Innovation Strategy is often left aside, after all, as soon as you have a creative idea you already think you are ready to be an entrepreneur and open a business, right?

Wrong! To build a new product or implement an innovative process, you will need a strategy.

Because innovation has more to do with a routine of activities and planning than with a discovery in the middle of the day (or in the shower).

The concept of strategy emerged many centuries ago from military tactics in Greece. The first studies were based on the art of war.

Little by little this concept of strategy was naturally brought to companies of all sizes around the world.

The problem is that in the rush of everyday life, many of them enter the battlefield, called “market”, without having a clear and well-defined strategy of what to do and how to act.

A well-known concept from authors Hamel and Prahalad indicates that strategy is the process of building the future, taking advantage of the company's fundamental competencies.

Michael Porter, a global authority on the subject, indicates that strategy is a set of offensive or defensive actions to create a defensible position in an industry and successfully face competitive forces obtaining a greater ROI.

And Peter Drucker, the father of Management, says that strategy is a continuous and systematic process that has the greatest possible knowledge about the future.

The point that unites all these recognized authors in administration is that thinking strategically has become indispensable in leading and managing organizations.

Making risky decisions, systematically organizing daily actions and managing results are part of driving your strategy.

Some companies have a strategy, but do not break it down into actions at a tactical (management) and operational level for day-to-day execution.

This is important so that work activities are effective in meeting the company's plan.

Many of these organizations that claim to innovate do not understand the meaning of the company's strategy, which is fundamental to achieving the organization's goal.

When we talk about product development, there are factors that directly affect the result of its launch.

So much so that to increase the chances of success, three tools are widely known.

The first of these is the product life cycle, which makes it possible to identify the phases of a product.

This way, it is possible to make more assertive decisions and define the actions for each phase of the product:

Introduction: The period in which the product starts on the market, i.e. its launch, and generally has a lower ROI than in other stages

Growth: this is the phase in which the company will obtain customer feedback regarding its product, if everything is going as desired, the initial investments will be covered and the product will begin to generate profit.

Maturity: In this part, the product has already conquered the market and is relevant, as it is already well established with its competitors, investments will be lower than in the initial phase, making this phase highly profitable.

Decline: Almost everything comes to an end, and it is inevitable that a product does not go through this stage, this happens due to a variety of factors and can be postponed, but not avoided.

There are other strategies that are used in conjunction with this, such as BCG Matrix, or else the Ansoff matrix.

To be successful in this, everyone needs to have the same information about the company's strategic direction for innovation in the coming years. This information is usually expressed by the Mission, Vision and Values.

The result of not having a good definition of strategic guidance is wasted effort and widespread demotivation.

With this vision and knowledge correctly recorded in strategic planning and broken down into actions, innovation is driven.

It is worth highlighting that innovation for a company must always be synonymous with value, that is, value innovation.

It must provide the company with a return on the investment made in the resources used to obtain this innovation, whether people, process or financial.

Innovation in companies is what generates differentiation in the market.

It is very important to have a good strategy for innovation and it must be linked to strategic planning, because as the saying goes: “for those who don't know where they are going, any path will do”.

How can we help you?

We, at 4C Innovation, are a product development platform that guides companies in implementing a culture of organizational innovation, transforming ideas into products/services with market viability.

O Innovation Management software, the CRD, emerged from MIT's digital transformation concepts, aligned with years of experience in innovation consultancies.

So much so that the end result was an innovation governance tool, used as a means to manage the transformation of ideas into products or services, such as implementing improvements or even analyzing startups.

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