Innovation Project Management Handbook

Dr.Gregory C. McLaughlin, Dr. William R. Kennedy

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498788274
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Innovation Project Management Handbook provides organizational leaders and decision-makers with a cadre of agile, disciplined, and transformational tools and processes for improving innovation opportunity outcomes and achieving sustained innovation project success. The authors introduce new tools and processes developed over their decades of work i

Chapter 1

Using the Handbook

Introduction

This book, or more appropriately handbook, is a complete revision of the book, ENOVALE™: How to Unlock Sustained Innovation Project Success (McLaughlin and Caraballo, 2013a). This book revises the original process including new tools and a distinctly improved, better-defined process for successful innovation opportunity projects. This does not negate the original material rather “evolving” it to a better and more adaptive state.

Designed as a handbook, this book provides a systematic and validated approach for conducting innovation projects. The intention is not to teach innovation per se, but to provide a detailed approach and process for creating innovative products, service, or technologies. In any case, effectively capitalizing on the innovation opportunity requires a disciplined project management approach if that innovation is to reach and deliver value to the consumers. In this handbook, we present seven unique, process-derived approaches (we will explain how we achieved this number) for the innovation team and organizational leadership to consider, each of which has a very different objective.

Unlike other techniques that have a common purpose, for instance: audits (for compliance), quality (to reduce defects), or accounting (for debits/credits); the innovation opportunity processes offered in this discussion are agile but predictive and disciplined in approach. The business or organization can accomplish multiple objectives by innovating, depending on the type of innovation desired. Improvement is one objective, discovery another, and competitive advantage a typical third goal or objective. Given that innovation can accomplish multiple objectives, it is easy to comprehend the outcome of following just one implementation method for every innovation opportunity can greatly diminish the chance of success. If the leadership of an organization needs an agile or flexible approach to innovation then following one method seems unrealistic and wasteful. That is not to say that a single methodology or approach can accomplish great success, as it is certainly possible. However, the caveat to the last statement is we feel there is not a single “catch all” method sufficient to achieve an organization’s complete complement of desired innovation objectives.

The handbook begins (Chapter 1) with an innovation primer, for those who need a refresher on innovation. Next, we discuss how we evolved the original model (ENOVALE) to N2OVATE™. Chapter 2 provides an overview on how to select a project for each type of innovation opportun...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Authors
• Chapter 1: Using the Handbook
• Chapter 2: Selecting an Innovation Project
• Chapter 3: Building an Effective Initial Innovation Opportunity Profile
• Chapter 4: New Products/Services with Existing Resources
• Chapter 5: “New” Applications
• Chapter 6: A New Approach
• Chapter 7: Incremental Innovation: Performance below Expectations
• Chapter 8: Incremental Innovation: Accelerated Performance
• Chapter 9: Innovative Change: The Art of Replacement