Innovation Term Glossary

Get definitions for some of the most common innovation terms in this list below.

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Creative Problem-Solving

The process of generating and evaluating new ideas in order to solve a problem.

Innovation Readiness

The degree to which an organization is prepared to adopt and implement new technologies and ideas.

Innovation Adoption Model

A framework that helps to explain how and why individuals or organizations adopt innovations.

Innovation Diffusion Curve

A graphical representation of the adoption of an innovation over time, often showing the stages of early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

Innovation Diffusion Theory

The process by which an innovation is adopted and integrated into the mainstream.

Innovation Ecosystem Map

A visualization of the interconnectedness of the various elements that make up an innovation ecosystem, including organizations, individuals, and resources.

Innovation Accelerator

A program or organization that helps businesses or ideas to grow quickly by providing intensive support and resources, often over a fixed period of time.

Innovation Incubator

A program or organization that helps new businesses or ideas to develop and grow by providing resources such as funding, workspace, and mentorship.

Innovation Pipeline

A system for managing the flow of ideas through the stages of idea generation, evaluation, development, and implementation.

Innovation Sprint

A time-boxed process for rapidly prototyping and testing new ideas, typically involving a cross-functional team working intensively over a short period of time.

Innovation Sandbox

A controlled environment in which organizations can test and experiment with new technologies and ideas without the risk of failure.

Innovation Culture

The values, behaviors, and practices that support and encourage innovation within an organization.

Innovation Workshop

A structured meeting or session that brings together cross-functional teams to generate and evaluate new ideas.

Innovation Maturity Model

A framework that helps organizations assess their current level of innovation and identify areas for improvement.

Innovation Audit

A systematic review of an organization's innovation processes, capabilities, and outcomes, often with the aim of identifying areas for improvement.

Innovation Software

Innovation software is a tool that helps organizations identify and develop new ideas, products, services, or processes to gain competitive advantage.

Innovation Platform

A technology or infrastructure that enables innovation by providing a common platform for collaboration and development.

The network of organizations, individuals, and resources that support and enable innovation. It includes the interplay between customers, businesses, governments and other stakeholders who influence the development of new products and services.

Frugal Innovation

The process of developing products or services that are affordable and accessible to a wide range of customers, often by using simple and low-cost technologies and design principles.

Lead User

A type of user who is significantly ahead of the market in adopting new products or services. Leader users are typically knowledgeable in the domain and their insights can help shape future products and services.

Collaborative Innovation

The process of developing new ideas through collaboration with external partners, such as customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Open Source

A model of collaboration in which the source code of a software product is made available to the public, allowing anyone to use, modify, and distribute the software.

Crowdfunding

The practice of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the internet.

Trade Secret

Information that is not generally known or readily ascertainable, is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy, and provides a competitive advantage to the owner.

Sustaining Innovation

A type of innovation that involves making incremental improvements to an existing product or process in order to maintain its competitive advantage.

Intellectual Property

The legal rights that protect the creations of the mind, such as inventions, designs, trademarks, and copyrights. They can provide a source of revenue through licensing and royalties.

User Innovation

User innovation is the process of individuals or organizations developing new products or services that meet their own needs, rather than those of the market

Wireframe

A wireframe is a two-dimensional outline of a website or app and thereby provides a clear overview of the layout, user flow and structure.

Value Proposition

The Value Proposition is the offering to the customer, and the reason they should purchase a product. It is the offering of value that sets a product, service or brand apart from its competitors.

User Journey Map

A user journey map, also called customer journey map, is a visualization of a user's interactions with a company.

The House of Quality

The House of Quality is a brainstorming framework that links customer needs to product features.

Simulation of a Service Experience

Essentially a prototype of a service experience, the simulation may consist of role play or a full-scale example of a service delivery.

Storyboard

In innovation a storyboard means a visualization of the experience of a customer during service delivery or product usage.

Stage Gate Model

The Stage Gate Model is a process for managing product innovation and development. It is used in large organizations that emphasizes structure and discipline. It outlines a structured approach for successful project management and decision-making.

Social Innovation

Social innovation is the application of creative thinking and novel solutions to social challenges, leading to positive change in society.

Resources for Innovation

Resources for Innovation are the tools, materials, processes, and people that support the development of new ideas. The assets, skills, and knowledge utilized in the innovation process.

Sensing Capabilities

Sensing Capabilites are the skill of a firm in sensing opportunities in the market before competitors. This is often done through the use of data, analytics and technology.

Remote Innovation

Remote innovation is a way of developing new products, services, and processes in a virtual setting without needing to be physically in the same location.

Red Ocean Strategy

Red Ocean Strategy is a business approach focused on competing in an existing market by trying to outperform the competition. It is innovation in the same space as competitors, in the competitive red ocean full of sharks.

