Executive Summary
A leading medical device manufacturer operating in Ireland, with a sister site in the United States, engaged Competitive Innovation to design and implement a structured Innovation Management system.
The organisation was experiencing challenges common to fast-growing, regulated manufacturing environments: an overloaded project pipeline, inconsistent project delivery, rising costs and limited governance at the front end of innovation. While innovation activity was high, the business lacked a clear, need-led framework to ensure that resources were focused on the most valuable opportunities.
Competitive Innovation partnered with the organisation to introduce a disciplined business-driven Innovation Management approach which integrated governance, execution and commercial decision making. The result was a measurable improvement in delivery performance, cost reduction, increased capacity and a significantly healthier innovation pipeline aligned to strategic growth objectives.
Business Context & Challenges
The organisation had a strong market position and a steady flow of ideas entering the business from customer, sales teams and internal functions. However, several issues were limiting performance:
· Innovation activity was not consistently aligned to margin and strategic priorities
· Too many projects entered the system with limited early validation
· Project execution performance was inconsistent with frequent overruns
· Limited visibility of resource demand and capacity across the project portfolio
· Existing innovation and project processes no longer met the needs of the business
Senior leadership recognised that without a structured Innovation management system, continued growth would place further strain on resources, cost and delivery capability.
Engagement Scope
The engagement focused on designing and embedding a scalable Innovation Management framework across the organisation. The scope was structured around three integrated workstreams.
1. Need-Led Innovation
Shifting the organisation from idea-led to needs-led innovation ensuring that opportunities were clearly defined, commercially viable, aligned with business margin and strategic goals.
2. Innovation Process Design & Deployment
Defining, mapping and implementing a consistent Innovation Management process across functions, providing clarity from idea capture through governance and decision making.
3. Project Execution Re-Engineering
Redesigning the project execution process to improve delivery performance, reduce overruns and enable more effective use of existing resources.
Approach & Key Activities
Leadership Alignment & Governance
The engagement began with a series of leadership workshops to:
· Understand current business challenges and constraints
· Define success criteria for the Innovation Management intervention
· Establish a common innovation mindset and decision-making framework
This alignment ensured that the Innovation Management system was built around real business needs rather than theoretical best practice.
Current-State Process Mapping
Existing innovation and project processes were mapped end to end to establish a clear current state. This included:
· Redesign the front-end idea capture process
· Define clear business requirement for new opportunities
· Ensure early validation before significant resources were committed
Stakeholders from sales, operation, engineering and leadership were involved to ensure strong adoption and ownership.
Solution Development & Implementation
A fit for purpose Innovation Management process was designed and implemented tailored to the organisation’s regulatory, operational and commercial environment.
Key elements included:
· A structured idea capture process focused on business needs
· Re-engineering of the existing Salesforce application to capture customer and commercial requirements.
· A streamlined business requirements process enabling early-stage opportunity kill decisions.
· Weekly governance reviews to prioritise, progress, or stop initiatives
· Clear linkage between innovation decisions, resource planning and execution capability.
Results & Business Impact
The implementation of the Innovation Management system delivered significant and measurable results:
· Innovation Management process fully implemented at the Irish site and successfully adopted by the US sister site
· Governance and resource planning in place, enabling the site to achieve 70% of milestone commitments
· Improved project intake and prioritisation, reducing overload on key teams
· Business case development embedded as a core part of innovation decision-making
· 57% reduction in project overruns compared to the previous year
· 6.5% reduction in cost of sales year-on-year
· 18% cost savings as a percentage of cost of goods sold
· 10% increase in capacity achieved using existing resources
· A healthier, more focused project pipeline aligned to top customers and priority products
· Enabled a potential threefold increase in revenue over the following 24 months
Long-Term Value
Beyond the immediate performance improvements, the organisation established a repeatable and scalable Innovation Management capability. Innovation is now treated as a managed business system rather than a series of disconnected projects.
The leadership team gained:
· Greater confidence in innovation investment decisions
· Improved predictability in project delivery
· Better alignment between strategy, resources and executionThis foundation positions the organisation to scale innovation sustainably while maintaining cost control, delivery discipline and strategic focus.