Innovation Models and the Innovator’s Mindset

Posted on Apr 2, 2025 in Other subjects

Innovation Models

Linear Innovation Model

Development, production, and marketing.

Interactive Model

  • Feedback allowed
  • No clear starting point
  • Target market observation and focus groups enable understanding of consumer needs and expectations, gaining customer insight, and providing an improved basis for innovation.

Network Model

  • Emphasis on external linkages
  • External inputs affect each business function: marketing and sales, finance, engineering and manufacturing, and research and development.
  • Coordination of functions allows for knowledge accumulation over time, catalyzing innovative ideas.

Open Innovation

Closed Innovation

  • Innovation equals control
  • The company controls idea generation, production, marketing, distribution, finance, etc.
  • No relation with other companies or universities.

Open Innovation

  • New paradigm where companies use external ideas and technologies and allow others to use their unused ideas.
  • Innovation with partners, sharing risks and benefits.
  • Permeable boundary between company and environment. Innovations are transferred both internally and externally.
  • May imply changes in intellectual property.

Innovation & the Mindset

The Innovators

  • Need capital for development
  • Are not investors, but take risks
  • Are not employers, but may need to employ people
  • Being an entrepreneur is not a personality trait, but involves comfort with uncertainty.
  • Entrepreneurship is a behavior, not a personality trait.
  • Innovators view change as positive. They seek, respond to, and exploit change as opportunity.

Methodology: Design Thinking

Empathize – Define – Ideate – Prototype – Test

Ethnography

Systematic study of people and cultures.

Focus Groups

Five-stage process for conducting focus groups and reporting results:

  1. Study Purpose
  2. Methodology
  3. Facilitation
  4. Analysis
  5. Reporting

Focus groups provide insights into thinking and deeper understanding of phenomena.

Stage One: Study Purpose

Define the study’s purpose.

Stage Two: Methodology

  1. Conceptualization
  2. Logistics

Conceptualization follows a process similar to classic research.

Stage Three: Facilitation

Components: preparation, pre-session, and the session itself. Acknowledging certain factors for each component contributes to a successful focus group.

Stage Four: Analysis

Coalesces discussion into a manageable form for report development.

Stage Five: Reporting

Combines all stages into a coherent whole. The key decision is attending to the report’s target audience.