Innovation

Donal O’Connell
Chawton Innovation Services

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 Innovation

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What is innovation?

Formal definitions as taken from the Collins English Dictionary

• Creative: having the ability to create, characterised by originality of thought, having
or showing imagination, designed to or tending to stimulate the imagination,
characterised by sophisticated bending of the rules or conventions
• Inventive: skilled or quick at contriving, ingenious, resourceful, characterised by
inventive skill, related to an invention
• Innovative: to invent or begin to apply new methods or ideas, to renew or make
new

Innovation starts with thinking differently. It is a process of questioning, experimenting,

learning and adapting. It requires an appetite for risk, a willingness to question,
and open mind to look at things without a pre-determined conception and perhaps
most importantly, patience and perseverance
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Innovation – its forms & phases

Innovation can take many forms. It can be disruptive, transformative, radical,

breakthrough, incremental or step improvement in nature.
Innovation literature typically distinguishes three separate stages of innovation: generation
stage, promotion stage and realisation stage.
Innovation can take place in what is offered, in who is the defined customer for the offering,
in how things are done or in where things are done.
Innovation may impact the product, the service, the process or the business model

•Radical vs. incremental

•Product vs. service vs. process vs. business
•Generation vs. promotion vs. realisation
•Open vs. closed
•Creativity vs. innovation vs. inventiveness
•On your own vs. support structure in place

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Ambiguity, controversy and non linearity

This poses a certain challenge to many companies interested in properly managing their
innovation process
Companies are most anxious to succeed with their innovations yet this also means
accepting failures
Companies must avoid seeing innovation failures as being tantamount to doing something
wrong, not to doing it right

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Environments which Encourage Innovation

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Customer driven / Market driving

Companies are indeed constantly exhorted to become more customer driven

However, the companies whose success has been based on radical business innovation are
better described as market driving
Market driving strategies often involve high risk, but also offer a company the potential to
radically alter an industry and gain great rewards
That said, customer driven innovation is very important, and should not be dismissed
Customer driven innovation basically means asking what need of the customer is this
innovation expected to fulfill

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The 7 Cs Changes
• The future of media is social, where its richness is in
conversation
Challenges • Consumers are broadening their ethical focus
• Poverty, disease, pollution, water shortages, • New applications using fixed and mobile Internet have
climate change, security democratised media and increased the power of consumers
• Quality, customer service, efficiency, cost • Women are increasingly embracing and using technologies
management, logistics, performance functionality • Multi-sensory user interface experiences are becoming the
norm
• New application usage for mobile devices in emerging
Convergence markets can bypass traditional stages of IT development
• The interface between two entities
• The mixing of different technologies Competition
• Digital convergence of wireless and Internet worlds • Striving to be # 1
• Acting as an incentive for self improvement
• Stimulating innovation and encouraging efficiency
Collaboration
• Between companies
Competences Culture
• Between companies and communities
• Skills • Support culture
• Between companies and universities
• Knowledge • Learning culture
• Between companies and consumers/end user
• Questioning culture
• Challenging culture
• No fear culture
• A “passion for innovation”

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 The Innovator Community

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Typical profile of an innovator
Innovators may be categorised, classified and rated by:-
• Skill and competency level
• Volume of ideas (serial; 1s & 2s; none)
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• Ease of linking and communicating with them
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• Extent to which they “push” their ideas forward

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External innovators
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• Un-solicited ideas coming from "Joe Public"

• Innovators working with external 3rd parties (companies,
organisations or universities) with whom your company is co-
operating and collaborating. This can include suppliers and vendors
• Externals or contractors working for you but who are not employees.
These people can be working in your premises, interns, students or
employees of our subcontractors. (There should always be
agreement in place which ensures that you gets rights to or access to
the inventions raised in co-operation with them).
• Customers and end-users prompted to submit ideas via your product
or service literature, your web sites or your service support
• Communities (eg open source software, social networking
communities, special interest groups)
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 Management & Leadership

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Management and leadership

Successful innovation is usually driven by senior management with a strategic vision of the
business
There should be specified areas of strategic innovation focus and a willingness to commit in
the long term
It is important that a company identifies and communicates to their employees how
innovation fits in with their overarching business strategy
It is key that this is accurately and clearly communicated throughout the business

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Management and leadership

Innovation management & leadership involves nurturing a culture of innovation

• allowing time for scouting
• not be overly risk averse and invest in the occasional high risk project
• encouraging projects and teams to work outside the business
Such managers and leaders check in periodically to see how it is going and what help they
can provide

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Management and leadership

Building a creative innovative company takes ...

