Front End of Innovation
In the past, at the heart of the "fuzzy front end of innovation" was the belief that, early on, ideas were not fully developed or qualified, and the creative process of generating them could not be managed with a precise, structured approach without stifling innovation. Today, this has been proven to be untrue as leading companies have created appropriately structured idea management processes to enable successful, sustained innovation results.
Of course, successful innovation requires much more than coming up with creative ideas. The front end of innovation must be driven by an organization's strategic choices and core competencies. It must include excellent execution to win in the marketplace with customers, and implemented so that it will keep generating and commercializing winning ideas to meet growth goals.
To improve results from innovation and deliver business growth expectations, companies must change the way they think about and approach innovation. This means understanding how to systematize the front end of innovation – innovation strategy, customer/consumer insights, ideation and concept development – to drive desired growth without sacrificing creativity.
Kalypso’s Front End of Innovation approach improves organizations’ innovation results by converting winning ideas and concepts into tangible business value. We work with clients to first develop an innovation strategy that matches their business growth goals, then to optimize their front end of innovation and development processes to deliver increased return on innovation investment.
Our methodology includes a wide range of idea generation methods, the knowledge to sift and turn ideas into winning concepts, and the information system support to capture the ideas/concepts to easily enable reapplication across the organization.
Related service offerings include:
- Digital Innovation
- Integrate digital capabilities into innovation and marketing strategies to better engage consumers and shoppers and improve ROI.
- FEI Optimizer for Consumer Goods
- Transform the front end of innovation to drive bigger, better business results.
- Integrated Idea Management
- Develop effective ideation and idea management processes to capture, communicate, assess, prioritize, and exploit new ideas.
- Open Innovation
- Create and implement open innovation strategies, business processes, and technologies that facilitate connections and ideas from the outside.
- Social Product Innovation
- Integrate social media and social computing strategy to support innovation, product development, and business strategy.
- Strategic Roadmapping
- Implement effective roadmapping practices that improve strategic, market, technology, and product planning processes.
- Voice of the Consumer/Customer
- Capture consumer and customer insights and translate them into user needs, product requirements and product specifications to drive successful new product development.