Innovation can be defined as the application of better methods, products, or solutions that meet new requirements—in other words, it is change. New requirements generally must be met with new ideas, but where are new ideas most often cooked up? Putting aside the image of The Thinker alone on his stone pedestal, novel thoughts and concepts typically don’t come from a single person. Instead, it’s more useful to understand that they come from a combination of collaboration and past experiences.
As products become more complex, smart, connected, and multidisciplinary, the ability to create innovations is becoming increasingly critical to a company’s success. The key factor is the ability to collaborate both internally and externally, globally and across industry, using platform technology. Interestingly, the Aras Platform, which is largely focused on PLM, is called Aras Innovator.
For years, innovation products and product portfolio management applications have largely been isolated applications that the enterprise has not had access to. Ideally, innovations are connected to requirements, systems architecture, and every other aspect of the product lifecycle.
I ran across an interesting blog by an innovation consultant, Paul Hobcraft, which I highly recommend. Paul has an insightful take on the accelerating demand to respond to the ever-changing needs of the market to gain a competitive advantage. Accordingly, he recognizes that innovation management needs to move to platforms such as Aras.
As always, I look forward to your thoughts.