Innovation fuels any project and can lead to growth, efficiency, and innovation over competitors. Innovation can make a project succeed if ideas can be translated into achievable action plans to meet goals. Bringing innovative ideas into a project can be planned out and you have to think on how you can execute. In this article, we will explore how to bring an innovative idea into a project, what planning steps to take, what goals to set, how to resource an innovative idea, as well as what metrics and how to assign and track responsibilities. The article also discusses why a project can fail due to poor management and how some common pitfalls can be avoided.
1. How to Plan Innovative Ideas Implementation?
When planning a project, you may have some innovative ideas for the project. How can you make sure that these innovative ideas are implemented in the right way?
According to my perspective, planning is always the first step to implement any innovative ideas in a project. Planning is important because it sets up the ‘base’ for your project; it helps you connect the innovative ideas to the overall purpose of the project and shows how everything can be implemented.
Step 1: Use Idea Management Platform
Use an idea management platform to streamline your ideation process, enabling effective team collaboration and organization of creative ideas. By leveraging this platform, you can easily prioritize and implement the most impactful solutions. It helps in keeping the ideation process structured and focused, ensuring that innovative ideas are not just generated but effectively executed. Start your journey towards better innovation management today
Step 2: Idea Evaluation
This is the first step where we evaluate the ideas generated from the ideation sessions. People usually come up with crazy and innovative ideas. But not all ideas are feasible or fit for the project’s purpose. So, filter out the unnecessary ideas. You can reject some of the ideas because of its boundaries, its impact, needed resources or it’s far fetched.
Step 3: Stakeholder Engagement
Ensure important stakeholders have input into your project/idea at the beginning.
Get important stakeholders to provide input early in the planning process, as they are excellent resources for identifying additional impacts of your ground-breaking idea that may not be apparent to you (due to lack of knowledge of the broader business context), or impacts beyond your initial area of expertise (for instance, uncovering potential resistance due to impacts to another stakeholder group that you don’t know well or may misunderstand).
This step is important for two reasons:
- It increases buy-in (or support) because your stakeholders have been involved from the beginning.
- And it also provides you with resources to mitigate potential areas of resistance to your project/idea down the line.
Step 4: Feasibility Study
Conduct feasibility study on each of the highly innovative ideas to ascertain technical feasibility, financial viability and the associated risks of failure (if any). If the feasibility study shows the challenges upfront, it will motivate participants even more towards innovation.
2. How To Set Goals and Objectives?
With good goals and objectives, it’s more likely that innovative ideas will be successfully implemented. Goals provide focus and direction. This is especially important during times of change when people need to understand the reason for innovation. Here are some suggestions for setting good goals and objectives:
Leverage SMART Goals
Use SMART goals to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. Making your goals SMART ensures they are easily understood by your team, what success looks like, and when to achieve it.
Sync with Business Objectives
Ensure that the goals adopted for innovative action are in sync with the broader business objectives This will ensure that innovation efforts have the support of stakeholders, stay on track and contribute to the greater good of the organization.
Use Prioritization
There are only so many goals that can be achieved simultaneously. By prioritizing the most important ones, you’ll be able to concentrate your team’s efforts on what’s most important in your project.
Implement Regular Review
Innovation is driven by momentum, but unrealistic goals might need to be dialed back as the project progresses. Set up regular reviews of the project internally, as well as with the actual user, to track progress, adjust goals and objectives as appropriate, and capture relevant new data.
3. Types of Resources to Consider
Coming up with good ideas only half of the equation needed to succeed. To make sure that it works as intended, it is vital that the right resources are allocated. Resources mean financial investment, time, human resources and technology and here’s how to manage them.
Budget
How much money will the innovation cost to bring to market?
What will the research and development, prototyping and testing, fundraising, branding and other needs be?
Bootstrap or crowdfund when some creative accounting is permitted. But recognize where the budget is coming from and does the report have the backing of an investor (if any).
Time Management
Time is the most critical resource in every project. Plan time for each step of creating and launching the new ideas (including planning, building, testing), as well as accounting into the total time frame in the project plan. Use any number of project management software to track time and keep projects running on a schedule.
Human Resources
Which people are needed to implement the innovation?
Who are the experts in specific areas?
What skills does the team need?
Are there external consultants who can help?
