a) Creating a spirit of innovation

creating a climate where creativity is valued; encouraging risk-taking and entrepreneurial flair; rewarding people for taking and using other people’s ideas; experimenting to find new and better ways of doing things; celebrating success, learning from failure; collaborating with managers from other countries and professions; creating a stimulating physical environment; building a sense of innovation opportunity; being decisive and action-orientated as well as creative and exploratory.

b) Exploring consumer and technological opportunities

focusing on what might be, not on what was ; probing to discover latent consumer needs; seeking information and experiences to stimulate insights; knowing the technical foundations of a category and specific products; collaborating with Research to explore technological possibilities and limitations; investigating developments in packaging design and technology; ensuring consumer needs and benefits are the drivers for evaluating technology opportunities.

c) Generating creative innovation ideas

using consumer insights and opportunities as springboards to new ideas; directing efforts in line with business strategy and the BrandKey Vision; adopting successful ideas from others (companies, countries, categories); applying creative thinking techniques; seeking unconventional perspectives (e.g. naïve experts, extreme consumers); listening to and building on the ideas of others; seeking opportunities for business and specification simplification; capturing and sharing ideas (e.g. inopad).

d) Designing winning innovation concepts

building ideas into distinctive consumer relevant concepts; using concepts to develop and test hypotheses with consumers; developing prototypes for quick consumer response; recycling and building on promising ideas and concepts in consumer research; exploiting the potential of packaging in delivering form, function and communication; identifying relevant technical attributes, benefits and cues; ensuring the concept remains true to consumer needs; writing motivating Charter Gate documents.

e) Managing the innovation project portfolio

applying the IPM portfolio management tools to link innovation to the business strategy; validating the risk profile of the portfolio; ensuring that the portfolio contains both adopted and new ideas; setting and applying portfolio and project metrics; tracking project growth potential against business growth objectives; focusing innovation efforts in priority areas – “less is more”; allocating resources across innovation projects; continuously performing appraisals of projects (e.g. when to stop a project); addressing both short and long term horizon needs; making investments using IPM Gate procedures.

f) Driving innovation projects through the funnel

using project planning tools and techniques (e.g. Gantt, PERT); building top management/stakeholder commitment; crafting the development of new marketing mixes; co-ordinating the inputs and activities across processes (e.g. manufacturing, packaging); managing international IC and local company relationships; managing trade-offs between speed/cost/quality; monitoring and controlling project budgets; performing project risk assessment; using market research to check and challenge project market potential; preparing Gate documents at each funnel stage.

g) Launch planning, implementation and evaluation

assessing and ensuring the practicality of project implementation; communicating launch plans to all internal parties; working with the constraints and opportunities of the supply chain and distribution channels; adjusting to reflect regional/local variations and issues (e.g. legal, cultural); jointly managing the roll-out of IC-developed innovations; developing imaginative launch support programmes; communicating qualitative and quantitative learning (process, consumer, mix, success and failures) using IPM and category knowledge management tools.

Tasks:

·      Arrange visits to other companies with a high reputation for innovation to learn about their cultures and  processes.

·      Visit an innovation consultancy to see how they work with ideas.

·      Attend a creativity session set up to generate new ideas.

·      Develop innovation ideas and concepts in face-to-face discussions with consumers.

·      Visit factories and R&D labs to find out more about the role of technology and the opportunities it provides.

·      Read a selection of IPM gate documents for innovation projects within your company.

·      Carry out an analysis of your innovation project portfolio using the full range of IPM portfolio

·      Management tools.

·      Draw up a detailed network plan for a project you are working on.

·      Review innovations in other markets to see if the principles behind them are relevant to your own.

·      Look at a selection of post-launch review documents to identify the lessons learned.