Different Forms Of Innovation and phases in successful Innovation

According to Hamel (1997) in Dess and Lumpkin (2005), innovations come in different forms:
Technological innovativeness primarily comprises research and engineering efforts aimed at developing new products and processes.


Products-market innovativeness consists of market research, products design, and innovations in advertising and promotion.

Administrative innovativeness is concerned with novelty in management systems, control techniques, and organisational structure.


Innovation can also be classified in terms of whether it is incremental, modular, architectural or radical (Henderson and Clark, 1990 in Hager, 2006):


Incremental Innovation: 
This comprises relatively small modifications to pre-existing solutions (Scheepers, 2007). In the view of Henderson and Clark (1990) in Hager (2006), this type of innovation improves and extends an established design. Improvement takes place in individual components, but the basic core design concepts and the linkage between them remain the same. An example is faster spinning hard drives.


Modular Innovation:
This kind of innovation changes the core design of one or more components but does not change the entire product architecture. This type of innovation requires new knowledge for one or more components, but the architectural knowledge remains the same. A good example is the digital phone which replaced the analog phone, without changing the phone itself (Henderson and Clark, 1990 in Hager, 2006).


Architectural Innovation: 
The essence of this type of innovation is the reconfiguration of an established system to link together components and parts in a new way (Henderson and Clark, 1990 in Hager, 2006). According to the authors, architectural innovation does not mean that the components remain unchanged but they are changed in a manner that there are new ways of linkage between the components. The change is so small that the core concept behind the changed component is the same, and the associated scientific and engineering knowledge remain the same. An example is the technologies where architectural innovations reduced the size of the hard drives from 14-inches diameter disks to diameter of 3.5-inches, and from 2.5-inches to 1.8-inches.

Radical Innovation: 
This type of innovation brings about a new dominant design and consequently, a new set of core design concepts embodied in components that are linked together in a new architecture (Hager, 2006). Radical innovation leads to new solutions that address customer needs (Morris and Kuratko, 2002 in Scheepers, 2007). In the view of O’Connor and Ayers (2005) in Lassen (2007), radical innovation is the commercialisation of products or technologies that have a strong impact on the market, in terms of offering wholly new benefits; and the firms, in terms of generating new business.
Moore (2004) also gives the following taxonomy of innovation:


Disruptive Innovation: 
Gets a great deal of attention, particularly in the press, because markets appear as if from nowhere, creating massive new sources of wealth. It tends to have its roots in technological discontinuities, such as the one that enabled Motorola’s rise to prominence with the first generation of cell phones.


Application Innovation:
Takes existing technologies into new markets to serve new purposes.


Product Innovation:
Takes established offers in established markets to the next level, as when Intel releases a new processor or Toyota a new car. The focus can be on performance increase, cost reduction, usability improvement or any other product enhancement.


Process Innovation: 
Makes processes for established offers in established markets more effective or efficient. Examples include Dell’s streamlining of its PC supply chain and order fulfillment systems.


Experiential Innovation: 
Makes surface modifications that improve customer’s experience of established products or processes. These can take the form of delighters (“You’ve got mail!”), satisfiers (superior line management at Disneyland), or reassures (package tracking from FedEx).


Marketing Innovation: 
Improves customer-touching processes be they marketing communications or consumer transactions


Business Model Innovation: 
Reframes an established value proposition to the customer or a company’s established role in the value chain or both. Examples include IBM’s shift to on- demand computing, and Apple’s expansion into consumer retailing.


Structural Innovation: 
Capitalizes on disruption to restructure industry relationships. Innovators like banks, for example, that have used the deregulation of financial services to consumers under one umbrella.


Phases in Successful Innovation 

The following are five essential phases of successful innovation:


Idea Generation and Mobilisation
This phase is the starting point for new ideas. Successful idea generation should be stimulated by the pressure to compete and by the freedom to explore. Once a new idea is
generated, it is conveyed to the mobilization phase, wherein the idea travels to a different physical or logical location. Because most inventors are not also marketers, a new idea often needs someone other than its originator to move it along. This phase is crucially important to the progression of a new idea, and omitting it can delay or even sabotage the innovation process .


Advocacy and Screening
According to the authors, this phase is the period for weighing an idea’s costs and benefits. Advocacy and screening have to take place simultaneously to weed out ideas that lack potential without allowing stakeholders to reject ideas impulsively solely on the basis of their novelty. Firms will have more success when the evaluation process is transparent and standardized, because employees feel more comfortable contributing when they could anticipate how their ideas would be judged.


Experimentation
The experimentation phase assesses the sustainability of ideas for a particular firm at a particular time – and in a particular environment. In this phase, it is essential to determine who the customer will be and what he or she will use the innovation for. With that in mind, the firm might discover that although someone has a great idea, it is ahead of its time or just not right for a particular market. However, it is important not to interpret these kinds of discoveries as failures – they could actually be the catalysts of new and better ideas.


Commercialisation
In this phase, the firm should look to its customers to verify that innovation actually solves their problems and then should analyse the costs and benefits of rolling out the innovation. According to the Desouza et al (2007), an invention is only considered an innovation once it has been commercialised. Therefore, the commercialisation phase is a significant one similar to advocacy in that it takes the right people to progress the idea to the next developmental phase.


Diffusion and Implementation
According to the authors, diffusion is the process of gaining final, company overall acceptance of an innovation. Implementation is the process of setting up the structures, maintenance and resources needed to produce it.