What strategic roles can be taken on by others in the business if critical mass is needed?
What costs can be off-loaded by using freelancers?
Who is responsible for what, and are responsibilities clear?
New Technology and Tools
Creativity often demands new tech. Making sure you have the technology and tools you need and that your team is trained to use them is crucial. This may require investing in new software, hardware or equipment.
4. How To Specify Innovative Ideas Metrics?
Metrics are needed for the ideas and for the overall project. Both the innovative ideas and the implementation need to be measured so you could understand if something didn’t go according to the plan so you have time to go back, resolve the issues and reappear. In any case, without metrics, it’s next to impossible to tell if the implementation phase had been a success. Here’s how to define and utilize metrics:
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Identify what KPIs are going to be used to assess the outcome of the sandbox? These might include time-based ones, cost-based ones, quality, customer satisfaction, speed or others that are more relevant. Obviously, others will follow on from this.
Baseline Measurement
Take a measurement before you make the tiny change, so that you have a starting point in the water against which to judge whether your innovation has moved the dial.
Monitor the metrics on a regular basis – the objective behind this heuristic cannot be overemphasized: by knowing and regularly monitoring the key metrics of a project, it is easier to avoid unexpected surprises which can imperil the entire process. Design dashboards and reports.
Feedback Loops
Ask stakeholders, team members and customers for input on innovative ideas. Create feedback loops to iterate on the ideas.
5. Specify Responsibilities
Although not a very sexy topic, it is crucial that everyone involved in an innovative project has a clear role and responsibilities. If roles are unclear, a project will end up being messy and will inevitably run into delays and ultimately fail. What is the best way to assign responsibilities?
Roles
Set up each person’s role and responsibilities (the people working on the implementation, and anyone else – stakeholders, external consultants, support staff – who might be involved).
Accountability
Define accountability for each step; those responsible for carrying out your requests, whether the first or last mile, should be identified.
Collaboration
Make team members and managers work together both for immediate projects and across departments In many cases, innovation requires people from other departments to come together and solve a problem. Making that possible means that team members and managers should work in teams.
Leadership
Good leadership is key to major change or innovation: providing direction, support and oversight. This might require project management as well as innovation leadership.
6. What Are The Challenges?
Bringing new ideas to a project may cause some challenges. Here are the challenges and some suggestions to overcome them:
Resistance From Stakeholders
One of the biggest challenges to adopting an innovation is resistance from stakeholders. People might resist because they don’t understand an innovation, they fear it will change things for them, or they have a different interest than you. Three ways to overcome this challenge include getting stakeholders involved early, communicating the benefits, and involving them in the decision-making process
Resources Scarcity
Resources that are crucial for innovation may not be readily available, such as time, budget, or human resources with the right skills. Recognise the most important ideas and look for opportunities to procure additional resources, if possible. Manage available resources as most effectively as possible, and, if necessary, phase the approach so that it is closely aligned to the availability of resources.
Innovative ideas do not always translate into meeting the intended business goals. Thus, it is important to keep experiments well-connected and aligned with business objectives. Continuously monitor progress against set metrics, and if things are not moving in the right direction, be willing to pivot or change the tactics.
Challenges
Using an innovative idea may present technical challenges, requiring a thorough technical assessment in order to make this assessment safe from obstacles. Performing technical assessments in the planning phase mean identifying technical barriers and avoiding them as challenges from the very beginning of the project. It also gives the team the ability to know and understand where the challenges will come from. To successfully overcome any technical obstacles, assure that technical expertise is building up the team.
Cultural Barriers
Organizational culture can be a barrier to innovation, especially if there is a culture of risk-aversion or a lack of tolerance for new ideas. How can these barriers be overcome?
Being specific, work toward creating a culture of innovation, encourage experimentation and reward innovation efforts.
Conclusion
Enabling those innovations within the project means setting up Plan-Do-Check-Act cycles ahead of time, carving out resources to deliver on them, and setting goals that can be checked and revised over time. While stakeholder resistance, limited resources, and making money can find their way into your views shed, the tools and thought processes described in this article should prevent each one of them, pointing you and your organization to a future of growth, efficiency, and success.
Breakthrough thinking is important, but innovation also means turning these ideas into reality during the course of a project. If those conditions can be met, the organization will stand to see a greater value created which lasts well after the completion of a project.
