InnovationOps is the way of the future for any organization intent on efficient, repeatable and scalable innovation. By bringing together culture, ways of working, people and products, companies can operationalize innovation and bring every team member together under an overarching goal.
Innovation management software helps companies simplify innovation operationalization by creating a platform where all pertinent information is available across the organization with the context necessary to make informed, impactful decisions. We’ve seen great strides in how innovation management software positions companies for InnovationOps success. AI is now forcing the industry to expand how solutions can serve organizations.
While InnovationOps is a powerful and effective ideology, it requires technological support to implement it efficiently. In the coming weeks, we’ll explore how we believe AI will transform the innovation management software industry through four lenses: product portfolio management, idea management, project management and product management. Let’s start with product portfolio management.
AI will simplify product portfolio management in three ways
The current state of innovation management software positions companies to address portfolios by ensuring alignment with strategic priorities, minimizing risks and maximizing desired business outcomes. Predictive and generative AI promises to move product portfolio management forward in the following ways: portfolio health indicators, resource planning and optimization and scenario planning and risk mitigation.
Product portfolio health indicators
Integrating AI into innovation management software will give companies faster, more accurate health scores of defined portfolios. A portfolio health score, like a credit score, would provide leaders and executives the ability to quickly and effectively gauge the ability of each portfolio to meet its specific objectives.
While portfolio health scores are currently available, AI would give decision-makers the insight they need at lightning speed with unprecedented accuracy. Incremental additions to portfolio health scoring could use predictive and analytic techniques to highlight key risk areas within each portfolio to speed decision-making and improve portfolio performance against desired strategic outcomes. They could address risks and issues of portfolios at the highest risk of not meeting their goals early instead of trying to fix a problem that has gained problematic momentum.
Portfolio planning
AI holds the power to help organizations optimize portfolio planning in several ways drastically, but we see the most promise in resource planning and optimization and scenario planning and risk mitigation.
Resource planning and optimization
Allocating resources effectively among various projects and initiatives is a common challenge. Organizations must decide how to distribute financial, human and time resources across different stages of the innovation process and the product portfolio.
This is an area where AI can turbo-charge resource planning and optimization. AI analyzes historical resource utilization, project requirements, and other factors to forecast resource needs. This profound insight would ensure optimal resource allocation, prevent bottlenecks, maximize workforce efficiency and ensure outcomes against strategic priorities for each portfolio and across all portfolios.
Scenario planning and risk mitigation
Most innovation management software offerings are able to synthesize vast amounts of data to provide executives with actionable insights. However, AI can make this technology more powerful via its ability to simulate almost any scenario you can imagine and identify potential risks.
By inputting user-defined parameters and internal and external market context and dynamics, traditional innovation management software can help organizations identify and address risks before they’re real-time issues — all while safeguarding project success and organizational objectives.
With AI, innovation management software solutions like Sopheon Accolade can make portfolio optimization an even more accurate process, empowering leaders to explore new strategic options, evaluate potential outcomes and align portfolio scenarios with organizational goals based on market context and dynamics. Learn more about Accolade, and download this Sopheon e-guide for a definitive breakdown of InnovationOps.
