Making Innovation Happen

Only the very best ideas -- those that are most likely to succeed-- will ultimately make it into development.

Once your innovative idea has been conceived an selected as worth pursuing, it needs to go through stages of development to make it a reality. It is important for any organization to have a standard process for developing innovations, particularly if you intend to make regular changes.

The standard structure for the innovation process is to take your idea forward in stages. At each stage, the idea is reviewed to decide whether it is worth pursuing further. For every stage that it passes, an increasing amount of money, time, and resources must be dedicated to the project. This testing process is often described as a sort of funnel.

The mouth is wide, in that many ideas can begin the process, but more and more ideas will be rejected at each stage as they are show to be unworkable for one reason or another. Only the very best ideas -- those that are most likely to succeed-- will ultimately make it into development.

ACTION POINT: Establish a process for innovation to filter out everything but the best ideas.