This is how we work with innovation

Attention to innovation has increased rapidly over the last fifty years, and it is no longer just a macroeconomic concept.

It is also a concept seen within the company in achieving readiness and creating change in the competitive picture.

The newest thing is to see innovation as a result of complementing personal competencies that can be learned, trained and refined and thereby create an innovative culture that is ready to act in an obscure future – an organization that is not just ready for change but Future fit!

In line with the development of the innovation concept, the discipline of innovation management has become complex and challenging. By reading the relatively new Innovation Standard ISO 56002, with its many chapters and good recommendations, you get a good starting point for understanding the complexity, depth and breadth of the discipline. Here, innovation work is not only seen as an isolated development task but is seen as the construction of an integrated innovation function in the company – corresponding companies’ finance and marketing functions – with associated methods, specialities and tools. It challenges companies’ current way of thinking about innovation and places great demands on the innovation leaders who have to build and navigate in the professional innovation field.

The innovation work embraces three keywords: Process, competence and framework. ‘Process’ covers methods and tools that lead to the desired change and innovation. ‘Competence’ covers knowledge, qualities and innovative abilities that make some quality come out of the process. ‘Framework’ covers motivational and visionary leadership qualities and supporting management disciplines that ensure an innovative culture and that resources are available. A framework that motivates participants to do their best in a process that is appropriate for them. When the Innovation Conductor gets the three keyword functions to fluctuate in time, the innovation has good conditions in the organization.

At Oquam, we support the broad, holistic view of the innovation concept from the Innovation Standard, and our mission is to develop digital innovation tools that integrate the three disciplines of process, competence, and framework with the goal of making companies better and more efficient at working with innovation in practice.