New perspective

Of course, with the new challenges, the understanding of innovation processes is also constantly evolving and adapting to the circumstances. Scientific findings by Schumpeter¹, Chesbrough² or Rogers³ and their representation in the form of popular approaches, such as Eff-ectuation⁴, Theory U⁵, Design Thinking⁶, Lean Running, Lean Scaling and Lean Startup⁷ or tools such as. Business Innovation Design⁸, Circular Design⁹, Blue Ocean Strategy¹⁰, Design a Better Business¹¹, or Business Model Canvas¹² help make innovation and its implementation accessible to a broad swath of society and rethink familiar challenges. All these approaches help to bring innovation into the world. The more we embrace such new principles and actively apply them, the better we can actively shape our society.

We want to add the innovation approach "Real Time Innovation", which complements and extends the existing tools by providing new perspectives on the process and resulting approaches. At the same time, the presented tool helps to connect existing approaches. We are convinced that this will enable us to promote an entrepreneurial and responsible way of thinking and approach among budding founders and intrapreneurs.

To uncover patterns of success and interrelationships in these areas, we used pattern language to extract implicit success factors and categorized them (Entrepreneurial personalities - Team and collaboration - Customers, stakeholders and eco-system - The truly best solution - Sustainability and responsibility - Time and space). In addition, we assigned the patterns to temporal phases in the innovation process that reflect the maturity of an innovation.

Each pattern, category and temporal phase are presented on a separate map. The maps make it possible to pick up individual patterns, link the patterns together or develop an entire innovation system. They inspire in a playful way, provide new insights in the implementation of innovations and lead us to a new culture of innovation. At the same time, we have used the experiences of founders, innovators, experts and existing insights and literature to derive explicit criteria and metrics for each phase for all categories, which are important for the successful development of the subsequent phases.

Thus, the tool can be used as a dynamic innovation radar that shows the current status of the project at any point in time. Together with the sample cards, which show ways to fulfill the criteria and parameters with the help of the radar, an innovation process can be systematically played out with the help of a case study, or an own project can be developed. Users learn about new and phase-related success factors, approaches, team and organizational structures. For complex, dynamic processes, the previously known success criteria and key figures are sometimes no longer usable or even counterproductive and often discourage forward-looking innovations.