Innovation portfolio

In summary, it is essential that the following four actions are performed in developing an adequate innovation portfolio. 

Exhibit 1.2 shows the relative proportions of a typical innovation portfolio. Usually you will have more product, process, and service innovations— and fewer business model innovations. As well, most organizations aim for more incremental and substantial innovations—and fewer breakthrough innovations. 

Fig. 6. Portfolio analysis to guide investment in major catalyst innovation requiring new plant.

Therefore, the research and innovation system of a country has to be analysed and must be convinced by the opportunities and the new vision of a 2000 Watt per capita society. Any recommended efficiency-policy portfolio and R D efforts have to be evaluated within the context of the relevant research and innovation boundary conditions of the actors and institutions involved (see Fig. 20.3). The research and innovation systems of a country encompass the biotopes of all the institutions that are ... 

Another key portfolio component that was added was the purchase of Acuson, an innovation leader in ultrasound solutions with a strong brand name, in November 2000 for just less than 700 million. This acquisition propelled Siemens from sixth or seventh in the world ultrasound market to the leading position. 

Establish a frontier research portfolio able to promote innovation in catalysis use especially at the SMEs level. 

The project portfolio enables an overview on the ongoing research activities. Numerous economic and technical parameters have been proposed to provide a meaningful picture. Examples are attractiveness, strategic fit, innovation, gross/net present value, expected profits, R D expenditures, development stage, probability of success, technology fit, and realization time. Most of these parameters cannot be determined quantitatively, at least during the early phases of a project. 

Answers to the first question can be illustrated by giving some examples (see Table 1). Eastman Chemical reengineered its innovation process and doubled the value of its R D portfolio (71—74). A team at Eastman was asked to provide (/) an assessment of the then-current innovation process, (2) a vision of the ideal process, (3) a flow chart of the modified process, (4) measures of the process, and (5) key roles and responsibilities. The team identified four main subprocesses needs identification, concept development, implementation, and market development. 

This workshop focused on factors such as work processes, systems, and technologies that could enable and accelerate the pace of innovation and increase the yield of major innovations from work in the basic chemical sciences. More specifically, speakers identified teamwork, commitment, standardized portfolio management, clear goals, well-defined milestones, and effective technology transfer as some of the characteristics of innovative institutions and practices. Successful approaches to innovation have taken place in different environments and between different environments—despite infrastmcture and cultural differences, both interdisciplinary collaborations and collaborations between industry and academia have proven beneficial for all parties. Funding must also be available to promote innovation at stages of research often ignored. 

Clamen envisioned an ideal environment for innovation. It should have an open, sharing culture and customers who are active in setting product targets. Innovation should be considered vital to the business strategy, and structured processes should be used for both innovation and portfolio management. 

Robert W.R. Humphreys, National Starch and Chemical Company Allen, you talk about your innovation process, which is not too different from the one we use. When you re doing portfolio management and a lot of projects are coming through, you ve got to make decisions. The quality of your portfolio management team is obviously a critical thing or there will be many mistakes that won t be discovered for a long time. How do you choose that team ... 

Michael Schrage Absolutely, but in both of those contexts the convergence of allocation of overhead is present. Given a portfolio and a particular perception, we want to charge a certain amount to overhead rather than another amount. If the portfolio is put in the incremental innovation category, we do a different overhead formulation than if it is pioneering research. 

Elsa Reichmanis We don t use formal innovation processes such as those described in the preceding presentations. We do continually examine our portfolio of activities and determine what relates to the business from the advanced development, applied research perspective and from the very long-term research perspective. We need to have a mix of both, and we have a broad continuum of activity. In reality the spectrum of fundamental research to productization requires different modes of working at different stages—there is an evolution from what could perhaps be more individual blue-sky research to a team-based, problem-solving approach. To be successful, we need flexibility. 

Innovators are inherently betting on the unbalanced portfolios. If they bet on the index, they will perform at the median within a standard deviation of how the industry group is doing. 

Meeting these customer demands means that both the innovation and the go-to-market cycles shrink (Fig. 4.6). So, to stay a step ahead of customers needs (or at least keep up with them), Merck and its affiliated companies in Asia always develop LC mixtures in dose cooperation with them. Moreover, Merck invested early on in in-house display development first so that we could evaluate the properties of our LC materials for display applications, but also in order to obtain a better understanding of the final LCD products so that we could remain the technology leader and adapt our various product and applications portfolios to market requirements. In addition, needless to say, it is vital always to have adequate time and production capatity for all orders. 

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