Innovatsiooniprotsessi mudel

Innovation process model

Various tools will also be created to support the new knowledge gained in the Innovation Leaders Club. Completed during the course of in-depth mapping and a workshop, the model describes the company’s continuous innovation activities undertaken to stay competitive. Each step of the model is a separate set of issues that must be resolved based on the current situation of the company. In the three-phase model, there are six steps that companies take to innovate. The model was developed by Markko Karu together with the team of the Innovation Leaders Club.

Assessment of Innovation Capacity

At the beginning of 2021, the ILK team conducted interviews with all the large members of the club based on a self-assessment questionnaire to assess the innovation capacity of the member companies. The questionnaire is based on the 3-phase and 6-step innovation model described above and aims to determine the company’s readiness to manage innovation and to identify the main challenges for the company in this regard.

The summary results of the survey can be found in the attached file.

The main findings of the interviews brought Mart Maasik to the following conclusions:

  • Estonians are conservative in their assessments and set maximum marks only in exceptional cases.
  • The willingness to deal with innovation issues is mostly due to external and customer pressure.
  • Most companies do not have a systematic collection of ideas or a bank of ideas, and its constant operation is perceived as a great challenge.
  • To address innovation issues, the decision to start and the initiative from both the top and the bottom clearly exist in the responding companies.
  • People exist in companies to address innovation challenges, but there is often no clear process for doing so.
  • As an innovation measure, ROI is used less, rather more specific and closer process-specific measures are used.
  • The weakest area throughout is idea development.
  • The cooperation of companies with universities and research institutions does take place in some companies, but either very specific or superficial – there is no consistent, systematic and in-depth cooperation.
  • When implementing the solutions, it is surprising and good that innovations with a 3-5 year perspective are also addressed.
  • Innovations are made as a clear preference within the parent company, not as a spin-off. In most cases, the innovations are not aimed at a new target group, but at an existing one.