Systematic Implementation of Innovation Best Practices:Thota Framework for Innovation

The Product Development and Management Association(PDMA)comparative performance assessment studies(CPAS)teach us that the new product development(NPD)and innovation management practices continue to evolve.However,advances in the practice of NPD and innovation did not yield significant increases in new product success rates.However,the PDMA 2003 CPAS reported a significant difference in the success rates for top performing businesses versus the"rest".This paper summarizes innovation practices of top performing businesses from CPAS and compares them with the practices of PDMA Outstanding Corporate Innovator(OCI)Award winning companies.The paper verifies that what the top performers say they do in research surveys is actually what the outstanding corporate innovators do in practice.The paper then raises the question of how underperforming companies can implement key learnings from the best to improve their own innovation performance.The development of Thota framework for innovation as a systematic framework to help underperformers implement the best practices is discussed.As a case study,the implementation of the Thota framework for innovation is illustrated with BMW,an OCI award winning company.The Thota Framework for Innovation is based on three organizing principles and eight actions.Underperforming businesses can improve their innovation performance by internalizing the three organizing principles and rigorously implementing eight actions specified in the Thota framework for innovation.