Innovation: nurturing creativity and staying ahead

In today’s dynamic business landscape, innovation is not just a buzzword—it’s a strategic imperative. Organizations that embrace innovation can leapfrog their competitors, create new markets, and drive sustainable growth. However, innovation isn’t just about coming up with ground-breaking ideas; it’s equally about executing those ideas effectively. In this article, we’ll delve into why and how innovation is fostered within our company.

Why innovation matters and how it is approached

Among different reasons and backgrounds why innovation matters nowadays, some main drivers determine why investing in innovation is crucial for our company.

Staying relevant and anticipating trends: innovation ensures that our company remains relevant in a dynamic marketplace. By actively seeking out emerging trends and adapting to them, we position ourselves as a forward-thinking player. Whether it is technological advancements related to product contents or processes disruptions to be more effective and leaner, staying ahead of the curve is essential.

Attracting talents and empowering people: top talents are attracted to organizations that encourage creativity and provide a platform for self-expression. When employees feel their ideas are valued and heard, they become more engaged and committed. Innovation becomes a powerful recruitment tool, attracting visionaries who want to contribute meaningfully.

Cultivating ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking: innovation isn’t about incremental improvements, it’s about breakthroughs. Encouraging people to think beyond conventional boundaries fosters fresh perspectives. When employees are empowered to challenge norms, explore unconventional solutions, and take calculated risks, the organization benefits from their diverse viewpoints. And this allows to make the difference also in our traditional business as engineering service provider, challenging the status quo and providing valuable solutions to our customers.

We established processes and structures to manage and develop innovation in our company to make it as effective as possible based on our competences, background and structures.

Open and diffused approach: innovation is not confined to a select few. Instead, it permeates every corner of our company. An open culture encourages collaboration, cross-functional exchanges and idea-sharing. Whether it’s through brainstorming sessions or specific challenges, everyone should feel invited to contribute. Since years we launch internal and external open challenges with the use of specific platforms and in cooperation with other companies and universities where people can exchange ideas and improve them by sharing their thoughts. We also cooperate with external facilitators that help us to coordinate ideas collections, refinements and development.

Coordinated efforts by a small team: while innovation is everyone’s responsibility, we have a dedicated team that ensures focused efforts. We adopted a lightweight team structure (Fig 1) where two project managers steer people involved in innovation initiatives and act as catalysts, scouting for opportunities, conducting experiments, and driving change. Their role is to ignite creativity across the organization, connecting disparate dots and turning ideas into reality.

Challenges in managing innovation activities within a service-oriented company

As mentioned in the introduction of this article, innovation is not only coming up with ground-breaking ideas but it’s equally about to properly selecting and executing them and make them available for us and our customers and benefit from their generation and implementation. Collecting, selecting and implementing innovative ideas has many different challenges that we learned and had to face during these years. Let’s explore the creative facets of innovation, from envisioning customer needs to navigating the struggles faced by passionate inventors.

Ideas generation and selection

Seeing through the eyes of the customers and users. Innovation begins with empathy. To create meaningful solutions, organizations must step into their customers’ shoes. What are their pain points? What unmet desires keep them awake at night? By understanding their vision, we can craft products and services that resonate deeply.

Business case generation: from idea to impact. Innovation without a solid business case is like a ship without a compass. Creativity ignites the spark, but a well-crafted business case provides direction. It outlines the value proposition, market potential, financial feasibility, and competitive advantage.

Business cases emerge from thoughtful inquiry. What problem are we solving? How does our solution differ from existing alternatives? What resources do we need, and what risks are involved? Innovators who delve into these questions build a compelling rationale for their ideas.

Struggles of inventors: love and perseverance. Inventors often fall in love with their ideas, regardless some aspects that should discourage them from taking the next steps. Their passion fuels late nights, scribbled sketches and countless prototypes. But love can be blinding. They become attached and are unwilling to let go even when evidence suggests otherwise. The struggle is maintaining a delicate balance. Inventors must love their ideas while remaining open to criticism. Passion should drive persistence, not stubbornness. One of the hardest parts for innovation project managers and decision makers is providing feedbacks to inventors explaining why their idea will not make it through the next steps and development phase. And colleagues, over the years, have learned to take such feedbacks positively and motivate them to generate further ideas.

The core of the idea generation and selection can be easily summarized, as I love to repeat, in some easy questions to ask to ourselves: ‘Would I buy the product? (or implement the process)’. ‘If yes, how much would I pay for it?’ The answers to these questions are a good indicator whether we’re going in the direction of the customer needs or not.

Innovation Implementation: navigating the path to success

Given an idea which has been evaluated as valuable and worth to be developed, the next phases start. The creation of a Proof of Concept (POC) or Minimum Viable Product (MVP) are in most cases the next step to have a confirmation before entering the development phase. This is needed because moving from ideas evaluation to the next phases and preparation for the market, the development costs increase exponentially, while on the other side uncertainty decreases. (Fig 2)

An interesting technique is the ‘pretotyping’, a set of tools, techniques and tactics designed to validate any idea for a new product quickly, objectively, and accurately. 'Pretotyping' was coined by Alberto Savoia during his time at Google. It refers to the practice of rapid testing to determine the desirability of a solution. He defines pretotyping as “building the right product before you invest in building your product right.”

Very interesting examples can be found at the following link:

Basic Pretotyping Techniques

Some key aspects can determine the success or failure of any innovation development, the following are those we found most challenging and impacting the path to the market.

Finding the right partners and funds

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, innovation is no longer an individual task. Companies seeking significant, cost-efficient and timely breakthroughs must embrace collaboration. Seek partners who bring unique expertise, resources and perspectives, companies that share our vision and needs.

Especially in the tech sector, where innovation fuels growth, partnerships play a pivotal role. Tech companies move swiftly and successful innovation often hinges on strategic alliances. Partnerships with other organizations, start-ups, or research institutions can provide access to new markets, technologies, and funding. Joint ventures, licensing agreements, or co-development projects must be considered.

This is also a way to reduce investments by sharing developments costs: external funding can fuel innovation efforts and demonstrate the potential impact of our innovation.

Approaching the markets and customers

Understanding our target markets and customers is fundamental: analyse customer needs, pain points and preferences and tailor our innovation to address specific market gaps.

POCs and MVPs, as well as ‘pretotypes’, can provide already in the previous phases very good inputs.

For our company, an automotive service company in the field of design, engineering and small series cars production, moving from services to products requires a mindset shift. We need to understand the unique challenges of product-based business models and aspects like distribution, after-sale services, warranties, maintenance and customer support.

And, finally, setting the right pricing strategies: set competitive yet profitable prices, considering bundling products with related services, leveraging subscription models or tiered pricing structures.

Conclusions

Our company has always had an innovative DNA and, some years ago, we made a deliberate decision to establish innovation processes and structures to address specific needs. The fruits of our work are now beginning to emerge.

Successful innovation requires a holistic approach. It’s not merely about inventing something new: it’s about bringing ideas to life, from conception to realization. This involves identifying the right markets and delivering value.

Innovation is not an isolated event, rather, it’s a dynamic journey that unfolds over time. Learning is a continuous process and we actively collaborate, forge connections, deeply understand our markets, and enhance our product sales. All these elements converge to strengthen our organization, enabling us to thrive even in today’s ever-changing world.