What Is Innovation? Exploring Beyond The Buzzword

Gates to Innovation – Incorporate Innovation

For many businesses, innovation is key to solve operational issues and remain competitive. Especially in the Aviation and Aerospace industry. But how does one innovate? How does one translate innovation into their operations? The answer is in the process.

During the process of implementing the innovation into your operations, your project evolves along 2 axes:

– Axis 1 – Degree Maturity

– Axis 2 – Degree Operational Impact

 

 

When an innovation project is deployed into operations, it follows a specific path along these axes of Maturity and Operational impact. This path is punctuated with 5 key Gates:

 

– Gate 1: Identify the pain, need or desire – What do you want to improve? What are you looking to achieve?

– Gate 2: Define your project team and secure the resources you will need

– Gate 3: Your project is 80% realized

– Gate 4: Your project receives regulatory acceptance, you match Technology, Regulatory institutions, and Operational procedures maturity.

– Gate 5: It’s the end of lifecycle of the innovation – the decommissioning phase

 

However, processes do not create innovation, only people do. The true value of a project lies in the human resources, its team.

 

The next question is then: How do I get the best skills and competencies to foster innovation?

Skills and competencies sourcing is a key challenge of innovation. In the coming weeks, we will address this question a take a deeper look into the crowdsourcing model and how it will play a major role in your innovation process.