IMPLEMENTING AN AGILE INNOVATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: Using the Agile Innovation Master Plan Framework

Due to the exponential pace of technological and societal change and the need for organizations to stay ahead of that change (to thrive) or to stay in step with that change (just to survive), it is crucial that they innovate, and thus that the methodology used to manage the organization’s innovation efforts and investments be rigorously structured to support those efforts. Even better would be an approach that assists in shaping the pace of change to your organization’s advantage.The Agile Innovation Master Plan (how to align innovation with strategy – the CEO’s guide) by Langdon Morris provides such a framework, offering organizations a comprehensive approach to agile innovation management. I am dedicating this effort to further the advancement of that book, which I consider to be Langdon’s seminal work on managing innovation. If you have not yet read The Agile Innovation Master Plan, I strongly urge you to put this book down and come back after you have done so; this book is part instructional and part lessons-learned, and some of the terminology and passages will refer back to it for context. But why the need for this book?Having successfully implemented The Agile Innovation Master Plan in our company, I realized that I could help organizations accelerate implementation of this most-important framework by providing an operational overview of that experience. My hope is that by reading this book you will be able to contextualize what I learned during our implementation of the “five key tracks of an effective agile innovation management system,” apply it to your specific situation and be able to hit the ground running in an efficient manner. As in all things related to innovation, it was a learning experience, but if I can help you skip the bumps and bruises along the way, I will fulfill a major goal of this book.