What Exactly is Innovation & Innovation Management

Innovation management is quite a confusing concept for many people. After all how can one manage innovation, not to mention what exactly is innovation? What makes these questions interesting and even more confusing is the fact that if you ask twenty different innovation managers the same questions you will get twenty different explanations as to what innovation is and any number of methodologies to manage innovation.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain what my definition of what innovation is. Innovation is when an organization or person/s successfully add value to a product, process, business model or service and innovation management is the process and methodology used to add value to a product, process, business model, or service. Believe me, the process of innovation management can be extremely simple and undefined, for example an entrepreneur comes up with an idea goes through the process of implementing based on his own intuition. At the same time it can be a clearly defined process with phases that include brainstorming, funneling ideas, prototyping, getting customer input, and finally releasing a product. Either way there is always a process involved and understanding this is what innovation management is all about.

Although these definitions are extremely general the goal of this blog is to take a journey through the deeper concepts of innovation. Not only for you the reader but also as a journal of my progress through the realm of innovation management.