Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2017 - 58

Why It Is Important to Build an Innovation Strategy Through the Project Management Maturity Model
C
Breakthrough: an out-ofthe-blue solution that cannot be compared to an existing one

Figure 4.

Strategic planning processes and deliverables.

PRODUCT INNOVATION
Product innovation can be realized through different approaches:
implementing the strategy, exploiting new random ideas, or combining both approaches. The market domain, the competitive scenario, the technological sector, or the organizational assets typically direct the product innovation process. Many classifications of
product innovation exist in the literature, and one of the classification criteria is based on the impact that the innovation effects (are
they actually new to the company or the market?). Some innovation types are described below:
C

C
C

Disruptive: a new product or service, or a new market that
eventually disrupts the existing market
Radical: a major technological breakthrough
Discontinuous: a new technology applied to solve an existing need in a new way

In some cases, innovation enhances existing technology and is aimed
at a relatively short-term market window; in other cases, it involves longterm research in order to identify the
technology whose availability is not
foreseen in the near future, meaning
that substantial investment and long
lead times can be required before the
proof of concept and initial operational capabilities are available.
Products and technologies have
their own life cycle and different
phases (Figure 5) [6]. Although this
article only discusses the invention
phase of an innovation project, each
phase has different distinctive parameters (e.g., market requirements
compliance, performance, unit costs
of production, reliability, and obsolescence), is influenced by different
market attractiveness (from growing
markets to saturated ones), and reaches different technology readiness levels (TRLs) at different rates. TRL is
a method for estimating technology
maturity and is used to define with some level of confidence the
scope, schedule, and cost baseline for the development project.
Figure 6 provides a graphic depiction of TRLs. Early forecasting
of successes or difficulties that may occur in the later phases of
product development will influence the selection of inventions to
invest in as innovation projects.
More than one project can develop products or enabling
technologies in order to enlarge or improve company offerings.
There is always competition for resources of all kinds. If multiple
projects perform concurrent technology development and design
implementation, they can run the risk of proceeding with an illdefined project baseline. Therefore, it is important to have coherent
and synchronous portfolio management that defines and develops
a proper innovation selection process. To better select a project, it
is necessary to know the context, strategic goals, constraints, risks
and opportunities, priority, and level of expectation and to have
some selection tools (e.g., what-if analysis, decision trees, and

Figure 5.

Product development phases.

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

MAY 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine May 2017