Targeting the Innovation Roadmap Event Horizon: Product Concept Visioning & Scenario Building

Identifying new potential product innovations requires working on the horizon of already existing product road maps and also ensuring that some credible business case can be made. New innovations often loose momentum due to a lack of resources required to fully explore and develop a concept when such new potential product innovations are not effectively communicated and conceptualized. Hence engagement and effective communication with stakeholders is essential to ensure required resources are maintained. This paper studies how appropriate product concept visioning coupled with multiple scenario building as part of an innovation roadmap can formulate product innovation and provide effective communication with the required stakeholders. Several consumer electronic product concept projects undertaken by a major MNC based in Singapore were analyzed. Critical characteristics of an integrative innovation process were identified and linkages to existing product & technology roadmaps identified. The scope considered is that of convergent innovation where technologies and product features are used in new application areas. Several key roles emerge as necessary to manage such an innovation process. These include concept architect, integration agent and market interface roles and how these can be combined to provide an integrated innovation process. This process is also used to augment and support the product & technology roadmaps of business units who are responsible for product development and commercialization. The paper concludes that innovation requires pushing existing roadmap boundaries using concept visioning and scenario building. These tools are necessary to identify the market context, including varying and emerging markets and build the business case to justify resources for further development. Too far over the roadmap event horizon and the concept vision can be lost and difficult to communicate, however if the concept does not push the existing roadmap boundaries enough it falls into existing product development pipelines which are already time pressured and resource allocated