Read the notes, then try the practice. It adapts as you go.When you're ready.
Session Length
~17 min
Adaptive Checks
15 questions
Transfer Probes
8
Innovation management is the systematic process of managing an organization's innovation efforts, from the generation of new ideas through their development, implementation, and commercialization. It encompasses the strategies, processes, organizational structures, and cultural practices that enable firms to create value through novel products, services, business models, and processes. Rather than treating innovation as a spontaneous or serendipitous event, innovation management recognizes that sustained innovation requires deliberate planning, resource allocation, portfolio management, and governance frameworks that balance exploration of new opportunities with exploitation of existing capabilities.
The discipline draws on multiple theoretical foundations, including Joseph Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction, Clayton Christensen's disruptive innovation framework, and Henry Chesbrough's open innovation paradigm. These perspectives collectively illustrate that innovation is not merely about technological invention but involves the entire value chain from ideation to market adoption. Organizations must navigate the tension between incremental improvements to existing offerings and radical breakthroughs that can redefine industries. Effective innovation management requires understanding innovation types (product, process, business model, and organizational), building innovation pipelines, establishing appropriate metrics, and fostering a culture that tolerates experimentation and learning from failure.
In today's rapidly changing business environment, innovation management has become a critical competency for organizations of all sizes and across all sectors. Companies that fail to innovate risk being displaced by more agile competitors, as demonstrated by the fates of firms like Kodak, Blockbuster, and Nokia. Modern innovation management practices include design thinking, lean startup methodology, stage-gate processes, innovation ecosystems, corporate venturing, and digital transformation strategies. The field continues to evolve with emerging approaches such as platform-based innovation, artificial intelligence-driven ideation, and sustainability-oriented innovation that addresses environmental and social challenges alongside economic value creation.
One step at a time.
A process by which a smaller company with fewer resources successfully challenges established incumbent businesses by targeting overlooked market segments with simpler, more affordable solutions that eventually move upmarket and displace established competitors.
Example: Netflix initially offered a DVD-by-mail service that appealed to price-conscious customers before evolving into streaming and ultimately disrupting Blockbuster and traditional cable television.
A paradigm introduced by Henry Chesbrough that assumes firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, to advance their innovation efforts.
Example: Procter & Gamble's Connect+Develop program sources over 50% of its product innovations from external partners, universities, and independent inventors rather than relying solely on internal R&D.
A project management approach developed by Robert Cooper in which an innovation project is divided into distinct stages separated by decision gates, where management reviews progress and decides whether to continue, modify, or terminate the project.
Example: A pharmaceutical company uses a stage-gate process with phases for discovery, preclinical testing, clinical trials, and regulatory approval, with go/kill decisions at each gate based on scientific results and market potential.
A human-centered approach to innovation that integrates the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success through iterative cycles of empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing.
Example: IDEO redesigned the shopping cart by observing shoppers, interviewing store managers, and rapidly prototyping solutions that addressed safety, maneuverability, and theft concerns.
The strategic allocation of innovation investments across a balanced portfolio that includes incremental improvements, adjacent expansions, and transformational breakthroughs to manage risk while pursuing growth.
Example: Google uses a 70-20-10 resource allocation model: 70% on core business improvements, 20% on adjacent opportunities, and 10% on transformational moonshot projects through its X division.
An organizational design that enables firms to simultaneously pursue exploitation of existing competencies (efficiency) and exploration of new opportunities (innovation) through structurally separated but strategically integrated units.
Example: Amazon maintains its highly efficient e-commerce operations while simultaneously exploring transformational innovations through units like AWS, Alexa, and Amazon Go stores.
The version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort, central to the lean startup methodology.
Example: Dropbox validated demand for its cloud storage service by releasing a simple video demonstration before building the actual product, generating 75,000 sign-ups overnight.
A measurement system originally developed by NASA to assess the maturity of a particular technology on a scale from 1 (basic principles observed) to 9 (actual system proven in operational environment).
Example: A clean energy startup uses TRL assessments to communicate to investors that its solar cell technology has progressed from laboratory testing (TRL 4) to prototype demonstration in a relevant environment (TRL 6).
More terms are available in the glossary.
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