When it comes to innovation, the common belief is that companies must invest heavily in R&D spending to achieve successful innovation, competitive advantage and overall enterprise growth. If companies consider innovation as the key to fueling company growth, shouldn't more money be spent on innovation development?

Without managed innovation, companies experience missed market opportunities, misalignment of R&D priorities, redundant technologies and big budgets with not-so-big results. This, in the end, leads to poor investments of R&D dollars. Identifying innovation as the key to growth is inaccurate – rather, managed innovation is the key to growth.

So what are companies doing to consistently and efficiently manage innovation? Many leading companies today are using strategic roadmapping processes to provide a structured framework for managing multiple-generation and long-term “horizon” projects in their product pipeline. Roadmapping fosters innovation by helping companies to make more informed decisions with better data about future technologies, customer needs, and market demands. This allows organizations to make strategic planning decisions about future innovations in a more timely and efficient fashion.

Another key benefit of managing innovation through a rigorous roadmapping process is improved communication and collaboration across the enterprise, including different functional departments and business units. As a result, companies are investing precious R&D dollars and resources in only those new product ideas with the most commercial potential. Disciplined and managed innovation through roadmapping is the key to their success.

If you’re interested in learning more about the roadmapping process or about Sopheon’s end-to-end product planning solutions, including its Vision Strategist™ product roadmapping software, click here.