My Experience
I have worked for years in a product design/development firm in between (industrial) designers, engineers and developers in where I worked for many years on mechanical foldable babystrollers. I have worked in an innovation lab for consumer audio (head- and earphones and speakers) between electronic and acoustic engineers and between software and firmware developers. The last years, working under my own name, I have helped many other companies with innovation projects. I have collaborated and setup (prefunding) startups with and without co-founders and have real-life experience working in dedicated innovation teams for multicorporates and in small teams in start-up format.
The success of your innovation efforts depends mostly on your process and, even though I might be able to give you some pointers (see below), it is never that straight forward. If your company is looking for innovation help, please let me know for a meet-up, interview or discussion.
My Learnings
• It starts with passion. Passion is what drives excellence and passion is what leads to asking the deeper questions and challenging the status quo.
• Innovation is research and engineering combined, following universities, trend research and yes, fooling around, prototyping and a lot of talking with each other.
• Commitment from your co-founders or stakeholders in your company is important. Where is the budget going, do they see result and how to manage expectations.
• 'The electric light did not come from the continuous improvement of candles', a quote from Oren Hariri. You can create innovation by small steps, but you can also be innovative by making a big step.
• Innovation in big companies is different than for medium or small companies. Budgets, goals, resources and timeframes are very different and your innovation process shhould be reflecting that.
• The end-result of innovation is new insights, not patents. Innovation is about building insights and learning from your mistakes until you are far enough that it can get patented, or not.
• Innovations are not always patentable but can still have value (eg. optimizing your admin, moving sales online, change shipping trajectories, etc.).
• A good innovation process leads to gained insights. Insights can get patented or can provide a competitive advantage for your company without a patent.