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Having looked at the Front End Innovation that occurs before an idea enters a company's
Formal Development Process and what makes it so complex, let's take a closer look at
the different elements involved and the role they play in Innovation creation.
Here I would like to show you some of the common steps in the Front End of Innovation
and what they include. Some key actions are: - Describe the discovery or new concept,
- Improve understanding of the innovation and its potential,
- Prioritize which ideas are best suited for additional investigation
- Unearth and understand enabling technologies, - Evaluate risks and barriers
- Conceptualize a solution and define the value proposition,
- Evaluate scalability criteria and time to market,
- Architect and plan prototypes, - Challenge conclusions,
- Build consensus and support for the concept - Iterate and refine the plan for insertion
into the Formal Process. ... and that is a lot of hard work!
There are six generic steps represented in these phases that demonstrate the variety
of tasks that are undertaken during the Front End of Innovation.
- Preliminary assessment includes high-level market, technology, and industry assessments.
Could this idea make sense? Could our company do it? What alternatives are already out there?
- Market research involves understanding the current market and what "pain" the customer
may want to eliminate which is not addressed by current offerings.
- Technology searching includes finding and developing early stage technologies, securing
IP rights, building prototypes, and performing translational research designed to demonstrate
a key aspect of an otherwise theoretical technology.
- Product concept testing includes early focus groups and other concept testing completed
through test runs on current equipment or test runs on equipment owned by others.
-Portfolio analysis and triage includes an examination of each potential innovation with
criteria that differ substantially from the numerical analysis required by The Formal
Process. The main goal of the portfolio analysis is to eliminate potential innovations and
ask questions designed to increase understanding of the concept.
-The final step is the preparation of the product definition and detailed analysis required
by The Formal Process.
In practice, there are dozens of potential tasks that might be undertaken in order to
better understand the potential of a Front End idea, and these tasks are not performed
in a linear, sequential way. Iteration is critical and ideas may move through these
steps in a random fashion at first.
Now that we understand the Front End and all the possible phases it entails, we can pull
it up next to the Formal Process as a whole for a 'big picture' frame of reference. Take
a look at the next video for an easy to understand, side-by-side comparison.