Mapping Innovation

By studying and surveying HP LAbs, Rivas and Gobeli (2005) managed to identify enabling and risk factors for innovation in a large, research-oriented company. Employees reported that the most helpful enablers were: skilled people; people are helpful; management support; checkpoints provide focus; and people working together. These enablers were environmental factors that employees indicated increased their comfort level with and ability to innovate on a consistent basis.

The top five barriers Rivas and Gobeli discovered were not enough resources (such as money, time or access to management); hard to process experiments in the factory; lacking process-capable equipment; undefined market planning; and a project spanning multiple sites.

Rivas and Gobeli then create an easy-to-understand visual model mapping the enablers and barriers to innovation along a spectrum of how well known the innovation's technology is and how well known the market for the innovation is. Those two factors, newness or comfort with technology and market, Rivas and Gobeli define as the "level of innovation."

SOURCE
ACCELERATING INNOVATION AT HEWLETT-PACKARD
Rio Rivas; David H Gobeli
Research Technology Management; Jan/Feb 2005; 48, 1.

[Summary by: Caroline]