R&D Innovation Is Maturing: Corporate Patterns Of Innovation Emerge Across Invention Strategies, Tools, Techniques, & Software

NEEDHAM, Mass. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - May 22, 2012 - Leading corporations first began demanding "innovation" from R&D and Product Development in the early 2000s. Widespread achievement of lean six-sigma factories and outsourcing, combined with a tech bubble burst economy, caused CEOs to look north for financial performance improvement. Achieving innovation would raise the top-line and further underpin margins. Top publishers and research firms caught on, and the first wave of innovation rankings appeared in public media in 2004. Innovation now had stakes, besides Wall Street. A trend of corporate adoption began.

With demand palpable, suppliers and service firms dedicated resources to the emergent market.  Strategic and tactical techniques and approaches were needed to position a company to be innovative. Operational methods, tools, and software were needed to increase day-to-day innovation. 

Selected Corporate Patterns Of R&D Innovation:

• Global strategies that spread R&D out geographically to a handful or two of locations, but keep it pretty centralized at those locations, may perform better.  Within R&D locations, more defined Advanced Development organizations and processes are taking shape.
• Tactically, management focus on embedded innovation process tools like requirements and technical feasibility may facilitate an innovative culture.
• Operationally, over 250 tools and techniques exist. DeBono's "Six Hats," vonHippel's "Lead User," and vonOech's "Creative Whack Pack" lead.
• Software-based tools are diverse.  At low-end price points, the "mind map" tools appear to be gaining the largest piece of the corporate pie.  At high-end price points, companies compete indirectly. "Triz logic", and increasingly "semantic technology," pervade most products however.  Beware a predictable emerging market.  About a third of market entrant companies came and went in the first eight years.  Bling might not be there tomorrow.

The 11th R&D-Product Development Innovation Summit, consisting of eight modules, will broaden your thinking and improve the precision of your R&D strategy and tactics.    Notable Corporate and Senior Executive decision-making is now augmented by quantified information on innovation and intellectual property trends.

GGI's primary research on the emergent market for innovation and intellectual property began for private clients in 2001, and biennially in 2004.  Combined with semi-annual secondary research on innovation and intellectual property since 2004, we conclude that corporate patterns of innovation are now taking shape.

MEDIA CONTACT INFORMATION:
Goldense Group, Inc. [GGI]
Cheryl A. Walrod, 781-444-5400 x201
Assistant To The President
caw@goldensegroupinc.com