Mitigating Disruptive Innovation Risk

Let's begin with a defintion for innovation:  Innovation is a match beween a need and a solution. Technology innovation can be brought about by inventing a new solution, discovering a new need or by improvising a new solution by applying an existing solution and need in a new way. Innovation need to create value:

• Is the need real?
• Does the solution meet the need?
• Can the solution be delivered cost effectively?

There are 3 Frontiers of innovation that corporates fall into. They need to exploit an existing technology, a new technology for an existing solution, or exploration of a completely new approach or solution. Each have their own risk reward systems with respect to adoption of the technology or solution itself.

The TekMetrix Ambidextrous Innovation Matrix, Figure below, indicates that in order to improve and sustain our business model we must fill the innovation pipeline with Frontier 3 opportunities. TekMetrix will assist our clients in identifying, developing and sustaining an innovation pipeline. We create a culture of innovation from our experience and knowledge through:

• Identifying investment needs in technology exploration
• Working to assign a central authority responsible for innovation
• Managing the innovation pipeline
• Creating a model to value the innovation 
• Value Created (VC) = Function (idea, development capabilities and external factors)
• Managing a portfolio of innovation projects
• Managing the quality of ideas
• Integrating with the business units from the start
• Developing capabilities (skills, assets, systems)

We privide both an offensive and a defensive perspective on assisting our clients with innovtion. Offensive points of vew begin with how to discover and pursue opportunities for future growth and from a densive point of view how our can clients mitigate their rise to disruptive innovation. When an organization is faced with disruptive threats we work them to manage risk assisting with strategy development along the following decision scenarios:

• Fully Invest in the disruptive technology
• Invest in a project or create a new organization to mitigate, hedge against the risk of disruptive innovation
• Review anti-competitive actions
• Concede and manage for cash
• Change the game by proactively investing in new market opportunities
• Invest in Frontier 3 opportunities creating Frontier 2 opportunities
• Minimally we work with our clients to extend their business processes to enhance Frontier 2 culture and capabilities
• Taking a project portfolio perspective for Frontier 2 represents risk mitigation 
• Leverage Frontier 2 opportunities to make money with at horizon 1 - exploitation

Defining the Innovation Process

• Strategy - what is the plan to proceed with innovtion efforts, what is the innovation opportunity (hypothesis)?
• Project - how to get the optimized return for specific innovation activities?
• Innovation Process - is this a new innovation process or an existing innovatino process in the client organization?
• Discovery processes to create more opportunities (workshops, innovation events, projects, partnerships)
• Find better opportunities by involving experts who have reliably generated high quality ideas in the past
• Inceasing idea quality variance by involving customers, suppliers, and other SMEs
• Creating an effective selection process
• Resolve team tension, work within productive processes
• Identifying and balancing internal versus external modes of innovation