What we are very good at is supporting our clients with the best innovation processes and thus accompanying them to success.
If you need innovations or you want to improve the innovation culture in your company, we will choose the optimal process or a process-mix from our large tool arsenal – precisely and optimally to your topic.
What follows is an extract from our processes
In this strategic approach, we enable your company to deliver innovative excellence in the long term. At the same time, we will create small steps for you that will show you noticeable success. We start at the base of the innovation pyramid, go up the steps of the pyramid, and help your company to achieve the highest innovative performance.
APPLICATION: Empowering companies to ensure excellent success with innovations.
InnoWINg© as a central control process strengthens the innovative power of your company.
InnoWINg© is used with the support of an optimal software as part of a first brief review of the innovation strategy. We involve all relevant stakeholders in the process and offer good visualization for decision-making and for monitoring the results.
APPLICATION: Strategic development of innovation power – achieve maximum innovation power with minimal costs
Find out more at Maximize Innovation Power!
This elementary process consists of phases, actions within the phases and milestones. It is very similar to classic project management, but is used for the early phases of concept and prototype finding.
APPLICATION: Wide application in almost all areas of activity. It is a “MUST” for every innovative company to efficiently practice this process in everyday business!
Stage-Gate is not intended to generate very innovative approaches or to handle challenging “breakthrough topics”.
Structured Idea Management structures the work with ideas and brings an idea up to a mature business concept. Such a business concept represents the optimal solution, has been checked on the market and its stakeholders give full support in the implementation.
APPLICATION: Broad application in various areas of activity, industries, company sizes. Also suitable for generating very innovative approaches.
In the case of very difficult problems or apparently “unsolvable” problems, we recommend using methods such as Synectics or Blue Ocean Strategy, or using a sensible combination of several methods/processes.
Lead Users Research has already long proven itself in practice (example: Hilti and 3M). In the process, we look for existing solutions of the so-called lead users – these are very innovative people, companies or parallel applications, that have a specific context to your topic. It is interesting that lead users have often already developed ready-made solutions or even tested them in real application.
We plan to track down relevant lead users and adapt their solutions to our own problem. We consider the direct customer proximity that we gain from this to be a major advantage of the process.
APPLICATION: Generation of particularly innovative solutions; also suitable for interesting niche products.
Blue Ocean Strategy finds ways to global market growth by looking for alternatives (instead of competition) and by looking at non-customers (instead of existing customers).
With the Blue Ocean Strategy, one is looking amongst other things for the minimum price for an innovation to enter the market. As a result, you gain large masses of customers and ensure sustainability.
APPLICATION: It is a broadly applicable strategy process that effectively shapes innovations. The result is, above all, a new (often unique) direction and, as a result, new products or services that are generated.
Since the process contains numerous tools and requires intensive dealing within the company, the “full version” is usually less suitable for small and medium-sized companies (SME). i.c.i.c. has therefore developed a very compressed version for SME. We call it „Blue Ocean Jump©“.
When it comes to challenging problems or if you have not yet found a satisfactory solution with other tools, a Synectic process can make the breakthrough.
Synectics is a particularly intuitive method. We wander through the world of analogies and metaphors, put aside logical thinking and analytical mind and trust the emotions, intuition and gut feeling (hedonic response) for the individual steps.
The solutions from a Synectic project are often completely new and at the same time surprisingly simple and logical. That is also the point of the matter.
APPLICATION: Creation of completely new ways or an innovative breakthrough. Even difficult problems or topics can be dealt with.
In the Idea Pool, we build on the knowledge that the extraordinary creative inspiration comes at unpredictable times and can be brought in by anyone in the company. Idea Pool…
APPLICATION: Broad acquisition of ideas and innovations in the entire organization and at all levels of the company. Project-related work based on specific objectives is also possible.
Idea pool is sensibly used more and more as a digital/software solution.
TRIZ (Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch / Theory of Inventive Problem Solving)
… was created by G. S. Altshuller (1926-1998) and was designed by analyzing thousands of patents. Altshuller found that:
TRIZ contains a wide range of diverse tools and requires a high level of competence and experience in working with its tools. This means that the use of TRIZ makes sense particularly if a company has a large number of innovation projects on its daily agenda.
APPLICATION: Broad application in predominantly technically oriented companies:
Optimization of products and product features
Innovation Risk Management is not a process of generating innovations, but primarily serves to ensure the success of the innovations. We ask the following questions: “What could go wrong in the implementation?” Or “Where can we expect surprises in the implementation or on the market?”
In contrast to most innovation processes, which follow each other step by step and create something new, Risk Management tries to anticipate possible future negative scenarios. If a critical point actually arrives, your company has already prepared an alternative and can immediately turn in this alternative direction. With Risk Management, a positive moment is achieved from a previously negative perspective. We see Risk Management as an extremely effective and valuable tool for innovation projects.
APPLICATION: Ensuring the success of innovation
This method goes back to Walt Disney, the father of the modern cartoon industry. Walt Disney designed three rooms for himself in which he performed different tasks:
We carry out this process with our customers and clearly separate these three modes. In addition, we build these premises in a company in reality and enable very dynamic work in the company, but also with customers and business partners who are invited to participate in the process.
APPLICATION: Broad application across the organization and at all levels of the company. Project-related work is also possible with it.
Since it is a very easy to use method, it is also very suitable for SME.
House of Innovation© is a very compressed, agile process, where you go through all the steps of an innovation process in a structured manner and create a simple prototype in just a few hours. This process …
is easy to use – The process is aimed at small to medium-sized companies and organizations and is deliberately kept simple.
can start immediately – No previous knowledge is required. The process can be started immediately with instructions.
has a structured process – An efficient and structured process saves time and costs, minimizes risks and leads to optimal solutions.
brings quick results – Many ideas arise and in a very short time you have a prototype tailored to customer needs.
APPLICATION: Rapid generation of innovations in a wide range of applications; also well suited for SME.
We claim: Every process has its optimal application and also its limits. If you would like to know more about it, contact us. We are happy to help.
