Functioning innovation management is highly relevant for every company to strengthen its future readiness and secure its competitiveness. With TRENDONE’s 20 years of expertise as an innovation consultancy, we have guided many companies in building and professionalizing their innovation management through more structure and the introduction of systematic processes and tools. Every company faces its own challenges in innovation management. Where the function sits within the company, how it is integrated and what motivation drives it can be visualized in the following 4 stages with their respective characteristics:

Pioneers

Trend management is driven by an employee’s intrinsic motivation, while managing directors or department heads act as sources of ideas. The people responsible have often been with the company for a long time and report to sales, which brings ideas or customer requests to them. They inform themselves through trade media and assess topics from the gut. Yet trends are often only picked up once they are so obvious that they seem barely manageable operationally. Even so, pioneers play an important role for the future readiness of SMEs in particular.

An example from practice: The Heidenheimer Zeitung approached TRENDONE in 2016 with the goal of better processing and internalizing trends from the media, print and publishing sector. Over many years of cooperation, the company repeatedly recognized new opportunities and has now employed a dedicated innovation manager for several years, who looks after the topic full time.

Trend Task Force

In the trend task force, up to three employees concentrate on the creation of trend insights and communicate them in the form of business recommendations. They create trend reports and trend radars that provide a broad content perspective. At least one member of the group, however, holds a different primary role. The trend task force receives active support, for example, from the company’s marketing leadership and has access to senior managers. Priorities are mainly set by management and significant parts of the budget lie outside the control of this "working group". Across the company, projects are initiated with a focus on the optimization of existing products and processes that, among other things, incorporate and support trends. A certain "innovation feeling" is present in a decentralized way, but the company struggles to bundle and communicate the relevant future topics centrally.

An example of a trend task force: The VOSS Incubator (launched in 2019) supports VOSS Automotive GmbH as an innovation lab and drives innovative product and service solutions outside the core business. The search for future business areas is at the heart of the work of the three colleagues.

Innovation Team

At stage 3, innovation leads are seen as strategic partners. It is common sense in the company that trends are a decisive input for strategic decisions. Up to 10 employees engage with trends and their implications in a structured way. Innovations are no longer seen at this stage as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The department is regarded as a reliable advisor and is involved in important projects and decisions. Established innovation processes help, in the form of a "classic" stage-gate process, to expand innovation within the core business.

Transformative and disruptive ideas are also accompanied by the department. The function head works closely with management, makes their network available to the team, and provides sufficient budget and time resources. A learning organization is being built that is increasingly able to anticipate trends. The results are communicated and embraced across the organization.

An example of an innovation team: The WDR Innovation Hub consists of a small team of permanent (2–10) and freelance employees. The hub watches for promising trends for WDR and consistently brings ideas into the organization, runs workshops, publishes trend reports and not only gives the topic "the future of WDR" a voice but also makes it heard. Worth recommending: their LinkedIn channel.

Corporate Foresight Team

The Corporate Foresight team shapes the company’s innovation climate through openness and creativity. Members of "innovation labs", for example, are freed from day-to-day operations and have access to multiple inspirational and informational data sources or innovation consultancies. These departments act like a special unit with a very clear goal: to continuously expand trend knowledge and innovation topics and to communicate them inside and outside the company.

The content of their innovation management does not necessarily relate to the existing product portfolio. Global technologies and trends are creatively projected forward and only rarely have a tangible link to current customer value. The head of the department belongs to the top leadership level in the company and is significantly involved in strategic decisions.

An example of a Corporate Foresight team: In line with its innovation vision "Imagine an easier world to work and live. Inspire new solutions to empower humans. Drive our business to create economic, social, and ecological impact.", the KUKA Innovation Management demonstrates how customer-centric innovation can succeed. Deeper insights into innovation management at KUKA are available, among other places, in the podcast by produktion.de, in which Chief Innovation Officer Ulrike Tagscherer answers questions.

More theoretical and practical knowledge on "trend and innovation management"

Whitepaper: Trend and Innovation Management

The TRENDONE whitepaper on trend and innovation management shows you how to successfully establish trend management in your company and how to professionalize innovation processes for the long term.

Image source:

https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/hande-mannschaft-zusammenspiel-einheit-6146703/ https://www.pexels.com/de-de/foto/junge-im-weissen-hemd-das-auf-weissem-papier-schreibt-7688454/