30 May 2008

Microsoft has announced its Innovation Process Management (IPM) initiative to help enterprises build a flexible IT platform and speed the process of innovation.

In many industries, innovation has traditionally been a compartmentalised, top-down process run by a small team of researchers, designers or engineers. But the rapid spread and high availability of collaborative technologies has changed that model, and it is now widely recognised that breakthroughs in products, services and processes can come from people anywhere, inside or outside the organisation.

The primary challenges associated with IPM include capturing the best ideas from all levels of the organisation, identifying and harnessing the right people and other resources both inside and outside the organisation, coordinating innovation project teams, monitoring project progress, and measuring success.

“Innovation really is a team sport, requiring close collaboration and the alignment of people, processes and supporting infrastructure throughout an organisation,” said Don Richardson, director of the worldwide innovation management sales strategy at Microsoft. “Ideation, knowledge capture, knowledge management, project management and portfolio management must all be synchronised through a formal process to ensure that innovation projects yield success.”

Microsoft’s IPM initiative is focused on helping businesses to apply IT to address these challenges, by delivering solutions that enable corporations to manage the end-to-end innovation process with greater transparency, coordination and discipline. The Microsoft Innovation Process Management solution is built on Office SharePoint Server 2007, and is a key component of the Office Enterprise Project Management solution.

“Innovation is a top priority in every industry we serve,” said Joe Boggio, director of innovation management solutions at Microsoft. “Our customers want a systematic approach for managing innovation to garner greater yield, efficiency and speed; this initiative joins employees, suppliers and customers around a formal, end-to-end process to manage innovation for sustained growth.”