Innopedia
Innopedia is Innovation Matters' reference collection on innovation management — concepts, frameworks, and models explained with practical examples, organized by theme below.
Foundations & Opportunity Recognition
- Sources of Innovations Where innovations actually come from — the ecosystem of individual inventors, firms, universities, and cross-industry collaboration behind most breakthroughs.
- Creative Inquiry Curiosity, critical thinking, and open-mindedness as the disciplined practice behind recognizing opportunities and framing problems.
Strategy & Scope
- Ansoff Matrix & Development Scope Using the classic product/market growth matrix to set a development effort's principal direction, and narrowing that into concrete workpackages.
- Trade-offs and Coherence in Digital Strategy Why digital strategy is a set of coherent, mutually reinforcing choices — with real trade-offs companies like Spotify, Google, and Dropbox actually make.
- S-Curve Transitions & Disruption How performance S-curves plateau, and how Christensen and Raynor's disruptive innovation model explains what displaces an incumbent technology.
Development Process
- Agile/Stage-Gate: Symbiosis & Compatibility Whether agile and stage-gate models can coexist — and how hybrid scrum-stage-gate approaches actually work in physical product development.
- Cash Flow Curves for Innovation Projects Reading an innovation project's aggregate cash flow curve — cash neutral points, break-even points, and estimating uncertainty.
- Mapping Activity Systems for Business Model Innovation Porter's activity-system mapping applied to business model innovation, worked through with a Trader Joe's example.
Ecosystems & Platforms
- Ecosystems Defined Distinguishing innovation ecosystems, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and product ecosystems, with definitions from credible sources.
- Optimizing Ecosystem Configuration and Governance with an Ecology Lens Borrowing keystone species, nutrient pathways, and symbiosis types from ecology to diagnose and improve innovation ecosystem health — with an interactive scorecard.
- Market Mediator Models, Platforms & Network Externalities How platforms like Airbnb create self-reinforcing positive feedback loops, and why network externalities make them dramatically more valuable at scale.
Digital Transformation & Value
- Microfoundations for Sensing, Seizing and Transforming Digital Opportunities The nine microfoundations behind an organization's dynamic capability to sense and seize digital opportunities — and why they must be actively coordinated.
- Estimating the Value Created and ROI for Digital Innovations Linking digital KPIs across six business areas to financial outcomes, for a more rigorous ROI case than standalone value alone.
- Equity Investors in Technological Innovations Venture capital, angel investors, corporate investors, private equity, and crowdfunding — who funds technological ventures, and what each brings besides money.