Successful and innovative companies typically do a lot of things well. Chief among them is consistently producing innovation that makes a measurable difference in the technical and market spaces it exists in. It takes a tremendous amount of time, resources, and innovative muster to advance quality innovations down the lifecycle so that they can succeed in the marketplace. During this process, decisions are made as to what opportunities to pursue. While most seek to build and commercialize revolutionary technologies, progress is often incremental—with high-quality ideas that target consumer needs. It is not always easy to determine which technologies will meet these goals. In fact, it rarely is.
Although innovation can differ by company and industry, a few basic tenants broadly apply to innovation efforts. Firstly, there will be failures, and some innovations may never make it beyond the ideation and invention disclosure stages. Secondly, building an innovation pipeline with a number of high-quality ideas involves actively assessing which ideas demand your time and attention. Taking these into account requires understanding the relationship between innovation quality and quantity, and preventing these objectives from conflicting with one another in your innovation pipeline.
Quality and Quantity in Collaboration
Innovation can be messy but it doesn’t have to be. Sound policies at the C-suite level that take into account the realities of day-to-day innovation are a great start. Taming the innovation process can also include standardizing workflows for innovation teams who may currently rely on inefficient company culture or the rare talents of a few innovators. But innovation is a team game that requires smooth collaboration between multiple disciplines to succeed. AI-powered tools can help capitalize on collaboration by simplifying and even eliminating workflows with automation to build an innovation pipeline with a number of quality opportunities.
- Ideation. Early in the innovation lifecycle, innovation teams are actively determining which ideas in their infancy can be technologically refined and are candidates for invention disclosures. Using workflow automation tools like IQ Ideas+™ can help create a standardized innovation system that more efficiently solves problems, builds on existing inventions, and improve systems. Assess the patentability of multiple fully-articulated novel ideas in each of these areas in real time. This limits the number of communications between teams to make collaboration more efficient for higher ROI.
- Invention disclosures. Writing high-quality invention disclosures shouldn’t be an afterthought or sacrifice quality for speed. In many organizations, disclosing requires input from R&D, legal, and C-suite teams. IQ Ideas+ can assist in writing invention disclosures ready for the innovation pipeline as patentable ideas or defensive publications with limited and efficient collaboration.
- Idea validation. Validation stage workflows involve determining the technical and commercial value of an idea. This workflow often requires extensive communication between teams to assess technical and market landscapes within legal and commercial trends. IQ Ideas+ uses powerful semantic AI technologies to compare your ideas with existing technologies so you can determine their value based on fully-realized technical specifications.
Quality and Quantity with Analytics
Ideas can be quickly assessed for their novelty along a single consolidated and transparent metric based on their description. IQ Ideas+ novelty scoring allows you to determine how an idea compares to existing technologies within all related technical domains to highlight existing or potential competitors. Quickly determine which iterations of an idea stand out to set you on a path to high-quality disclosures that more easily transition to patents or defensible publications.
Deciding what technologies to pursue should always be data-driven. But manually compiling and interpreting comprehensive overviews of technical and market landscapes is time-consuming and error-prone. Organizations can benefit from tools that can instantly provide meaningful, actionable metrics to multiple teams. Combine these tools with visualization and document summary applications to quickly identify important information uncovered in IP searches.
Quality and Quality in the Innovation Pipeline
Validate the work produced by ideation workflows by zeroing in on specific patents, companies, and technology families to determine where your ideas fall in the marketplace. IP.com’s proprietary Portfolio Intelligence Reports can uncover new ways to improve products with comprehensive AI-based analytics.
Enhance collaboration with standardized, descriptive, and holistic reports on the status of a patent portfolio and the individual technologies within it delivered to all relevant teams. Perform deep analysis of the technology landscape to differentiate your idea from those currently available and in development to build your innovation pipeline.