Short version:
 
Innovation is critical to economic development. Managing an innovation-driven company requires a number of different skills and methodologies to those developed for more predictable environments, and involves asking different types of strategic questions. Product development strategy and management is an important subset. A lot of work has been done in these areas over recent years, and a wide range of useful ideas, methodologies, and tools is now available to managers and entrepreneurs. However only a small number of advisors have skills in these areas, and there is a dearth of assistance for SMEs. I have been developing an overview and roadmap aimed at helping a New Zealand SME start to think about, and then develop and implement, an innovation-driven strategy. I am now testing the 'prototype' on selected consultants, clients, and NZTE people.
 
The long story:
 
Most NZ companies are not very good at strategic thinking and business planning. Raising this game is part of NZTE's role, and fortunately the world is well populated with business planning methodologies, formats, and templates.
 
However most of these were developed over the last few decades when, broadly speaking, businesses succeeded by becoming more efficient.
 
Now though, "the main driver of wealth creation is an increase in total factor productivity and ... the main driver of that increase, these days, is innovation."  (Hon Pete Hodgson). Or "relentless and bold innovation is about the only card American businesses have left to play if they are to withstand the competitive threat posed by China [and therefore] "In uncertain times like ours, innovation is inarguably top management’s Job One." (Tom Peters).
 
Innovation is far from just having creative ideas - it involves issues that are central to how the business works. Questions include: How innovative should we be (leading edge or fast follower)? How important to us is speed-to-market? Where are the opportunities for innovation (products, business model, channels, customer experience, etc)? Where do our capabilities lie? What is our current and desired product portfolio? In what arenas should we compete? Where and how do we find good ideas? How do we select ideas to take further? How do we allocate resources? How much and what should we outsource? How should we manage development projects at varying degrees of uncertainty? 
 
Entrepreneurs and managers first need to know what questions to ask, and then how they might go about answering them.
 
The higher the degree of innovation, the greater the unpredictability. The management of uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction is not well served by the traditional management arsenal, and although a lot of work has been in this area in recent years it's not yet part of the skill set of most business advisors.
 
Yet if New Zealand SMEs are to succeed in being internationally competitive, they cannot let smaller size stand in the way of sophisticated thinking and smart management. Unfortunately clever ideas and smart methodologies tend to be developed for large companies first because that's where the money is, and the implementation may be over-complicated for smaller companies.  
 
A few ideas are simple and powerful as they are written, and can readily be put into practice. Others need the core principles to be extracted, clarified, and made practical. 
 
Last year, at the suggestion of Peter Bull, I attended a two-day seminar "Strategy and Portfolio Development for New Products", presented by Bob Cooper who is a leading international guru in this area. New product development and portfolio strategy is a major subset of innovation-driven strategy.
 
(At the seminar I commented to Dr Cooper that there was little resource avalable for SMEs. There may be scope for collaboration with Bob Cooper and an allied software company Accolade, which offers a software tool for managing product development, although the software is large, sophisticated, and expensive.)
 
With that as a starting point I have been developing an overview and roadmap to help a business develop an innovation-driven strategy. It's fairly wide-ranging and certainly not a template or a one-size-fits-all solution, but it's pragmatic and action-oriented rather than just a literature review.
 
I am now testing the 'prototype' on selected consultants, clients, and NZTE people.