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Human-Centered Approach to Innovation

Embrace a human-centered approach to innovation

Turn ideas into innovative solutions that deliver profitable business outcomes with a unique approach that balances people, process, and technology.

Address today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities

Our holistic approach to innovation is customer-centric and agile.  We focus on making innovation real by covering all areas of the innovation equation from user experience, business model design, and the role of technology – from ideation to full-scale operation. Throughout this entire innovation experience, we balance the multiple demands of successful innovation including, financial, regulatory, consumer, commercial, and technical, to support the sustainability and profitability of your business.

As your trusted innovation partner, we help you:

  • Improve your customer experiences and employee productivity
  • Pinpoint high-value areas for your business process transformation
  • Identify new business opportunities and create new business models 
  • Establish a culture of innovation across your company

Ben Gilchriest
Global Head of Applied Business Innovation SAP
Human-Centered Innovation: Find your way out of the proof-of-concept trap

No matter how groundbreaking the idea or concept, innovations cannot deliver as promised if they get stuck in the proof-of-concept trap.

~90

%

of companies have digital initiatives focused on improving current products and services.*

>80

%

of organizations have digital initiatives focused on creating new products and services.*

22

%

of organizations scale proof of concepts well enough to achieve expectations and significant growth.**

From idea to business value at scale

Delivering on continuous innovation and fueling sustainable growth requires an innovation process that avoids the proof-of-concept trap by constantly looking to impact business value at scale. From ideation to fully supported solutions, our approach achieves this by considering ideas from four key perspectives.

Feasibility

Evaluate the technical and regulatory feasibility of the solution and its delivery.

Scalability

Assess and scope out how the idea will be scaled, both from a technology and a business perspective.

Desirability

Define the consumer value proposition, its attractiveness to the end-user, and the way value is achieved.

Viability

Flesh out the commercial case for the idea and the potential for increased revenue and impact.

Discover the road map to innovation

Learn how our approach provides the path to innovation and the outcomes each phase delivers.

Illustration of the human-centered approach to innovation road map
Explore

Explore innovation opportunities.

  • Multiple innovation opportunities
  • Prioritized use cases

Discover

Gain a deep understanding of business needs and opportunities with consumer, employee, and market research.

  • Common understanding of the current environment, challenges, and opportunities
  • Aligned stakeholders
  • First insights to overcome the challenges 

Design

Design and create a prototype of the solution.

  • A prototype validating the viability, desirability, and feasibility of the solution
  • Enterprise architecture design
  • Commercial proposal

Deliver

Develop and deliver your tailored business and technical solution for productive use.

  • Productive solution synchronized to the road map from SAP
  • Deployment in a cloud, on-premise, or hybrid environment and on any device

Run and Scale

Run the solution, optimize it continuously, and deploy it across your company.

  • Smooth operations and continuous optimization
  • Solution maintained with available support options
  • One support infrastructure for standard and tailored solutions
  • Productive solution deployed across markets and regions

Gain competitive advantage through innovation

Shift from simply developing prototypes to delivering and scaling productive solutions that produce results. You benefit from an approach that is:

Human-centered

Place people at the center of every engagement.

End-to-End

Cover the complete innovation journey, from initial idea to live solution, across all SAP touchpoints. 

Business-focused

Address your technology and business innovation needs.

Integrated and aligned

Ensure integration with standard solutions and alignment with the product road map.

Agile

Create value early and often to achieve a faster path to productivity and adoption.

Supported

Mitigate risk with the same approach to support and operations as offered by your standard SAP solutions.

Get deeper insights into our innovation approach

Learn more about our approach and related tools

Find out more about the human-centered approach to innovation – including a breakdown of each phase, deliverables, and a live customer example. 

Innovation Services and Solutions

SAP offers a broad portfolio of innovation services and solutions to help organizations make innovation real.   We co-innovate with our customers to help them gain maximum value and profitable growth while empowering them to win in the experience economy.

* Jackie Wiles, “Foster Innovation to Drive Digital Transformation,” Smarter with Gartner, Gartner, April 2019

** “Scale Digital Innovation Like a Champion,” Accenture, April 2019

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