Funnel or tunnel? A tough journey for breakthrough innovations

Creating breakthrough innovation becomes a key strategy for many organisations in an increasingly competitive environment. An important precondition for the implementation of such substantial innovation is the identification of breakthrough ideas in the front end of the innovation process. Despite the large amount of resources and talents that organisations pour into the front end of the innovation funnel, few breakthrough innovations emerge at the other end. The pipelines often clog with inconsequential opportunities, ideas and projects while potentially slowing the valuable ones during their passage. Therefore, the funneling capabilities are compromised, and the funnel becomes a tunnel. The managerial process for breakthrough innovations and the factors inhibiting its effectiveness remain not well understood. This article contributes to an understanding of managing innovation funnels for breakthrough innovations by approaching the issue from an analysis of the theory and practice of innovation process models. By observing the evolution of these models, it is clear that the problem space of managing innovation is shifting from planned and mechanistic, towards emergent and organic models, from user centric to user lead innovation, from dynamic modeling towards complexity modeling, from value capturing towards value exchanging. Focusing on breakthrough innovation operations in a large telecom carrier, this article reveals an internal organic process of implementing breakthrough innovations.