Perspectives — value propositions

3D printing is ushering in a new atomic model for physical objects and a new era of pan-industrial competition. Any factory anywhere can potentially manufacture not just parts, but complete products for any number of industries, continually iterate and hyper-personalise these at low cost in response to market demand.

In deciding where and how to compete, every organisation makes choices about the products and services they will offer, and the strategies they will pursue to get there. Having a well managed, systematised process to evaluate these choices is essential. You likely have many more opportunities to pursue than your resources permit and research indicates that it is your ability to allocate resources based on project merit that most strongly determines your innovation performance. A number of frameworks exist to aid prioritisation of the ideas for development. Their differences in rigour will impact on speed to market, and their suitability for deployment varies according to the scale...

Much of the current conversation about innovation is heavily skewed to that delivered through the application of new and scalable digital technologies. Whilst this captures the headlines, it is but one of three distinct strategic approaches to innovation: 1. the aforementioned focus on delivering radical or disruptive innovation that delivers quantum leaps in product or service performance. This is almost always driven by a 'technology push' approach.   2. focusing on improving currently available solutions to better meet customer needs - so called incremental or sustaining innovation. This approach is grounded in 'market pull' and is most effective when underpinned by the robust application of user centred design.  ...