The technological innovation process and its 8 steps

The technological innovation process consists of a series of phases necessary to implement improvements or develop a new production process, product or service.

There are two ideas about the origin of technological innovations. One argues that the technological push comes from the scientific research and development sectors, with no commercial purpose and the other (Market Pull), more accepted today, affirms that it’s market needs that instigate companies to develop new technologies that satisfy the demands of consumers and businesses.

In this post, we’ll analyze the technological innovation process focused on meeting market needs and how it applies in companies.

Also see: How many stages do you use in process innovation?

The 8 stages of the technological innovation process

1- Basic research

Basic research is that phase of the technological innovation process that only occurs in large companies, usually in the pharmaceutical, energy and information technology sectors, which keeps research and development departments continuously abreast of the state of the art technologies that most impact their organizations.

2- Applied research

When it detects some specific market needs that may represent an opportunity to develop a sustainable competitive advantage for the business, the company searches among the technologies that dominate the way to solve this problem.

At this point, you can integrate existing technologies creatively and innovatively or really develop something totally new.

3- Development

When reaching a solution to the market need, it’s time to develop the product, service or process that will be marketed or employed.

For this, a prototype is developed that must be tested, preferably with the help of the public that will use it.

Two interesting approaches to this stage of the technological innovation process can be used:

• Design thinking, which takes into account how people interact with innovative products and services
• Scrum, which promotes small iterations, incremental advances in the prototype and the rest of the innovation process, always based on the needs of those who will use it.

Know more: One of the authors of the manifesto criticizes Agile and Scrum methodologies

4- Engineering

With the prototype set, you have to turn it into a scalable product or service that can be mass-produced or meet the specific needs of an industry.

Materials, suppliers, appropriate forms of storage and transportation are searched, such as connecting parts and benefiting inputs, defining which professionals will need to be hired and trained, among other measures.

5- Manufacture

This is one of the most important aspects of the technological innovation process.

It is time to define the best way to deliver the solution created to the final customer, with efficiency and quality.

Start this by modeling the process, using, preferably, BPMN automation software.

Also read: 7 business process modeling tips for lay-people

6- Marketing

With the product or service ready to be released, it’s time to do concept tests, market research and market testing to see if any adjustments are still required depending on how their acceptance and distribution is taking place in test markets.

7- Promotion

Once the market tests are done, the product or service is launched nationally or globally, depending on the markets the company serves.

This stage of the technological innovation process can use agile marketing, which employs Scrum and Kanban methodologies to launch the products and services rapidly to achieve results as soon as possible.

8- Continuous improvement

Once launched, both the product or service and the process flows used to produce and deliver them to end customers are constantly measured and analyzed, with the aim of looking for ways to improve them even more, adding even more perceived value to the final customers.

Also, check out from our blog: Can continuous business improvement work without automation?

With HEFLO, free BPMN 2.0 modeling cloud-based software, you can model and analyze your processes with much more agility and assertiveness, always seeking to innovate.