We typically engage with companies in one of two ways. Companies come to us seeking a better understanding of their innovation capabilities and we start with an organizational assessment of a company’s innovation system. Alternatively, a company with an innovation challenge approaches us and we work with the company to build a capability for overcoming this challenge. Both these paths lead to company action plans that identify strategic level issues for senior management attention and business requirements for portfolio and project managers to address to build a sustainable innovation capability.

We also are very committed to implementation. In fact, regardless of where we start, our overriding objective is successful implementation. Successful implementation not only depends on establishing new processes and business structures, it requires working with the executive team to identify and facilitate change management issues at the system-wide level, where strategic intent, organizational commitment, culture and leadership development are critical elements. We also work with portfolio and project managers to address structure, role, process and interface requirements for moving projects through the innovation system and delivering them successfully to market.

Academic Research Foundation

RPI leads the academic research program. We contribute time and money to this valuable resource. Phase I culminated in the release of the book on Radical Innovation. Phase II led to the book Grabbing Lightning to help companies more fully understand how to initiate, develop and sustain a breakthrough innovation capability. We use the learning from this research to develop and evolve our custom and training programs to bring leading-edge practices to companies.

The key insight is that breakthrough innovation, game changing or major innovation is not an ad hoc, serendipitous event… it is a management discipline that companies need to learn such as engineering, marketing and other disciplines!

CUSTOM PROGRAMS

The Radical Innovation Group provides a variety of custom programs tailored to unique company requirements. We look at a company from different perspectives: strategic and operational as well as system-wide and project specific. Strategic engagements vary from a one-day innovation overview and issues identification session to a comprehensive organizational assessment of a company’s innovation capacity. We are committed to following through on our recommendations by being your implementation partner. We will guide you through your implementation challenges and provide you with tools specifically developed for portfolio and project management in a learning-based high uncertainty environment. We also sit on internal innovation and venture boards to bring industry experience, the latest in governance models and the value of an outside perspective.

TRAINING PROGRAMS

We offer orientation, training and coaching programs on a number of innovation topics. In partnership with RPI, the Danish Technical University and others, we offer executive education programs in corporate entrepreneurship. We also offer on site workshops at companies looking to train innovation staff and project teams on how to learn about new technologies, markets and business models.

THE INNOVATION ROADMAP™

Overview:

The RI Group has developed an Innovation Roadmap, which guides the development of an innovation capability in companies. This Roadmap is our DNA or tapestry and is based on systems-level thinking, i.e., to effect change and establish organizational legitimacy looking at all the elements of an effective innovation system is required across strategic, portfolio and project requirements. The Innovation Roadmap includes a series of questions that must be addressed over time to develop a mature, focused and disciplined approach to innovation management.

Through our work, companies have been able to maintain or secure industry leadership positions, accelerate the adoption of a systematic approach to new business creation and commercialization, reduce the lifecycle for major innovation projects by 25-33% or more and increase revenue contributions to divisions or business units by a factor of 2 to 3 times.

All of our programs and tools have been developed to aid companies in answering questions on this Roadmap.

Program Descriptions:

The following provides a representation of the RI Group’s training and custom programs:

A – Strategic Level

Innovation System Review

Objective is to conduct a review of a company’s innovation capabilities to identify strengths and areas for development that will help the company or division develop an effective, sustainable capability for higher uncertainty innovation initiatives. The program design is as follows:

1. Follow an interview protocol designed examining critical factors for innovation effectiveness;
   1. Career Background and Role of Interviewees
   2. Innovation Purpose: Mission, Role, Structure and Effectiveness
   3. Innovation Processes: Project Management and Evaluation
   4. Innovation Stakeholders: Interface and Transition Management Requirements
   5. Innovation Measures of Success: Culture, Metrics and Achievements
2. Provide a Summary Report of findings, including an Innovation Roadmap™ outlining implementation recommendations based on a gap analysis of what is not working and missing;
3. Present these findings and recommendations to key innovation stakeholders, including an overview of the requirements for building an effective and sustainable management capability for higher uncertainty innovation initiatives based on external benchmarks from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s 10-year Radical Innovation Research Study and the RI Group’s ongoing work with innovative companies;
4. Discuss how this learning regarding state-of-the-art innovation requirements could be applied to the company’s processes and capabilities; and
5. Determine what would be the best way to map these processes and capabilities into the company, including potential next steps.

Executive Seminar for Organizational Understanding and Alignment

The objectives of the Executive Seminar are to review insights from RPI’s radical innovation research study; outline the requirements for building an effective, sustainable innovation capability for higher uncertainty new business development projects; highlight the role leadership teams play in defining the strategic innovation agenda; and, introduce an Innovation Roadmap for managing higher uncertainty innovation projects. The Seminar would cover the following areas:

1. Introduction to innovation and definitions;
2. Overview of and findings from RPI’s Radical Innovation research study;
3. Challenges of innovation capability development with company case studies;
4. Considerations for an effective, sustainable management system for higher uncertainty innovation projects; and
5. Elements of an Innovation Roadmap™ and critical success factors.

