Type of innovation |
Characteristics |
Product or service innovation |
A product innovation is the introduction of a product or service that is new or significantly improved with respect to its characteristics or intended uses. |
Process innovation |
A process innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. Process innovations can be intended to decrease unit costs of production or delivery, to increase quality, or to produce or deliver new or significantly improved products. |
Marketing innovation |
A marketing innovation is the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing. Marketing innovations are aimed at better addressing customer needs, opening up new markets, or newly positioning a firm’s product on the market, with the objective of increasing the firm’s sales. |
Organizational innovation |
Organizational innovations can be intended to increase a firm’s performance by reducing administrative costs or transaction costs, improving workplace satisfaction (and thus labor productivity), gaining access to no tradable assets (such as non-codified external knowledge) or reducing costs of supplies. Organizational innovation is the implementation of a new organizational method in the firm’s business practices, workplace organization or external relations. |
- Incremental innovation
Incremental innovation seeks to improve the systems that already exist, making them better, faster cheaper.
- Process innovation
Process innovation means the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method.
- Red ocean innovation
Red Oceans refer to the known market space, i.e. all the industries in existence today. In red oceans, industry boundaries are defined and accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known. Companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand usually through marginal changes in offering level and price. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products become commodities, and cutthroat competition turns the red ocean bloody.
- Service innovation
Service Innovation can be defined as “a new or considerably changed service concept, client interaction channel, service delivery system or technological concept that individually, but most likely in combination, leads to one or more renewed service functions that are new to the firm.
- Business model innovation
Business Model Innovation (BMI) refers to the creation, or reinvention, of a business itself. Whereas innovation is more typically seen in the form of a new product or service offering, a business model innovation results in an entirely different type of company that competes not only on the value proposition of its offerings, but aligns its profit formula, resources and processes to enhance that value proposition, capture new market segments and alienate competitors.
- Sustainable innovation
Eco-innovation is a term used to describe products and processes that contribute to sustainable development.
- Frugal innovation
Frugal Innovation is about doing more with less. Entrepreneurs and innovators in emerging markets have to devise low cost strategies to either tap or circumvent institutional complexities and resource limitations to innovate, develop and deliver products and services to low income users with little purchasing power.
- Blue ocean innovation
Blue Oceans represent the unknown market space, i.e. all the industries not in existence today. Blue oceans are defined by untapped market space, demand creation, and the opportunity for highly profitable growth. In blue oceans, competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are not set. Blue oceans can be created by expanding existing industry boundaries or by reconstructing industry boundaries.
- Disruptive innovation
A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. . In a nutshell, disruptive innovation is that when the basis of competition changes, because of technological shifts or other changes in the marketplace, companies can find they getting better and better at things people want less and less. When that happens, innovating your products won’t help — you have to innovate your business model
- User led innovations
The user is king. It’s a phrase that’s repeated over and over again as a mantra: Companies must become user-centric. But there’s a problem: It doesn’t work. Here’s the truth: Great brands lead users, not the other way around.
- Supply chain innovation
Supply chain innovation is about applying best practices and technological innovations to your own supply chain in order to reduce such cycle and wait times and other waste (to use a Lean term) in your in-house processes.