Quintessence presentations

Routine business processes like Innovation Outsourcing could be expected to run smoothly and close to the peak of operational performance but real-life leaves much to be desired. Impressive failure rates, mismatches between client requirements and service provider deliveries and up to 30% malperformance in the quality field result in annual investment losses in the billion $US range.

Already a depressing figure, which gets worse once the subsequent damage to the respective innovation processes is added. Frequently Innovation Outsourcing offers room for significant improvement. Four rather simple steps will increase outsourcing performance.

Since innovation success or the lack thereof makes or breaks a business, innovation is clearly a top management topic. Seen from management perspective, innovation is an entrepreneurial bet, gambling substantial business resources on successful innovation and requiring consecutive decisions whether to quit the bet or to continue and raise the stakes. Deciding on the entrepreneurial bet is a top management topic as well. 

Since these decisions are done based on data from the innovation process, innovation quality should be a top management topic as well but seldom is. While management sometimes ignores innovation quality entirely, the standard response is delegation. 

No CEO or Managing Director would deny the relevance of quality for innovation processes. Few of them, however, feel the need to get directly involved in this topic. An attitude that bears the risk of costly failure. 

As a result, service providers deliver exactly the commodity ordered and payed for by the client - and nothing else. Scientific challenges, creativity challenges and the selection of the best, the fastest or the most efficient way to move forward remain exclusively with the client.

Keeping in mind the relevance of outsourcing for innovation success, this does not seem to be a helpful trend. 

Quality rules, regulations and activities are a common and costly occurrence in the manufacturing field.

Compared to that, the industry’s investment in quality activities in the innovation field is small to non-existent. Is that a smart way to operate?