A Lightweight Innovation Process for Software-Intensive Product Development

The product development environment facing most companies today requires a long-term perspective featuring the conception and development of long-term innovations. This can be hard when close quarter bottom-line results dominate. Without innovation, competitive advantages decrease over time. This is especially true for companies producing software-intensive systems. Software is becoming a large part of the competitive advantage of traditionally hardware-focused systems such as cars, robots, or power systems, where feature sets traditionally offered and controlled by hardware are transferred to software. As software's impact and influence grows, so do the possibilities for innovation and increasing the competitive advantage through software. Star Search is a lightweight innovation model based on best practices from innovation management literature as well as two industry cases. It employs face-to-face screening and idea refinement using heterogeneous audition teams. Star Search was developed in collaboration with, and subsequently piloted at, two companies. It has helped increase the long-term perspective of product development by increasing the level of new ideas that make it to product planning and development.