This model, developed by corporate strategists Roger Bean and Russell Radford, demonstrates how management can affect the innovation process through layers of employees and across the complete range of organizational activities. In formulating their model, Bean and Radford adopted a system viability perspective. Because innovation is vulnerable to so many organizational viruses, the authors argue, only a comprehensive and holistic view can provide the insight necessary to both engender and sustain innovation. In their view, the ‘viability’ of the system is maintained by managing the various elements of the system together, keeping elements from interfering with each other, and looking to the future with the whole rather than just the parts in mind.
The Innovation Management Model consists of four levels or subsystems, each of which represents common and necessary elements of the model.
The Four Systems Levels in the Innovation Management Model
The only requirement is that System I must produce something of value such that in its own right it could be a viable system. All the other systems (Systems II through IV) exist only to support the teams and groups that make up System I. The following describes each subsystem in turn:
This portion of the model interacts with four discrete activity clusters, each requiring management and each essential to the comprehensive understanding of innovation. The combination of the viable system activity with the activity clusters gives companies a useful way to examine the management of innovation.
Typical Activity Clusters
Combining the viable system model with the activity clusters shows how the involvement of the various participants in the system varies by system, time horizon and activity. Notably, System III maintains a constant role across the entire spectrum of activities—in keeping with the role of operational management.
The Innovation Management Model
Combined with the Activity Clusters
The Innovation Management Model provides a useful view of the challenge of managing innovation. It provides a means of understanding what needs to be done and some insight as to how to go about it. Needless to say, the model operates effectively when applied with a strong market focus.
Source
Bean, Roger and Radford, Russell; The Business of Innovation: Managing the Corporate Imagination for Maximum Results; AMACOM; 2002.
Developed by Robert G. Cooper, a marketing professor at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, the influential stage-gate system is a game plan for product innovation. The system is designed to help companies reduce cycle time and, at the same time, improve new product success rates. It’s a systematic process—a blueprint or roadmap—for moving a new product through the various stages from idea to launch.
The stage-gate system breaks the new product process into discrete and identifiable stages, typically, five or six. Each stage is designed to gather information needed to progress the project to the next gate or decision point. Each stage is multi-functional. There is no ‘R&D stage’ or ‘marketing stage.’ Each stage consists of a set of parallel activities undertaken by people from different functional areas within the firm. These activities are designed to gather information and drive uncertainties down. The entrance to each stage is a gate: these gates control the process and serve as the quality control, and Go/Kill check points. In addition, each stage costs more than the preceding one—the game plan is an incremental commitment to one concept.
Generic Stage-Gate Process Model
The general flow of the typical or generic stage-gate process consists of the following:
These stages capture the optimal design process. Most companies don’t actually operate this way. One stage not captured here is strategy formulation. This stage is ‘macro’ in nature—strategically-oriented as opposed to process or tactics. It’s probably best considered as a pre-requisite to the final business plan.
The game plan or new product process outlined here is fairly typical. Most companies tailor the model to their own circumstances and build flexibility into their game plans. For example, not all projects pass through every stage or gate of the model. Regardless of the particular configuration of the system, the benefits are evident. The model puts discipline into a process that, in too many firms, is ad hoc and seriously deficient. The process is visible and relatively simple to understand and communicate. It provides a roadmap to facilitate the project, and it better defines the project leader’s objectives and tasks: the deliverables for each gate become the objectives of the team and leader.
Source
Cooper, Robert G.; Winning at New Products: Accelerating the Process from Idea to Launch (second edition); Perseus Books; 1993.
