Innovation Practice Areas

espite the fact that software is rapidly becoming an instrument for realizing innovation, it is remarkable to see that a frequently used reference framework in the domain of software engineering such as the “Software Engineering Body Of Knowledge” SWEBOK makes little or no mention of innovation with software. The SWEBOK organizes the software engineering domain in a set of 10 knowledge areas, but does not mention the aspect ‘innovation with software’. SinnoBoK will help close this gap between the existing state of the art in software engineering and innovation management.

To address this gap, an initial survey was done with Finnish and Belgian ITEI partners to identify the practices and challenges they encounter with respect to their software innovation. This led to the derivation of a set of practice areas a company will have to master in order to be successful in delivering software innovations.

SinnoBoK practice areas:

• The art of idea valuation: This practice areas deals with understanding the value of ideas.
• The art of focusing: This practice area is about defi ning explicit innovation goals and targets, against the background of the business a company is operating in..
• The art of openness: In software-intensive product development, it becomes harder and harder to do everything yourself. This practice area deals with how open (or closed) a company keeps its product development.
• The art of optimizing the impact of critical experts: In software engineering, the impact on innovation between the best and the average employee is a factor 10. In traditional engineering, this factor is only 2-3. This practice area is about optimizing the impact of such critical resources.
• The art of innovation stimulation: Very often in software engineering innovation boils down to problem solving and fi re fi ghting. There is not really an innovation culture in many software based organizations. This practice area contains practices a company can adopt to embrace a more innovative culture.
• The art of idea harvesting: Capturing ideas is what this practice area is about. It handle things like: what do you record when describing an idea, where do you get ideas from, and so forth.
• The art of idea incubation: This practice area is about the capabilities needed to transform ideas into market solutions.
• The art of crafting smart product: This practice area is about being smart with software. It is all about creating products that use information about themselves, the environment in which they operates, or other products in their environment, with the goal to offer new differentiating functionalities.

Some companies in ITEI project have already positioned themselves through the SinnoBoK practice areas. For instance, the focus of Steria (in Belgium) has been mostly on the art of focusing and innovation stimulation, whereas Metso Automation (in Finland) has analyzed their innovation via the art of idea harvesting, the art of idea valuating, the art of idea incubation and openness.

Each of these practice areas will be further defined as a working (self) assessment framework and reference model for innovation improvement. It is the vision to develop this framework further into 1) an Advisory instrument for companies that make software based products (to achieve more innovation), 2) an  internationally accepted Body of Knowledge for Innovation in Software Development and 3) a means to position, focus, and steer the ITEI research.

We want to develop this vision by this open community with the goal to start up discussions with innovation experts all over the world.