Our Foundations for Innovation

Innovare’s front-end is based on our extensive experience as hand's-on innovators across industries and our research on best practices in corporate creativity and innovation.

The key characteristics of Innovare's front-end approach

• Systematic and repeatable front-end process - Adaptable for developing innovation strategy, new product and service concepts and technology direction

• Externally focused organizational learning - Overcomes internally derived and limiting paradigms expanding the range of opportunity

• Cross-functional team immersion - Leverage diversity of informed minds for better problem definition, solution development and organizational alignment

• Needs driven research approach - Reveal new frameworks by letting the customer tell the story uncovering needs insights and merging those with market and technology insights guiding innovation

• Climate for developmental thinking - Non-judgmental and safe environment for enhanced team creativity and building ideas into strong viable concepts

• Portfolio perspective - Create a range of innovation opportunities from close in to breakthrough to populate the innovation pipeline

The materials in the following section provide examples of our work, PDFs of our services, and a few publications we find of value.

Innovare's Foundations Newsletter

Flyers Describing on Innovare Services

Research and Articles

Innovare's Process Overview and Detailed Descriptions

Innovare's Foundations Newsletter

News on Customer-Centered Innovation Strategies and Results
Our newsletter provides examples of customer-centered innovation in commercial printing, health care and the chemical industry.  The examples describe how understanding customer needs was critical for innovation success for Xerox, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Praxair. 

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Flyers Describing on Innovare Services

About Innovare - A brief overview of who we are and our services

Tricept - Our front end of innovation process

Market Drivers - Our deep dive to understand emerging drivers of your market

Vocal Insights® - Our customer needs discovery process

Tech Explorer - Our approach for linking technology development to customer needs

Innovare Greenhouse - Our team creativity and idea generation workshops

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Research and Articles

Research Shows Understanding Customer Needs is Critical for Effective Innovation
In this new white paper, Don Ross provides a review  of the most recent research indicating that companies that are the best at innovation take explicit steps to understand customer needs during the front-end process of innovation.   Further, the most effective approach is to empower cross functional team to apply Voice of the Customer methods.   Companies that take a customer-centered approach to innovation enjoy at least twice the new product success rates and realize substantially higher revenues and profits from their innovations.

Product and Technology Mapping Tools for Planning and Portfolio Decision Making

Beebe Nelson recently published with Richard Albright their chapter on product and technology mapping tools in the 2005 edition of the PDMA Toolbook 2 for Product Development. 

Mapping enables innovators to visually represent their plans from high level strategic through tactical plans over the foreseeable time horizon.  It is part are the process of creating shared understanding or “mental models” through the organization which improved decision-making and innovation implementation. 

The chapter presents how to construct and use both strategic and tactical maps.   These provide a comprehensive picture of the market, customer, product, and technology space in which the teams execute and the company strives to be competitive.

Book Review: How Customers Think: Essential Insights in the Mind of the Market
Journal of Product Innovation Management
Don Ross and Beebe Nelson Review Gerald Zaltman's How Customers Think, and discuss its applicability to product development professionals across industries.

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Innovare's Process Overview and Detailed Descriptions

We have prepared several PowerPoint presentations on how to approach innovation process improvement and our customer-centered innovation services.  We are available to share those with you on-line during a virtual meeting.  Please call us or send us an e-mail requesting more information.  Click here to start the process!

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