Philippe Jabre is the founder, chief investment officer and chief executive officer of Jabre Capital Partners, an independent wealth management firm and multifamily office established in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2006. This article will look at innovation investment and the potential for businesses to increase their returns through the effective integration of innovation management in their strategic planning.
Innovation is critical to the continued success of any enterprise, protecting its longevity and future success. Successful organisations generally adopt one of three approaches to innovation strategies, namely:
- Market Readers – Keeping their finger on the pulse of the market and launching products or services when the timing is right in the marketplace.
- Technology Drivers – Relying on their own internal technological advancements to deliver new products or services.
- Need Seekers – Launching new products or services based on superior end-user understanding.
Since every business is different, every innovation strategy will be, too. In terms of categorising their own company, management teams may adopt a combination of two or all three of these approaches to innovation management. Whichever approach they choose, in order to be effective it will need to align closely with their overall business plan while having buy-in from stakeholders across the organisation. Innovation management should be treated as a cross-functional business process from beginning to end. All enterprises should consider incorporating innovation management in their strategic planning.
Staying Agile Is Key to Long-Term Success
A business needs to be agile in order to achieve long-term success, with its business and innovation strategies perfectly aligned. In any enterprise, innovation is a key function. Rather than separating innovation management from other strategies, businesses need to integrate them. Long-term commercial success demands a joined-up approach. Innovation and product development can be protracted processes. Nevertheless, they lay the foundation for future success and growth. When developing their companies’ innovation strategy, management teams are setting measurable, achievable goals for new products, providing an important starting point for measuring future success.
Senior management plays a critical role in all business proceedings. In order to achieve their innovation objectives, a company’s senior executives will need to play an active role in decision-making regarding new products that the business should invest in developing, as well as those that should be discontinued, with decisions reached and strategies agreed on before a single dime is invested in product development.
The Key to Success in Business
Success in business requires leadership to remain conscious of all of their active innovation projects. Most ideas for new products are generally connected to and/or dependent on others in the product development pipeline. It’s recommended that information be maintained in a central repository to prevent delays and ensure that resources are not wasted on developing products that are destined for failure. One way of addressing this is by using dedicated product portfolio management and strategic road-mapping software to enable leadership teams to visualise interdependencies between projects, enabling them to adjust resources and market strategy where needed.
Successful product portfolio management demands the incorporation of real-time business and technical data, paving the way for innovation investments to be thoroughly and objectively measured and reviewed in line with the business’ long-term strategic plans. Doing so will help the business achieve real returns on its innovation investments, ensuring its long-term profitability, success and growth.
While there is no direct correlation between research and development spend and an enterprise’s fiscal success, there is a direct link between investing in the right areas of innovation and organisational profitability. Effective innovation management is integral to the success of any enterprise, facilitating adaptability, fostering growth and enabling businesses in overpopulated markets to stand out from the crowd. More than just a buzzword, innovation is crucial across all industries, enabling businesses to deliver unparallelled service, build a competitive edge, and develop products and services that solve real-world problems, disrupt entire industries and potentially even create new ones.