The purpose of this paper is to describe innovation planning methods used at Microsoft.
The paper examines the cultural environment and changes that needed to occur to implement these methods and looks at a selection of product development efforts at Microsoft that used these methods and were successful.
This paper shares the steps taken to enable innovation planning methods to be successful organizationally and describes the specific approaches that were most successful from a product development perspective.
The findings demonstrate that innovation in the large enterprise is a repeatable and reproducible process when the right environment and methods are utilized.
Because enterprises are increasingly being called on to provide breakthrough and disruptive innovations innovation planning methods are increasingly becoming a necessary core discipline that is required in the enterprise.
This paper is valuable to all readers and organizations that want to enable innovation planning methods in large enterprises.
