In this month's inKNOWvations, Dr. Robert Phaal explores strategic roadmapping to support innovation and strategy.

The strategic roadmapping method is widely used in industry to support innovation and strategy, ranging from product planning to business strategy and public policy development. The approach is flexible, and can be readily adapted to suit the particular business context and strategic issues of interest.

In this month's inKNOWvations, Dr. Bryan Seyfarth discusses five common issues which prevent companies from generating more high-value ideas and specific principles to employ for effective idea management.

Sometimes companies don’t have enough ideas. Other times they simply generate a lot of bad ideas. And by “bad”, I mean low-value ideas or ideas that don’t contribute to the organization’s strategic goals.

Research findings by the Product Development Institute show that 79% of companies admit to having too few high-value projects in their portfolio. This is confirmed by what our customers tell us all the time: “we have no problem generating lots of ideas…what we need is better ideas.”

Nobody admits to being the innovation killer in a company. We call these folks the “dinosaurs that won’t change.” Or “nay-saying ‘Dr. No’ middle managers.” But when you meet these people, they don’t admit to being innovation killers. They believe, deep in their hearts as well as in their everyday actions, that they are doing the right thing for the business. And that’s because they’ve been chosen, and reinforced, to be the Status Quo Police.