CREATING CUSTOMER VALUE THROUGH INNOVATION

Innovation is critical to the competitiveness of any organization, and competitiveness is critical to an organization's survival, as well as for our nation in an increasingly competitive global environment. To be innovative, organizations must have a disciplined process that is well understood and fully endorsed by their entire membership and employ a process that affects how it interacts with customers, focuses internal investments, and forms partnerships. This article discusses the principles and drivers of innovation, and the disciplines necessary for successful innovation. Simply put, innovation is the creation and delivery of sustainable new customer value put into use. This article presents an example of how we at Draper Laboratory leveraged innovation, collaboration tools, and processes to establish a new energy business. We identified a need, partnered with Progress Energy Florida, and are now developing a custom, low-cost thermogravimetric analyzer that will be suitable for commercialization with a high value proposition. And in the process, we have partners for its manufacture and distribution, an initial customer, and the beginnings of research for the next-generation product. We have assembled a full spectrum of capabilities from the partners that enable us to address the multiple aspects of the problem in a high-value way.