Leadership Development Program

Build an appropriate skills mix and to help leaders be better prepared to lead and respond to the culture changes and new competency requirements associated with the commercialization of radical innovation. This program would involve the following:

1. Identify individual strengths, weaknesses and gaps in leadership and new business creation skills;
2. Build a development plan for capitalizing on strengths and closing the gaps; and,
3. Track progress against this plan through follow up coaching.

Strategy Setting and Strategic Market Exploration

Develop a dynamic Strategy Setting and Strategic Market Exploration capability to deliver upon growth objectives that incorporates the following:

1. Clarification of strategic boundaries for aligned, multi-aligned and unaligned opportunities;
2. Determination of NBD’s role in stretching strategic boundaries;
3. Definition of new business domains;
4. Identification of growth objectives linked to the appropriate innovation portfolio mix (incremental to radical, current strategy versus strategic intent, aligned, multi-aligned and unaligned);
5. Integration of innovation, marketing and strategy functions to guide areas for technology and market exploration and to influence strategy setting;
6. Evolution of strategic intelligence trends capability to capture shifts in company strategy and industry;
7. Creation of a strategic filtering capability for directing new business development projects by type of innovation, business potential and commercialization path; and,
8. Generation of whitespace opportunities set within the newly developed strategic framework.

B – Portfolio Level

Governance Model

Develop a Governance Model with the innovation core team and key stakeholders to address the following:

1. Articulation of the innovation mission, scope and guiding principles to clearly establish the innovation charter;
2. Definition of appropriate governing bodies to move from a hierarchical, operational world to a governance-based, entrepreneurial world;
3. Creation of a common language for innovation based on a consistent definition of terms to build alignment and manage expectations;
4. Establishment of roles and responsibilities of internal and external innovation stakeholders;
5. Definition of organizational commitment and business unit placement variables such as organizational capacity, resource availability, strategic fit, degree of innovativeness and performance expectations;
6. Development of decision making criteria based on investment potential, commercialization path and transition readiness;
7. Identification of appropriate strategic, portfolio and project measures of success and reward systems;
8. Development of a portfolio management and evaluation capability; and
9. Identification of appropriate HR practices, including development of performance management and evaluation tool.

System Level Talent Selection and Development

Develop Team Selection, Project Coaching and Evaluation Guidelines to assist the innovation make appropriate talent and business decisions for higher uncertainty innovation opportunities through;
1. Assessment of existing skills mix to identify strengths and gaps as well as develop plan to fill the gaps;
2. Definition of new roles for hub leader, interface manager, scouts, coaches, advisors, etc.;
3. Guidance re: selecting appropriate leadership personnel and team members to staff the Innovation Hub and project teams;
4. Providing evaluation board members, project leaders and coaches with new tools and processes for coaching and evaluating higher uncertainty radical and other major innovation projects given their stage of innovation maturity; and,
5. Looking beyond project issues to portfolio and strategic insights as well as leadership, culture and innovation system considerations that are critical to project and portfolio success.

C – Project Level

Market Development Training and Strategic Coaching Program

The Market Development Training Program offers an effective way to understand the differences between managing higher uncertainty (platform and breakthrough/radical) and incremental innovation projects. It is based on an experiential learning approach, using actual projects from within the innovation project portfolio. The focus of this program is to provide the innovation community with an understanding of the following:

1. What issues technologists and new business creation specialists must consider to communicate the potential value of technology or business model opportunities;
2. What market exploration techniques are required to identify and learn about unfamiliar markets and markets that do not exist;
3. How to apply these market exploration techniques to generate new applications for a given technology, business model, project and/or domain;
4. What Discovery, Incubation and Acceleration questions are to be asked/answered;
5. What a Learning Plan™ is, how it differs from a new product development (NPD) management approach, why there is a need for this type of project management tool, and what role it plays in the innovation system;
6. How to apply the Learning Plan™ Methodology and the Uncertainty Management Checklist to reduce project uncertainties;
7. How to develop and evolve the Learning Plan™ as a powerful tool for project learning through the use of learning loops; and
8. How the use of the Learning Plan™, Business Concept and Business Proposal Templates help guide more sound business decisions.

Transition Management Training Program

The Transition Management Training Program introduces the Transition Management Process and the Transition Readiness Assessment Tool™ as well as provides coaching for project teams on how to assess transition readiness. The program covers the following topics:

1. Seven management challenges and four venture uncertainties;
2. Definition of transition management;
3. Keys of effective transition management;
4. Expectations and role of senior management in the transition management process;
5. Dimensions and characteristics of transition readiness;
6. Critical transition management questions that need to be addressed;
7. How to utilize the Transition Readiness Assessment Tool™ to assess transition readiness; and,
8. How a transition plan builds the case for divisional or receiving unit commitment.

   ---