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Martin Gunnarsson, Product Director & ERP Evangelist at IFS, shares his view about the IFS World Conference 2016 panel discussion…

Modern systems and processes can provide an ecosystem where business innovation thrives, and with it, the ‘next big thing’ can…

Since 1998, NEC have been a valued partner of IFS, and one success factor of the partnership is the similarities…

My very first experience of the captivating atmosphere watching biathlon was in Ruhpolding in 2000. It’s amazing to be part…

In the software industry, we like to outline business dream scenarios. But that is the easy part. I prefer to talk about how to get there. What is your better, safer path to innovation? I think IFS can offer a quicker, safer path to innovation than our competition can, please let me explain how.

The main theme at the IFS World Conference is innovation and how to invent the future of ERP. But innovation doesn’t come easy. Good ideas are often hampered by thoughts like “this is not unique” or “it’s just an idea, I don’t know how to build it”. But why not reward interesting concepts just for being good ideas and leave practical worries for the experts? That was IFS’s idea when launching the IFS Innovation Award a few months ago. The challenge: give IFS an idea for how to apply technology in an innovative way and we’ll give the winner a cash prize and the opportunity to see their idea made into a product prototype. The winning idea turned out to be a smart way of…

The innovation process includes all stages from generating the idea to developing and selling the idea as a fully fledged product innovation to the market. In your company’s innovation processes, make sure that you stay at the junction where YOU flourish, based on your own personal prerequisites. Don’t waste your energy by assuming you are someone else and end up at a junction that doesn’t suit you.

As individuals and companies, we need to protect ourselves against distractions so as not to lose our focus and commitment to bringing ideas all the way to new innovations. Today, distraction can include the possibilities and opportunities we see around us but also our self-perceived limited skills and experience when we compare ourselves with other people or companies.

In a study of companies in the industrial, technology, and consumer goods sectors, a correlation can been seen between investment ratios and the distribution of innovation returns reflected in the share price. Among high performers that invest in all three levels of innovation, surveys reveal that the return ratio is the inverse of resource allocation. Companies that allocated according to the above investment ratios outperformed their peers, typically realizing a P/E premium of 10% to 20%.

Targeting a healthy balance of core, adjacent, and transformational innovation is a vital step toward managing a complete innovation portfolio. The challenge is that a company must be able to execute at all three levels of ambition. However, few companies are good at all three, and not entirely surprising, companies struggle the most with transformational innovation.

Many times I have asked myself what the best-in-class innovation portfolio would look like. How should you balance the different innovation ambition levels such as incremental innovations with transformational (breaking news) innovations? Are there any numbers you can benchmark against and what ratio will have the most impact on your financial results and share price? What areas of management will boost the different levels of ambition?

My advice is to always have your copycat glasses on and think how you can refine and evolve existing solutions on the market. Please bear in mind that many profitable innovations that have evolved from an existing technology or user behavior.