Innovation Project Management

Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects

Harold Kerzner

• Editorial: Wiley
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119587330
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Project Management

Actionable tools, processes and metrics for successfully managing innovation projects

Conventional project management methods are oftentimes insufficient for managing innovation projects. Innovation is lost under the pre-determined scope and forecasted environments of traditional project management. There is tremendous pressure on organizations to innovate, and the project managers responsible for managing these innovation projects do not have the training or tools to do their jobs effectively. Innovation Project Management provides the tools, insights, and metrics needed to successfully manage innovation projects—helping readers identify problems in their organization, conceive elegant solutions, and, when necessary, promote changes to their organizational culture.

There are several kinds of innovation—ranging from incremental changes to existing products to wholly original processes that emerge from market-disrupting new technology—that possess different characteristics and often require different tools. Best-selling author and project management expert Harold Kerzner integrates innovation, project management, and strategic planning to offer students and practicing professionals the essential tools and processes to analyze innovation from all sides. Innovation Project Management deconstructs traditional project management methods and explains why and how innovation projects should be managed differently. This invaluable resource:

• Provides practical advice and actionable tools for effectively managing innovation projects
• Offers value-based project management metrics and guidance on how to establish a metrics management program
• Shares exclusive insights from project managers at world-class organizations such as Airbus, Boeing, Hitachi, IBM, and Siemens on how they manage innovation projects
• Explores a variety of types of innovation including co-creation, value-driven, agile, open versus closed, and more
• Instructors have access to PowerPoint lecture slides by chapter through the book's companion website

Innovation Project Management: Methods, Case Studies, and Tools for Managing Innovation Projects is an essential text for professional project managers, corporate managers, innovation team members, as well as students in project management, innovation and entrepreneurship programs.

1
Introduction to Innovation Project Management

• Learning Objectives for Project Managers and Innovation Personnel
• To understand the differences between traditional and innovation project management
• To understand that there are new skills, responsibilities, and expectations for managing innovation activities
• To understand the strategic/business importance of innovation
• To understand the importance of measuring innovation business value

INTRODUCTION

“The future is a direction, not a destination.”

— Edwin Catmull

Over the past three decades, there has been a great deal of literature published on innovation and innovation management. Converting a creative idea into reality requires projects and some form of project management. Unfortunately, innovation projects may not be able to be managed effectively using the traditional project management philosophy we teach in our project management courses. Innovation varies from industry to industry, and even companies within the same industry cannot come to an agreement on how innovation project management should work. Part of the disagreement comes from the fact that there are several forms of innovation, each one with different characteristics and possibly requiring different tools.

It is inevitable that, over the next several years, professional organizations such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) will recognize the need to begin setting some standards for innovation project management and possibly partner with organizations, such as the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), which offers a certification program related to innovation. There may also appear an Innovation Project Management Manifesto like the Agile Manifesto. The greatest innovation in the next decade may be the recognition and advancement of innovation project management as a specialized project management career path position.

There are differences between traditional and innovation project management. People have avoided using the words “innovation” and “project management” in the same sentence because of these differences. Even those organizations that offer certification in innovation practices do not use the words “project management.” There is limited research on examining the link between innovation and project management.

Innovation is often unstructured and requires people to utilize those portions of the brain that focus on free thinking, creativity, brainstorming, and alternative analyses. Project management, on the other hand, is very structured, with a well-defined scope, and often with a very low tolerance for any creativity or brainstorming that is believed to be out of scope.

There are several types of innovation, ranging from small, incremental changes to a product to totally new products and processes that are the result of a breakthrough in technology that disrupts the market. Incremental innovation may follow some of the standard project management processes. Radical or disruptive innovation may require playing by a different set of rules. All assumptions must be challenged, even if they appear in a business case. Innovation requires the identification of the right problems and thinking about elegant solutions. All of these factors may require that the organizational culture change.

DEFINITIONS FOR INNOVATION

“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”

— Peter Drucker

“Innovation = Ideas + Execution + Adoption”

— Jag Randhawa, The Bright Idea Box: A Proven System to Drive Employee Engagement and Innovation

There are conflicting views on what innovation means. Some people argue that innovation is standing in the future (rather than the present) and helping others see it. Another view of innovation (to paraphrase Martha Graham) states that innovation teams, and innovators, are not ahead of their time in what they see. They are in real time, and the rest of the world hasn't caught up to them yet because they are still focusing on the past.

There is no universally agreed-on definition for innovation, but two common definitions are:

1. Innovation is the transformation of knowledge or intellectual property into commercialization.
2. Innovation is not necessarily invention; it can be the creation of something new, as in a new application. Innovation is finding a new or better solution to market needs in a manner that creates long-term shareholder value. Externally, it is seen by customers as improved quality, durability, service, and/or price. Internally, it appears as positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitiveness, and market share.

To understand the difficulty in defining innovation, we will look first at the reasons for performing innovation:

• To produce new products or services with long-term profitable growth potential
• To produce long-term profitable improvements to existing products and services
• To produce scientific knowledge that can lead to new opportunities, better ways to conduct business (i.e., process improvements and business models), or improved problem solving

There are many forms of process innovation. Capturing and implementing best practices, whether project management or business related, is process innovation. Process innovation can also include changing some of the key operations such as in manufacturing to reduce cost, add business value, or speed up time-to-market. Process innovation overcomes the misbelief that innovation occurs only with technical solutions for designing a new product.

The output from strategic innovation can create sustainable business value in the form of:

• New products
• Enhancements in brand value
• Additional services
• Efficiencies and/or improved productivities
• Improvements in quality
• Reduction in time-to-market
• An increase in competitiveness
• An increase in market share
• New processes
• New technologies
• Reduction in labor or material costs
• Reduction in energy consumption
• Conformance to regulations
• New platforms
• New strategic partnerships or acquisitions

The long-term benefits of innovations include an increase in market share, greater competitiveness, greater shareholder satisfaction, and so on. Many of these outputs are not the traditional, tangible deliverables or outcomes that most project managers are accustomed to seeing. These outputs can be more business related and intangible. Therefore, deliverables may take on a new meaning during innovation.

There are several types of innovation that can be used for these products, services, and processes, each with unique requirements and different life-cycle phases. Therefore, there is no single path to innovation, making it impossible to establish a uniform approach for all types of innovation projects.

Today, academia is differentiating between R&D and innovation. R&D departments are usually needed for breakthrough innovations that generally involve new technologies. If the R&D group develops a new technology or a new way of doing something that is substantially different from the way it was done before, then it could be turned over to the innovation team to find applications.

THE BUSINESS NEED

“Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”

— Brene Brown

“Normal is where innovation goes to die.”

— Richie Norton, The Power of Starting Something Stupid: How to Crush Fear, Make Dreams Happen, and Live without Regret

Global business is susceptible to changes in technology, demographics, a turbulent political climate, industrial maturity, unexpected events, and other factors that can affect competitiveness. Taking advantage of these changes will be challenging. Companies need growth for long-term survival. Companies cannot grow simply through cost reduction and reengineering efforts that are more aligned to a short-term solutio...