Recently I asked for your
comments around some of the key trends in innovation consulting in our first
blog challenge. Thank you all for your feedback -- there were some great,
innovative ideas, which I’ll try to synthesize here. I see these ideas as forming
the start of a value chain of innovation -- that of first understanding the
objective, then the specific process to achieve innovation, and finally the outcome
of the innovation. The key points are:

A couple of weeks ago I finished a review of the key M&A events in the software and services markets in the first half of 2009. In the research we analyzed the M&A, including divestment, activities of about 100 leading software and services providers. Unsurprisingly the volume of M&A deals was not very high, but what was key to our approach was examining the drivers underlying the acquisitions – why were companies making transactions and how would they affect their portfolio and go-to market approaches.

By Peter O'Neill, Vice President & Principal Analyst at Forrester Research

 In this week's Heretech podcast, I spoke with Alex Bender of Archer Technologies about the role the Archer community plays in the development process, all the way through the release. If you click the thumbnail shown below, you'll see their process in graphic detail. While Alex and I didn't get into all the specifics of how they do it, we did cover most of their "social product management" approach in the podcast. 

Among other interesting aspects of how they use their community as a resource for innovation and adoption, the role of partners really stands out. Of course, in the governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) space, you have an ecology of partners who are experts in things like Sarbanes-Oxley and risk management best practices. They'll tell you in plenty of detail why your product isn't really doing the job it should as a GRC tool.