Innovation Process Management

Challenge 

The primary challenges associated with innovation process management include difficulty identifying and investing in the best ideas for the correct market with the right resources, a lack of coordination, and challenges measuring innovation.  Organizations often do not have structured innovation processes in place to drive transparency, metrics development, or cross-functional collaboration. 

Employees are faced with limited opportunities to contribute and often struggle to socialize ideas within the organization.  Within many organizations a lack of coordination and long development times lead to limited customer insight.  As speed and coordination are critical to many organizations’ success, an effective collaboration process is essential to turn insights into ideas and action.

Solution 

The Microsoft Innovation Process Management (IPM) Solution is built on the Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) Solution, enabling organizations to facilitate the six stages of innovation process management.

Strategize and Capture Ideas 

In order to foster innovation, an organization must first establish and prioritize business drivers and metrics.  Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) provides a flexible, customizable management system for ideas and their associated content.  Employees can capture their thoughts and collaborate with others on idea definition.

With Office SharePoint Server 2007, an integral part of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Solution, ideas are captured and centralized in a collaborative portal.  Employees can search to find internal and external expertise, and gather sales history data to develop a business case for innovation. Workflow and collaboration technology can then be used to help create a cross-functional team and collaborative workspace for idea submission. In addition, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 provides a collaborative atmosphere that facilitates team involvement in an ad-hoc or structured environment.

Formulate and Objectively Evaluate Initiatives 

Ideas are formulated according to business cases that include strategic impact, market potential, financial analysis, and SWOT analysis. Ideas can then be published for review using Microsoft Office SharePoint Sever 2007 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007. Team members can provide ratings, reviews, and feedback to help determine the idea’s importance.

Microsoft Windows® Rights Management Services enables team members to set permissions for classified documents and e-mail so that intellectual capital is secure from its inception, preventing loss due to ideas being leaked to competitors or being used to create a new competitive business.

Managers can establish and prioritize business drivers and metrics to facilitate the innovation process with Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, a part of the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management Solution.  Submitted ideas can be selected according to business drivers, analyzed within the portfolio, objectively evaluated, and high-rated ideas approved.

Define and Select Projects

Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 is used to manage the selected ideas throughout the project life cycle.  Managers can build project teams and execute the project while taking into consideration design, market potential, and legal evaluation.   After the review is finalized, a design document is prepared that provides a project workspace for team collaboration. Project managers can create workspaces for innovation team collaboration, assign resources and skills to projects, and track project progress using the SharePoint Server 2007 portion of the Microsoft EPM Solution.

Managers can provide final funding approval to selected innovation projects with Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 and proceed to delivery processes such as New Product Development (NPD), enabling end-to-end project management and tracking, from idea to conclusion. Executives can align ideas and select proposals that align with the organization’s overall business strategy.