Innovation Project template
A tool to ‘process’ all the critical information on your innovation projects and ‘translate’ your innovation projects into mappable elements, or ‘circles’ for use on the Innovation portfolio map.
What is this for?
Don’t let the apparent simplicity of this tool fool you- this tool goes beyond just gathering information on your innovation projects. In answering the questions presented in this tool, you are likely to discover major inconsistencies in definitions and estimate methodologies used across different parts of your organization. That’s why we consider this tool more of an alignment generating tool- rather than one that just involves information capture. Once you’ve created this alignment, you can be confident in the insights you gain from the mapping of the innovation projects.
Step-by-step guide
Fill in all the important information related to the project including innovation type, timespan, allocation in terms of FTEs and budget.
Indicate the stage of the Innovation funnel that the project is in- to indicate it's maturity level. The pre-requisite for this is, of course, that your organisation has a well defined innovation funnel.
Indicate the total resource allocation of the project by classifying it as High, Medium or Low and choosing the size of the circle accordingly. Remember, it's important that the size of the circle accurately reflects resource allocation relative to other projects- not necessarily in absolute terms.
Indicate the estimated value generation by the project by classifying it as High, Medium or Low and choosing the size of the dotted-circle accordingly. Once again, focus on value generation relative to other projects- not necessarily in absolute terms.
While it's tempting to spend a lot of time on discussing absolute numbers, we have deliberately classified both resource allocation and value generation of projects into three broad categories- to prioritize speed instead of perfection. Make sure the methodology you use to measure resource allocation and value generation is consistent between projects and then use relative ballpark estimates to get started on mapping your innovation projects. Since different projects will be at different stages in the funnel, it is normal that some projects might have more accurate estimates that others.
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