How much is that much? A million dollars may be a lot for some and a little for others.
Whether you’re going to spend on innovation also depends on exactly what you’re buying.
The word Innovation covers a multitude of activities but, at a basic level, you can create new ideas for products or services at a very low cost.
As a general rule, I’ve noticed in idea generation workshops that to get an idea worth considering, we need to generate at least 10 “outside the box ideas”. Also, to get a single idea worth investigating or developing, we need at least 10 such ideas.
So the “golden ratio” is about 100 to 1. If you know how many ideas you need, this will give you an idea of the amount of time you need to spend. How you do this in an organization is up to you.
Ideas are just the beginning. What kind of system do you have for capturing ideas? You need to capture as much information as possible for a future recall. Does this system work for ideas that come “out of the blue”?
Everything you do has to be evaluated in some way so who judges? Is it the boss, a group of experts, a focus group, or perhaps naïve bystanders? Children are naturally good at this, if they don’t “get it” you will know immediately.
Is that so? Well no. You need methods to try things out (play or prototype) and capture learning. We hope everything goes well but there are some failures (remember Coca Cola Black?).
Isn’t there anymore right? Well … yes. If you intend to produce something as a result of your innovation activity, this may also incur some additional costs that you may want to include in the overall cost of the innovation or recover from sales. If you’ve never gone down the innovation path before, then you might be spending money on organizational culture and behavior.
Also please stay away from the innovation black hole. It can become a waste rather than a return on investment. Read more about black holes. Don’t be put off though, the gains can far outweigh the costs.
Let’s see how to fine-tune your innovation efforts
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