Innovation Term Glossary

Scenario planning is a strategic tool used to anticipate potential futures by creating detailed descriptions of possible outcomes. By exploring various scenarios, organizations can proactively prepare for the future.

The Triple Helix Model is an organizational model that suggests collaboration between three types of stakeholders - government, industry, and academia - is essential for successful innovation.

Co-design is a collaborative innovation approach that engages stakeholders from the beginning of the design process to create an end product or service that meets their needs and expectations.

Futuring is the practice of envisioning and planning for potential futures, often through a systematic process that includes analysis, exploration, and forecasting.

The knowledge, abilities, and attitudes that enable individuals to contribute to the innovation process.

A type of innovation that involves combining existing technologies or ideas in a new and innovative way.

A type of innovation that involves generating a wide range of potential solutions to a problem, often by considering unconventional or unlikely approaches.

A type of innovation that involves constantly improving and updating products, services, or processes in order to stay ahead of the competition.

The processes and structures that an organization puts in place to manage and control its innovation activities.

Measures of an organization's innovation performance, such as the number of patents filed, the percentage of revenue from new products, or the time it takes to bring a new product to market.

The process of iteratively testing and refining a product or service by engaging with potential customers - to ensure that the product meets customer needs and wants.

A problem-solving approach that involves exploring a problem from different angles and considering unconventional solutions.

A group activity that involves generating a large number of ideas in a short period of time, often using techniques such as freewriting and lateral thinking.

The process of generating and evaluating new ideas in order to solve a problem.

The degree to which an organization is prepared to adopt and implement new technologies and ideas.

A framework that helps to explain how and why individuals or organizations adopt innovations.

A graphical representation of the adoption of an innovation over time, often showing the stages of early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.

The process by which an innovation is adopted and integrated into the mainstream.

A visualization of the interconnectedness of the various elements that make up an innovation ecosystem, including organizations, individuals, and resources.

A program or organization that helps businesses or ideas to grow quickly by providing intensive support and resources, often over a fixed period of time.

A program or organization that helps new businesses or ideas to develop and grow by providing resources such as funding, workspace, and mentorship.

A system for managing the flow of ideas through the stages of idea generation, evaluation, development, and implementation.

A time-boxed process for rapidly prototyping and testing new ideas, typically involving a cross-functional team working intensively over a short period of time.

A controlled environment in which organizations can test and experiment with new technologies and ideas without the risk of failure.

The values, behaviors, and practices that support and encourage innovation within an organization.

A structured meeting or session that brings together cross-functional teams to generate and evaluate new ideas.

A framework that helps organizations assess their current level of innovation and identify areas for improvement.

A systematic review of an organization's innovation processes, capabilities, and outcomes, often with the aim of identifying areas for improvement.

Innovation software is a tool that helps organizations identify and develop new ideas, products, services, or processes to gain competitive advantage.

A technology or infrastructure that enables innovation by providing a common platform for collaboration and development.

The network of organizations, individuals, and resources that support and enable innovation. It includes the interplay between customers, businesses, governments and other stakeholders who influence the development of new products and services.

The process of developing products or services that are affordable and accessible to a wide range of customers, often by using simple and low-cost technologies and design principles.

A type of user who is significantly ahead of the market in adopting new products or services. Leader users are typically knowledgeable in the domain and their insights can help shape future products and services.

The process of developing new ideas through collaboration with external partners, such as customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

A model of collaboration in which the source code of a software product is made available to the public, allowing anyone to use, modify, and distribute the software.

The practice of funding a project or venture by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the internet.

Information that is not generally known or readily ascertainable, is the subject of reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy, and provides a competitive advantage to the owner.

A type of innovation that involves making incremental improvements to an existing product or process in order to maintain its competitive advantage.

The legal rights that protect the creations of the mind, such as inventions, designs, trademarks, and copyrights. They can provide a source of revenue through licensing and royalties.

User innovation is the process of individuals or organizations developing new products or services that meet their own needs, rather than those of the market

Agile Model is a method of managing software development projects that emphasizes rapid releases and incremental progress.

An analytical prototype is an initial version or model of a product with essential functionalities to be tested, measured and observed.

The ability of a firm to prepare the business for the future while also supporting current operations.

Architectural innovation is the process of changing the way that components of a product or service are configured together to improve outcomes.

Blue ocean strategy is Innovation that creates a new market, by creating and capturing demand that did not previously exist.

A company's Business Model incorporates everything that the business does to capture value such as its products or services, customers, revenue streams and cost structures.

What are Competencies for Innovation? The ways in which a company utilizes its resources.

Business Model Innovation is the process of changing a company’s business model in order to create new sources of value and competitive advantage.

Co-Creation is the collaborative process of creating something with stakeholders, customers, or other partners to develop innovative products, services and experiences.

The opposite of open innovation, cosed Innovation is the practice of developing products or services solely within an organization without external help.

A comprehensive prototype is a model of a product or system that contains most or all of the attributes of the final product, allowing it to be tested for functionality.

Concurrent working is the practice of working on multiple projects, tasks or initiatives at the same time.

