Translating trends into Innovation Fields

Innovation Fields help you identify potential and derive targeted innovation activities from trends. They are the link between trend evaluation and the development of initial ideas or projects.

Approach

1. Create the starting point: Your Trendradar is already created, trends are evaluated and clustered according to their evaluation criteria.
2. Relate trends to business areas: Analyze which trends from the three categories are particularly relevant for your main business areas. Select a particularly significant trend for each area to start brainstorming.
3. Discuss as a team: What impact does trend X have on our marketing, our products, sales, production, HR, etc.? What opportunities and challenges arise? What synergies and new solution paths become apparent when combining different trends?
4. Derive Innovation Fields: Combine the collected ideas, considerations, and scenarios. Look in particular for overlapping potential and recurring themes across several business areas.
5. Transparency and communication: Use templates or worksheets (e.g. with the dimensions Market Opportunity, Technologic Opportunity, Capabilities & Assets) to make Innovation Fields comprehensible for all stakeholders. Fill in key aspects such as opportunities, technical developments, necessary competencies, and planned measures.
6. Integration and implementation: Check how current projects and resources can feed into new Innovation Fields. Consider whether and how you want to build up missing competencies.

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