The progression of cavemen to the age of artificial intelligence and nano-technology has been possible only because of continuous innovations. However a systematic effort to understand the process may be traced since the 1940s, with the emergence of TRIZ framework, and of creative thinking frameworks. Though TRIZ became widely popular in engineering industries, it didn’t provide any sequence of implementation. So, NASA devised a TRL scale between 1980s and 1990s, for launch of its space projects. In comparison to TRIZ, whose fundamentals are drawn from the engineering discipline, the TRL scale could be adapted in diverse technology domains ranging from digital technology to vaccine development. Being simpler to implement, the TRL scale earned worldwide popularity, and became an important tool for deciding on innovation funding.
But the above developments had a fundamental limitation. They told 'how' to invent, but said nothing about 'what' to invent. These frameworks worked fine for NASA, whose space projects didn’t depend on user acceptance, or market dynamics for their success. However, the innovations from commercial entities started failing in the market because of ignoring these external factors. After consulting over 10,000 projects over 30 years, Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke, found that around 72% of innovations fail to adequately monetize. With the emergence of consumer internet based business in late 1990s, factoring in the consumer perspectives became very important. Then gradually the innovators started adapting the methods developed for designers in the 1950s and 60s, to factor in the external factors. In 2001, Frank Robinson introduced the concept of ‘Minimum Viable Product’, which got thoroughly integrated with the concept of 'Lean startup' ( 2011) by Eric Ries.
For execution of innovation projects, many project management tools, like Gantt Chart and PERT were found handy. But now agile framework has become quite popular in the software industry, and at the time of writing this article, upto 7 variants of agile development frameworks, namely 1. KANBAN, 2. Scrum, 3. Lean 4. DSDM, 5. Extreme Programming 6. FDD, 7. Crystal, are being talked about. While an agile framework is capable of bringing in continuous user focus during innovation development process, its adaptation for core technical innovations with considerable hardware components are yet to be tried and developed. Persona Analysis, another method started in 1983 by Alan Cooper for software designing, is now also becoming popular for planning innovations in different technology domains. Ms. Daria Nepriakhina from Netherlands has developed the very popular Problem-Solution fit canvas by merging Lean Startup + Design Thinking + Lazy User Model + principles of User Experience Design. This canvas has come-up as an effective tool for validating a solution-idea before beginning execution, though it doesn’t tell how to develop the solutions.
Gradual diffusion of an innovation in society had been a matter of curiosity among sociologists and anthropologists since the 19th century, and in 1962 the famous ‘Innovation Diffusion Curve’ was proposed by Prof. Everett Rogers. After leaving this matter as a matter of purely academic interest for sociologists, iIn past few years many innovation strategists have started looking at this curve for developing the go-to market strategy of innovations. Similarly, some of the methods developed for the manufacturing sector, like the ‘Five Why Analysis’ developed by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota Motor Corporation, and some tools for Quality Management , like Root Cause Analysis, are also being tried to plan innovations.
Techno-legal aspect is another important domain of the subjects of Innovation Management. The most common Techno-legal aspect is IPR (Intellectual Property Rights), and its transfer. Great deal of work is happening on strategically designing the IPR portfolio, claim-drafting, IPR valuations, strategising technology transfers, strategies of drafting tech-transfer agreements. As of now Patent Agent, Patent Attorney and Tech-Transfer Practitioners have come up as distinct professions from just the IPR related Techno-legal domain of Innovation Management. Apart from these, there are consultants on Clinical Research and GLP facilities, which deal with the techno-legal aspects of innovation management. But factoring-in the regulatory aspects while planning an innovation is still at a very nascent stage.
Beyond the development of individual innovations, the innovation management subject has to also deal with the macrosystem for innovations, which involves factors such as innovation funding, incubation centres, innovation policies, etc. Some studies on incubation centres have taken place, mostly by the management researchers. But much more work needs to be done for developing actionable frameworks.
As we have seen above, there have been many serious works in developing the principles related to innovations. Most of these principles/ methods were initially developed by the practitioners for solving/ understanding some problems in their specific work areas, which later on got generalised for other purposes. As a result, these works are highly fragmented, not homogenised, and often criss-cross with one another. This poses a major challenge for the innovators, and some serious research is required in them.
We also saw that most of these developments in innovation management took place in the commercial sector. However, research in the academic sector and R&D institutions is a major component of the innovation ecosystem and has a major share in the GERD ( Gross Expenditure in Research and Development) of any country. The organisational structure, primary objectives, and dynamics in this sector are totally different from those in the commercial sector. Unfortunately very little work has happened till now to support this sector in Innovation Management. The general incompatibility observed across the world between the academic researchers and the corporate sectors is largely because the concept of Innovation Management has not yet adequately percolated into the academic sector.
Getting proper human resources in Innovation Management is another major challenge, due to the clear division of educational curricula in science, arts, and commerce streams. As we have seen, Innovation Management is neither pure science, nor pure business management, but stands at the cross section of them, along with the need for some understanding of even the legal matters.
In the formative years, this is very normal for any subject to be not recognised as a distinct discipline, and being seen as some extension of other disciplines. However, in due course, a subject develops its distinct characteristics and then it has to branch-out for attaining its full potential. Today the discipline of Innovation Management is at the verge taking its independent identity, in parallel with the other disciplines of management studies.
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