There are many reasons that stand on the way to our ability to innovate. Here are some of the more frequently cited challenges and barriers to innovation. Unfortunately, I have experienced most.

• Organization and environment not supportive of innovation
• Traditional top-down management discourages front line empowerment and innovation
• Short term focus on execution with no time to think for the future
• Lack of resources, leadership and inadequate funding
• Organizational focus and value is on risk avoidance
• Lack of systemic innovation process
• Lack of end-to-end processes for bringing ideas to fruition
• Focus on immediate and unreasonable financial returns
• No incentives to innovate
• Inappropriate measures for managing innovations
• No common definition of innovation and how to measure success
• Lack of effective communication between individuals, managers, various disciplines, …
• Lack of understanding and interaction with the customers, market and industry
• Too much specialization, and lack the ability to cross-pollenate ideas or make connections
• Lack of focus, vision and direction from management and leadership ranks
• Lack of focus and support on innovation by senior management
• No infusion of new ideas, new problems or learning opportunities
• Resistance to change

Innovation is associated with growth, and technology advances are seen as having the most impact on growth and innovation. In today’s competitive global market, innovation and differentiation is a necessity for every firm. Innovation and technology management is focused to increase productivity by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of research and development, decreasing the time needed to realize a return on investment, and optimizing current and future technology investments. Without a structured process unmanaged innovation can be not only expensive, but also unpredictable.

So, where to start your innovation and technology management journey? As Sun Tzu recommends, that the starting point for any endeavor should be knowledge: knowledge of ourselves and knowledge of others (The Art of War: The Denma Translation).

Knowing the other and knowing oneself,
In one hundred battles no danger.
Not knowing the other and knowing oneself,
One victory for one loss.
Not knowing the other and not knowing oneself,
In every battle certain defeat.

So, here is a list of questions to contemplate on. If you are looking to improve your innovation process, read through the list, think about it, process it, take an inventory, visualize the ideal, internalize gaps, and start building an action plan. I plan to write more about these areas in the upcoming blogs. Send me a note on things that you see missing from the list, and I’ll continue to expand it and eventually turn it into a survey.

Think through your innovations and technology ideas. What are the sources of those ideas, how would you breakdown the internal vs. external idea rates? What is the process to take these ideas to market? Where do you start, and how do you proceed? How would you categorize the various innovation types: mostly incremental, process only, yet another better mouse trap?

How would you describe and rate your innovation capability? Think about your processes, leadership, funding, know-how, organizational ability to learn and explore… How are the teams pull together — multiple disciplines, backgrounds, experiences, or mainly specialized groups?

How well does your team work together, and with internal and external partners: marketing, sales, support, universities, technology partners, vendors, … How do the new ideas are born and nurtured?

How well do your innovation and technology directions support overall business goals and objectives? Does everyone in your team understand how they contribute to the top line and/or bottom line? What are the key attributes used for project prioritization, selection and funding, and how well are they aligned with the objectives of the business?

When was the last time your team came up with an idea that challenged the status quo? How was it nurtured and handled by the firm and senior management? What became of that idea? Does your organization have a immunity defense to new ideas that challenge status quo?

How is your innovation funnel and innovation portfolio performing? What are your key metrics and how are they performing against the baseline and the targets? How are you monitoring, measuring and communicating the innovation progress? How is risk defined and managed in your organization? Do you have a risk adverse culture?

How well do you understand your customers, market, industry and competitors? Do you have structured processes to regularly scan the environment and determine opportunities and threats? What do you do with those new learnings and insights? Would you say the organization is focusing on the most critical problems and exploiting the biggest opportunities?

How do your customers and the market react to your new products? Do they love them, hate them or are they neutral? What are the internal reactions and feedback from your customer facing teams: support, sales and services?

How well are you executing on your projects? Are projects performing on-time, on-budget and on-quality? Can you tell at any given point in time how the project is performing? How are the decisions being made? How well are the stakeholders identified and informed?

Where and how do you spend your time: in the present, fire fighting? Do you get the chance to think, plan and work for the future?

I’m sure that there are more to add. Drop me a note with your favorites.

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