Innovation in products and services is a major source of growth. Today, as mass media efficiency declines, pushing non-innovative products into the market becomes increasingly unprofitable. Therefore designing creative products and services is more important than ever.

On the other hand, innovation is a major cost driver. Large R&D departments pay off only if they deliver products customers are willing to pay a premium for. Therefore managing an efficient and at the same time customer-oriented innovation process is one of the keys to generating future growth and profitability.

A thorough assessment of customer needs is the starting point of a systematic R&D process. Often a segmentation based on latent customer needs lays the groundwork for defining development platforms and allows the enterprise to organise future product and service lines according to strategic customer segments.

From the initial idea for a product to the decision on whether to go to market, promising concepts need to be separated from less promising ones. Different market research techniques, ranging from qualitative evaluations to complex market simulations, permit fact-based and customer-oriented decision support within each of these steps.

Systematic innovation management needs a clearly defined process strongly embedded in the organisation. Firstly, this ensures a more accurate cross-functional planning of the entire process. Secondly, it enables organisations to establish clear benchmarks for their go-to-market decisions.