Culture of Innovation

Innovation requires not only creative people but also a culture that makes it possible to awaken the potential that exists and to use it efficiently. A vital requirement here: clearly defined framework conditions that are designed to give motivation as well as a focus on performance.

A culture of innovation is a daily reality at Jantape. The Company operates a systematic, forward-looking innovation management function that gives creative space – and links this to clearly structured processes. A wide variety of instruments and methods of Open Innovation are applied to systematically involve external partners in the innovation process. The result, expressed as a common denominator: A system for thinking outside the box.

 

Innovation Management

Structured innovation management is indispensable for lasting corporate success. New innovation projects can only be implemented successfully if there is broad-based acceptance for them within the Company.

 

Holistic, consultation-focussed approach

 

As a corporate function, Jantape Innovation Management supports all Business Units worldwide in the identification of new innovation potential. Our holistic approach integrates both the market and engineering through the application of appropriate methods. The Innovation Manager is an expert in methodology who develops and implements the correct approach in close consultation and discussion with the business coordinators. The portfolio of methods applied ranges from various search field analyses via creative techniques to business plan preparation. It covers a very wide spectrum, which means that the appropriate method can be selected for each internal customer and each project.

 

Active involvement and joint development

 

A central feature of the innovation management approach is the workshop. The joint active preparation of results in workshops achieves a uniform understanding of the task as well as a commitment to finding solutions. For this interdisciplinary preparation, persons from various corporate functions or, if necessary, external participants are drawn into the process – those who will be affected thus become those who are actively involved.

 

Achieving transparency in decision-making

 

 

Our holistic consideration of innovation projects in the Fuzzy Front End ensures transparency in decision-making about the attractiveness of potential innovations and the uncertainties still associated with them. The focus here is on customer benefits and, additionally by various aspects such as issues relating to production or sales. The principal method here is the business plan, the scope of which is matched to the requirements of the project. Transparency in decision-making increases the probability of success and helps to focus on the innovation projects with the best prospects.

 

Innovation Process

The systematic innovation process is the fundamental precondition for driving forward our innovation projects in both an effective and efficient way. It is important that the stages in making a decision are transparent to all participants and that the entire process is designed in a creative yet systematic way.

 

For this reason, we always follow three essential process steps in our innovation projects and apply specially developed methods for analysis, creativity, assessment and decision-making in each of these phases. We work together in interdisciplinary teams, drawing members from various market sectors and functional units.

 

Identifying search fields

 

In the first phase, various perspectives such as competences, product portfolio, trends and customer requirements as well as strategic objectives are analysed. The important initiator in this phase is the customer (voice of the customer). Integrating the customer in the innovation process at an early stage ensures a high degree of customer focus. Among the methods used here is the lead user method.

 

Generating ideas

 

In the second phase, concept solutions are generated for the search fields or problems that have been identified and have the best prospects. Various experts join forces in interdisciplinary workshops. It is not necessary that all the participants are already acquainted with the problem. It is rather the case that persons are consciously drawn into the process who can bring with them a new, detached way of looking at the problem. Through this interdisciplinary and heterogeneous collaboration, possible approaches are developed jointly that go beyond the knowledge horizon of any individual participant.

 

Evaluating innovation projects

 

 

In the third phase, business sketches are ultimately prepared for the concept solutions that give an integrated analysis from a market and engineering perspective. These provide a comparison of, for example, the costs of implementation and the benefits. This is how technical ideas become business ideas. Based on the analysis, the business ideas described are prioritised and approved for further processing in a development project.