Six Levers for Solving the Corporate Innovation Problem™ – Part 1

Innovation is crucial for businesses to stay competitive, but despite large investments in innovation, results often disappoint. This three-part article series examines the “corporate innovation problem” and finds that there are two root causes for it. This article focuses on the system problem and outlines six levers of improvement that can help solve this problem and increase innovation performance. The article delves into two sub-processes that make up the innovation process – the Fuzzy Front-End (FFE) and the Efficient Back-End (EBE). The FFE is about discovering valuable insight into customer needs and generating ideas based on those insights, while the EBE turns the innovation concept into real products, services or business models. The article discusses various ways in which companies invest into the FFE to improve innovation effectiveness, such as open innovation, innovation centers, corporate venture capital, and innovation management systems.