At Innoway, we get a lot of questions about innovating and fostering innovative cultures within organisations. We’ve compiled some of the most popular of them, as well as the relevant answers.
1. What is innovation?
Innovation is the generation of novel and creative ideas, which create value and sustainable business models.
2. What is the difference between creativity and innovation?
Creativity is just the activity of generating new ideas but innovation only happens when value is proven for these ideas. You can learn more about this differenc here.
3. Why is it important for a company to innovate?
The world is moving forward at an exponentially fast rate. Nowadays, it’s more important than ever for companies to balance their current business models while exploring ones they might exploit in the future. This really is a must if companies want to stay relevant and sustainable.
4. What are the most used innovation methodologies?
There are mainly two approaches:
- The most comprehensive review of the Product Development Process (PDP) to date is the Cambridge Business Model Innovation Process (CBMIP) model. Under this model, the development process is linear and focuses only on individual phases of the process, i.e. no iteration between phases.
- The Lean Startup, which comprises Customer Development (Steve Blank), Design Thinking, the Business Model Canvas (Alex Osterwalder), The Corporate Startup (Dan Toma, Tendayi Vicki and Esther Gons) and Agile Development. It follows the scientific approach of defining a hypothesis and design an experiment to validate (or invalidate) it. The process focuses on validating the concept by interacting with clients/customers or users from the beginning, in the form of unfinished products or services.
Innoway is currently collaborating in research with professor Alberto Peralta to identify which of the two approaches is more effective. We are also presenting two papers in Innovation Arabia 2018 event as follows:
- A sustainable view of Corporate Business Model Innovation tools.
- Eco-innovation and Lean Startup cases.
5. How can I generate innovative ideas in my organization?
It is proven that innovative ideas usually come from multidisciplinary individuals working in groups. There are plenty of possibilities, but a good start would be to organize sessions to generate ideas using different techniques like brainstorming, mind mapping, open challenges, megatrends analysis with multidisciplinary teams (including clients, stakeholders, university, etc.) You can find lots of techniques to help generate innovative ideas here.
Tip: frame the idea generation session by selecting any of your corporate challenges to start ideating for solutions to overcome it.
6. How many resources should be allocated to innovation inside an organization?
It is difficult to give an answer that applies to all companies, since the allocation of resources will depend on how mature the industry is or how likely it is that your business will be disrupted.
However, in general, companies should follow the Nagji and Tuff “magic formula” of innovation investment resources. The 70/20/10 –rule: 70% of financial resources to run normal operations and 30% to look for future revenue streams for your business (Adjacent and Transformational projects).
7. What is happening around innovation in the UAE?
There are plenty of things going on in the UAE when it comes to innovation. On one hand, the Government is encouraging all public entities to innovate to avoid becoming irrelevant. Download the UAE innovation strategy here.
On the other hand, the private sector is taking the first steps toward an innovative society by building the skill-sets needed to innovate. Additionally, the startup ecosystem is being fueled by the appearance of startup investment funds and venture capital. Taken together, these things should help startups to flourish exponentially in the UAE and the wider MENA region).
Check out magnitt to find out more about startups in the UAE and across the MENA region.
8. What does the UAE Government require from public entities with regards to innovation?
Abu Dhabi and Dubai have included an innovation pillar in their respective Excellence Programs. The requirements in both programs are pretty much the same. They require government entities to work on two areas related to innovation: the first one involves future shaping (developing capabilities in future thinking) and the second one, implementing the Innovation Management System (IMS) (applying mechanisms to ensure creating a work culture and environment supporting creativity, innovative thinking and continuous improvement). You can find more information on the Abu Dhabi Excellence award system here and the one for Dubai here.
9. I don’t have much idea about innovation and no specific resources have been allocated to it. How can I start innovating?
We recommend you start by attending one of our raining sessions. We will explain the whole innovation framework and methodology to be able to apply it within your organization. If you are interested in attending our next open-to-public innovation just drop us an email at info@innoway.me with your details (email and phone number) and we will keep you posted on our next training.
10. What readings are useful when it comes to innovation and applying it in the organization?
One of the best books you can read at the moment about how to develop successful innovative ecosystems is The Corporate Startup. You can buy the book on Amazon here.