Radical Innovation

Radical innovation is a type of innovation that creates new markets or dramatically changes existing markets. It produces highly differentiated, system-altering creations.

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research focuses on numerical data and often tries to find patterns and relationships in big sets of data.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is used to find non-numerical data. It thereby focuses for example on people's experiences, behaviours or interactions.

Prototyping

Prototyping is the process of creating a physical or virtual representation of a product, system or service to evaluate its usability or performance.

Product Refinement

Product Refinement is the process of making incremental improvements to an existing product. It happens after opportunity identification, when the innovator improves a prototype.

Product Launch

Product Launch is the process of introducing a new product to the market, from initial development and testing to final release.

Product Innovation

Product innovation is the process of introducing new products or significantly improving existing products to meet customer needs and preferences.

Product Development

Product development is the process of creating a new product that is ready to be launched. It includes research, design, prototyping, testing, and production to bring the product to market.

Physical Prototype

A physical prototype is a tangible representation of an idea or concept, designed to help showcase, test, develop and evaluate its potential for use.

Process Innovation

Process innovation is the improvement of existing processes to gain an advantage in terms of cost, quality or speed.

Organizational Culture

The culture that exists within an organization, which is established by its leadership and perpetuated by a variety of processes.

Opportunity Identification

Opportunity Identification is about finding a problem in the market that needs a solution in the form of a product or service.

Open Innovation

Open Innovation is an approach to innovation which sources outside knowledge and resources from outside of the organization in order to find new solutions.

Napkin Sketch

A napkin sketch is the simple drawing of one single idea, explaining what the idea is about without going into details how it works.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

An MVP is a prototype of a product or service that contains basic features to test the product in the market without being fully developed y

Lean Startup

The Lean Startup method is a method of innovation that allows for the rapid development and launch of new products. It focuses on customer feedback, experimentation, and iterative product development.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is about how an organization not only obtains but also uses and stores collective knowledge.

Jobs-to-be-Done Theory

The jobs-to-be-done theory is an approach to truly understand and cater towards customer needs.

Internal Collaboration

Internal Collaboration is the process of engaging multiple people within a company to work together on a shared goal or project.

Integrative Competencies

Integrative Competencies are a set of skills and knowledge a company needs to integrate complex ideas, data, and systems.

Innovation Strategy

Innovation strategy is a comprehensive plan to develop and implement new products, services, or processes that will help an organization achieve its goals.

Innovation Management Process

Innovation management process is the system of tools and techniques used to foster creativity and convert ideas into successful products, services or processes.

Innovation Portfolio

An innovation portfolio is a structured collection of projects and initiatives that an organization pursues to drive innovation.

Innovation Life Cycle

The Innovation Life Cycle is a framework for the stages of an innovation from its inception through to adoption and diffusion.

Innovation Lab

An Innovation Lab is a physical space where people come together to explore and develop new ideas, products or services.

Innovation

Innovation can be defined as the invention, development, and implementation of new products, services, processes, or organizational structures with the goal of creating value.

Innovation Hub

An Innovation Hub is a physical or virtual space designed to nurtures innovation in a particular field, where experts lend advice and direction to the innovators

Innovation Community

An Innovation Community is a group of people who come together to share ideas and learn from each other in order to foster innovation.

Innovation Charter

An Innovation Charter is a method of opportunity management used to create and formalize an organization's commitment to innovation.

Incremental Innovation

Incremental Innovation is a process of improving existing products, services or processes through small, constant changes over time.

Implementation

Implementation is the process of putting an idea or plan into action, the transformation of innovative ideas into actions.

Idea Management

Idea Management is a process of capturing, collecting, and organizing ideas to identify their potential value - and implementing the best.

Hyper-Adoption of Innovation

Hyper-adoption of innovation describes the ability to adopt to innovation at an unmatched speed and skill.

Growth Hacking

A growth hacker explores the next growth opportunities, mostly in a startup environment.

Hybrid thinking

Hybrid thinking means to be able to combine different ways of thinking and quickly switch between one and the other. Milan Guenther defines the term Hybrid Thinking as "the ability to integrate different ways of thinking, jump between them, and align them to work towards a universal goal".

Idea Generation

Idea Generation is the first part of any innovation process. Idea generation is the process of coming up with new, creative concepts or ideas. It focused os generating ideas with methods like brainstorming, research and exploration.

Hackathon

A hackathon is basically any event where people come together to solve problems (mostly over 1-3 days).

Growth Mindset

Having a growth mindset means to believe that one can constantly develop own capabilities.

Green Innovation

Green Innovation is a form of social innovation that focuses on reducing environmental impacts and maximize sustainability. This can include the development of new technologies, processes, products, services or business models that have a positive environmental impact.