Innovation is a constant preoccupation in B2B/B2G high-tech. It is not just about “inventing something new” but about “making something new succeed in the market”.
There is often a certain ambiguity or mixture between the two notions behind the word “innovation”. The ability to innovate successfully in one’s markets is vital in the technological world as it is often the condition not only for success but for survival.
Being left behind by competitors who innovate more efficiently or more quickly is usually a death sentence in the more or less long term. On the other hand, innovating better than your competitors will often be the guarantee of sustainable success. But what are the factors that enable a B2B/B2G high-tech company to build a sustainable innovation capacity on the market?
What are the conditions for successful innovation in the markets?
Several conditions will have to be met, including
- organise an effective external technology watch with public and private laboratories, as well as with start-ups, in order to detect the most promising technologies throughout the world
- sign partnerships and, if necessary, acquire companies or technologies in order to gain control of them
- effectively organising its own innovation department or directorate in order to generate new technologies internally that can be used in future products and services
- find funding for innovative activities, whether this funding is internal or comes from public or private bodies or customers
- ensure the intellectual protection of its innovations
- generate collectively and from multiple sources ideas for innovative products or services based on the innovative technologies owned or identified. This means creating, maintaining and developing an “innovation culture”.
- Ensure a close link between technological and product innovation
- arbitrate and select the market innovation ideas with the best chances of success from a technical, economic and financial point of view, in terms of customer market acceptability and competitiveness in the face of competition
- validate and, if possible, test innovative product or service ideas on the market
- financing the sometimes long and costly development of new products and services, whether this development is self-financed or co-financed with customers or partners
- successfully launch new products and services on their market
- ensuring the evolution and cost/value competitiveness of its products and services over often long periods
Innovation in the B2B/B2G high-tech sector is not fundamentally the result of the genius intuition of an “inventor”, although this may sometimes exist. Rather, it is an organised and financed process of making future technologies available and using them to design, launch and make successful innovative products, services, systems or solutions.
