This book explores how organisations manage new product development (NPD) focused innovation across a portfolio of core, adjacent and breakthrough environments. The focus is on the search and select phases of the innovation process, and how incumbents identify and validate a range of opportunities. Organisations face the paradox of how to establish search and select processes for focal markets, while also setting up routines to sense and respond to disruptive innovation signals from adjacent and more peripheral markets. The book builds on research into peripheral vision, and considers how organisations manage the crucial early stages of the innovation process in disrupting digital environments.
To analyse how organisations search for and validate opportunities in turbulent environments, the author conducted research in the global higher education publishing industry using qualitative research methods. The research project at the heart of the book focused on 10 case companies publishing 9,000 out of the world's 32,000 academic journals. The new frameworks developed by the author were informed by 61 interviews with 63 individuals across the 10 case companies. The interviewees ranged from CEOs and CTOs to directors and managers in areas such as production, operations, editorial, publishing, sales and marketing.
The author identifies a number of early stage innovation capabilities that need to be in place to manage NPD effectively. His research identified five contextual factors that influence how search and select activities are operationalised in technology disrupted environments. A framework is proposed to enable the mapping of individual opportunities within a wider NPD portfolio. The book highlights 10 key market insight areas where firms need to focus to improve their innovation success rate.
The research informed frameworks outlined in this book have implications for practice, especially for higher education publishers, online media companies, and business to business service organisations. Consideration is given to how the cognitive frames of boards and senior teams affect the structure and operationalisation of NPD portfolios, as well as how workflow mapping and the identification of jobs-to-be-done is deployed within the NPD process in different settings.