• synchronisation from the centre,
• cross boundary collaboration,
• structural changes to the organisational chart
Customer insight is also essential
• The most innovative companies build in a strong customer focus into their systems
and rely heavily on customer based research
This is where they gain their competitive advantage

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Contradictions
Leaders hip vs. M anagement

C ommunicating skills vs. Listening

Team player vs. S eparate from the team

Global, multi-cultural vs. Local

O rganisational understanding vs. Networked

C oach and mentorvs. Not an expert

E xpected to know the big vs. Asking questions is critical

picture

P rocess understandingvs. D rive to get the job done

Leadership is criticalvs. Job specs often differ

B orn leadervs. C ontinuous training and

development

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 Intellectual Property

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Protecting & promoting your ideas

Ways and means to protect your ideas ...

• Lead time advantage
• S ecrecy
• C omplexity of the des ign
• Intellectual P roperty R ights

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Intellectual Property Rights
A patent protects an invention. It gives the holder an exclus ive right to prevent others
P a tents from s elling, making and using the patented invention for a certain period (typically twenty
years from filing date)

C opyright protects the expression of literary or artis tic work. P rotection arises
C o pyrig ht automatically giving the holder the exclusive right to control reproduction or adaptation.

A trademark is a distinctive sign which is used to distinguish the products or services of

T ra dem a rk s one business from others. A trademark is clos ely linked to brand.

P rotects the form of appearance, s tyle or des ign of an object. It does not protect the
D es ig n functionality.

A utility model is an intellectual property right to protect inventions. This right is available
U tility M o dels in a number of national legis lations . It is very similar to the patent, but usually has a
shorter term (often 6 or 10 years) and less stringent patentability requirements.

S em i-c onduc tor This protects two or three-dimens ional layout or topography of an integrated circuit.
somewhat similar to copyright
It is
topo g ra phy
(“s ilic o ne c hips ”)

D atabas e right prevents copying of s ubstantial parts of a databas e. However, unlike

D a ta ba s e rig hts copyright the protection is not over the form of expres sion of information but of the
information itself. In many other respects , database right is similar to copyright.

A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, ins trument, pattern, or compilation
T ra de s ec rets of information used by a bus iness to obtain an advantage over competitors or cus tomers.
Trade secrets are by definition not disclosed to the world at large.

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IP creates value

Freedo m C os t I nfluenc e P ro duc t R evenue

o f a c tio n a dva nta g e in bus ines s differentia tio n
environm ent

• Technology • C ompetitive • P referred • Unique • Licens ing

acces s royalty rates technologies features • S elling
• C ross • P revent • C ollaboration • Look & feel
licensing freeriders • P artnering • Trademarks
• Litigation
avoidance

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The IP environment

Trends :
• The growing strategic and public policy importance of IP
• The increasing volume of patent applications and granted patents
• IP enabling a return on R&D investment
• IP as a mark of innovation and creativity
• IP as a sign of competitiveness
• IP as an enabler for cooperation and collaboration

Some challenges :
• Differences in IP Law, or interpretation of IP Law, between jurisdictions
• Complexity of the IP world
• Changing landscape/discussions about possible changes
• Quality vs quantity
• Striking the right balance between IP law, Competition Law, and the
benefits to society

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Thank you!

Please check out Chawton Innovation Services at ...

Chawton Innovation Services
www.chawtoninnovationservices.co.uk The Stables, Gosport Road
Chawton, Alton
Hampshire, United Kingdom
GU34 1SH

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