Creative Destruction is a continuous process in which new products and processes replace long-standing old products and processes.

Crowdsourcing is the practice of obtaining ideas, services, or content for a common goal by enlisting contributions from a large group of people, typically via an online platform.

Cross-Functional Teams are teams where people from different departments come together to work on a specific problem.

Innovation that focuses on the problems of the customers, and seeks to solve them in a way that brings the most value to said customers.

Design Thinking Process is an iterative methodology for creative problem solving that involves empathizing with the user, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing.

A customer persona is a detailed fictional character that represents a segmented group of customers, enabling businesses to better understand and tailor their offerings to meet their needs.

Digital innovation is the use of digital technology to create or improve products, services, processes and business models.

Digital Transformation is the process of leveraging digital technology to create new or modified business processes, products, services, and experiences that can help organizations increase their efficiency, effectiveness, and competitive advantage.

Disruptive Innovation changes the way that an industry or a market operates - typically by introducing simplicity, convenience, accessibility, and affordability where previously none existed.

A company’s capacity to adapt to an evolving market through change, innovation, and learning. A firm's ability to integrate, build, and reconfigure internal and external resources to address rapidly changing environments.

Entrepreneurship is the process of creating a new business venture, typically with considerable risk and effort. Entrepreneurship creates and extracts value and drives economic growth in society.

Experimentation is the process of testing ideas, concepts and solutions in order to measure their effectiveness and discover new insights.

Exploitation is using the current resources of the firm to improve innovations incrementally.

A focused prototype is a prototype with only one or two attributes of the final product, which is used to answer specific questions.

Finding new opportunities in new markets that can be turned into innovations for the company.

Followership is the strategy of following the first mover into a new industry. It can have advantages such as existing infrastructure and customer base, but also carries risks such as greater competition and slower product innovation.

First-Mover Advantage refers to the benefits companies gain by being the first to enter a new market or develop a new product.

Green Innovation is a form of social innovation that focuses on reducing environmental impacts and maximize sustainability. This can include the development of new technologies, processes, products, services or business models that have a positive environmental impact.

Having a growth mindset means to believe that one can constantly develop own capabilities.

A hackathon is basically any event where people come together to solve problems (mostly over 1-3 days).

Idea Generation is the first part of any innovation process. Idea generation is the process of coming up with new, creative concepts or ideas. It focused os generating ideas with methods like brainstorming, research and exploration.

Hybrid thinking means to be able to combine different ways of thinking and quickly switch between one and the other. Milan Guenther defines the term Hybrid Thinking as "the ability to integrate different ways of thinking, jump between them, and align them to work towards a universal goal".

A growth hacker explores the next growth opportunities, mostly in a startup environment.

Hyper-adoption of innovation describes the ability to adopt to innovation at an unmatched speed and skill.

Idea Management is a process of capturing, collecting, and organizing ideas to identify their potential value - and implementing the best.

Implementation is the process of putting an idea or plan into action, the transformation of innovative ideas into actions.

Incremental Innovation is a process of improving existing products, services or processes through small, constant changes over time.

An Innovation Charter is a method of opportunity management used to create and formalize an organization's commitment to innovation.

An Innovation Community is a group of people who come together to share ideas and learn from each other in order to foster innovation.

An Innovation Hub is a physical or virtual space designed to nurtures innovation in a particular field, where experts lend advice and direction to the innovators

Innovation can be defined as the invention, development, and implementation of new products, services, processes, or organizational structures with the goal of creating value.

An Innovation Lab is a physical space where people come together to explore and develop new ideas, products or services.

The Innovation Life Cycle is a framework for the stages of an innovation from its inception through to adoption and diffusion.

An innovation portfolio is a structured collection of projects and initiatives that an organization pursues to drive innovation.

Innovation management process is the system of tools and techniques used to foster creativity and convert ideas into successful products, services or processes.

Innovation strategy is a comprehensive plan to develop and implement new products, services, or processes that will help an organization achieve its goals.

Integrative Competencies are a set of skills and knowledge a company needs to integrate complex ideas, data, and systems.

Internal Collaboration is the process of engaging multiple people within a company to work together on a shared goal or project.

The jobs-to-be-done theory is an approach to truly understand and cater towards customer needs.

Knowledge management is about how an organization not only obtains but also uses and stores collective knowledge.

The Lean Startup method is a method of innovation that allows for the rapid development and launch of new products. It focuses on customer feedback, experimentation, and iterative product development.

An MVP is a prototype of a product or service that contains basic features to test the product in the market without being fully developed y

A napkin sketch is the simple drawing of one single idea, explaining what the idea is about without going into details how it works.

Open Innovation is an approach to innovation which sources outside knowledge and resources from outside of the organization in order to find new solutions.

What is Opportunity Identification? Finding a problem in the market that needs a solution in the form of a product or service.

The culture that exists within an organization, which is established by its leadership and perpetuated by a variety of processes.

Process innovation is the improvement of existing processes to gain an advantage in terms of cost, quality or speed.

A physical prototype is a tangible representation of an idea or concept, designed to help showcase, test, develop and evaluate its potential for use.