changing markets; that sclerosis can destroy value.

Creativity and innovation are particularly vital to a firm that needs to bring a range of new products and services to market. In fact, some researchers suggest that the ability to innovate new products and services is the key to survival for some companies operating in a number of mature or fast changing markets. In the 2010 results of McKinsey’s annual innovation survey of senior executives, for instance, 84% said that innovation was either very or extremely important to the growth of their companies (McKinsey Quarterly, July 2010).

In recent years a number of businesses have adopted ...