What types of innovation PMO can organisations consider implementing?

Dr Costas Chryssou

Feb 27, 2022

tamegon Innovation and Growth Advisory Firm

Experience shows that innovation management presents many challenges to organisations of any size, across industries and sectors. There is also a lot of discussion about how an organisational structure such as an innovation PMO, could assist innovation pursuits - the main aim being to develop a balanced approach, supporting the innovation process without stifling the creativity that innovation relies upon.


If an innovation PMO is an organisational structure that can support such a complex endeavour, such as the innovation management process, how can organisations implement one?


A good starting point would be to understand the type(s) of innovation the organisation is interested in pursuing. Each type of innovation requires a different management approach and therefore, one might argue, a different type of innovation PMO to support it.


In one of my previous articles, I described four types of innovation in a 2 x 2 matrix encompassing continuous improvement, disruptive, breakthrough, and transformational innovation. Continuous improvement or incremental improvement is more about value optimisation incorporating value-adding product modifications. It usually involves using existing technology and improving a product targeting an existing market.


Increased competition in the marketplace though cannot be addressed only by continuous improvement. Breakthrough innovation allows organisations to leap forward ahead of competitors by coming up with new technological developments and/or business models.

Disruptive innovations present specific challenges to all organisations because of the innovator's dilemma issue - incumbent companies having streamlined their operations and products to profitably serve specific market(s), find it difficult to back new technologies or business models which tend to, among other things, be unproven, sometimes under- performing in specific areas, and generally presenting a high risk business proposition. Transformational innovations, on the other hand, can impact on the nature of society.

Types of Innovation  and Innovation Support Mechanisms- tamegon.com

Organisations need to implement different supportive mechanisms to engage with and be successful at these four types of innovation encompassing, on one hand, R&D labs and predominantly the use of internal resource, and on the other hand, forming innovation labs and employing the venture-capital model to assess and develop promising projects and technologies that are aligned with the overall strategy. Each type of innovation demands a different organisational culture that supports, nurtures and develops innovation projects in a systematic way, working across organisational silos and bringing together talented people (internal or external) from a wide variety of fields and disciplines to work together and cross-fertilise. 

Types of Innovation PMO - tamegon.com

Whatever the type(s) of innovation an organisation is pursuing a PMO structure could be pivotal to the success of its innovation endeavours.  Below, I describe three types of innovation PMO that can support different types of innovation as well as the competencies that are required for the organisation to be successful at pursuing them:


  • Promoter: Provides information about innovation strategies and helps the organisation to rigorously use the defined innovation methodologies; it drives and facilitates internal teams to identify problems and guards, and effectively applies stage-gate development processes. The promoter innovation PMO is more designed to support continuous improvement and 'new to the company' innovations.


  • Incubator: Identifies and selects new innovative ideas and develops them with appropriate resources and research. Nurtures them to grow into practical applications for products or services leading to successful product or service launch; it predominantly deals with 'new to the market' innovations.


  • Champion: Leads and embeds a culture of innovation into the ‘DNA’ of the organisation; integrates internal and external ideas (open innovation), nurturing innovation throughout the organisation making it adaptable and responsive to change. It equips the organisation with the skills to deal with and launch 'new to the world' innovations.


As organisations divide their innovation efforts among all types of innovation, creating a balanced innovation portfolio, the development of the 'right' type of innovation PMO to support these efforts is crucial to the success of the organisation.


In general, a PMO-type approach for innovation is likely to positively influence an organisation in different ways:

  • ensuring alignment with overall strategy,
  • achieving consistent results from innovation pursuits across longer time-scales,
  • capturing accurate information and presenting a better opportunity to embed lessons learned,
  • developing experience and knowledge to successfully launch many concurrent projects and complete them within the organisational constraints (budget, time, quality, scarce resource),
  • offering enhanced ability to respond to changes in the competitive market environment.

I welcome your views and comments.

Costas Chryssou MBA, PhD
Founder and Managing Director

Sign up for our articles

Sign up to our newsletter

Digital change, transformation, and metamorphosis
By Dr Costas Chryssou 08 Jun, 2023
Digital transformation (DT) market is projected to grow at a higher than 20% compounded annual growth rate from 2023 with an associated spending of 1.6 $trillion in 2022 and a projected spending forecast of 3.4 $trillion in 2026. Although this astonishing growth is attributed mainly to the Covid-19 pandemic, which since 2020 caused many organisations to increase significantly their investment and adoption of digital, there are many other contributing factors at play including changing customers' behaviours, preferences, and needs. While digital transformation is a necessity for all organisations to remain competitive, the term is often overused, sometimes confusing businesses and practitioners alike. Many times the terms digitisation, digitalisation, and digital transformation are used interchangeably, together with digital change and even metamorphosis. So what do they all mean and what are their benefits for an organisation? Digitisation is about converting analogue data into digital form and it is the first step that organisations need to take in their digital journey towards digital transformation. Digitisation enables businesses to gain valuable insights from their data, leading to advanced business analytics and the capability of informed decision-making processes. By digitisation, many businesses, that still use manual processes to interact with their customers, can move a step closer to enhancing their customer experience. Digitalisation , on the other hand, involves the change of workflows and the adaptation of organisational processes, procedures, and systems to enable the adoption of digital technologies. Through their digitalisation efforts, organisations can leverage digitisation to improve their business processes through automation, enrich their products or services, and offer enhanced value to their customers. For example, an organisation could be using digitised customer data, as gained from different sources, to automatically generate insights from their behaviour and inform existing products and services and create new ones. Although the transition path may not be linear, digitisation and digitalisation lead to digital transformation. Digital transformation builds on the above described digitisation and digitalisation efforts and prepares organisations to leverage their knowledge and integrate it in all business areas to enhance customer engagement and experience, innovate their business model, and create new value. By utilising digital technologies, successfully implemented digital transformation projects make organisations more agile in responding to changing markets and disruptive business models, thereby making them more resilient to external disruption. Through digital transformation, organisations can achieve significant growth and gain competitive advantage. “…Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how it operates and delivers value to customers…”
ERP vendor evaluation and selection criteria
By Dr Costas Chryssou 22 Feb, 2023
This article outlines the criteria for evaluating and selecting ERP vendors that universities and HEIs should consider using to maximise ROI for their organisation.
How to innovate a Project Management Office
By Dr Costas Chryssou 11 Sep, 2022
Recent surveys indicate that more than 50% of Project Management Offices (PMOs) [1] have been in existence for less than two years. This article comments on how to bring innovation into the PMO so that it remains relevant to the needs of the organisation.
Innovation_Management_Frameworks_tamegon.com
By Dr Costas Chryssou 24 Aug, 2022
It seems that most articles, presentations and websites represent innovation using lightbulb images putting the focus and emphasis of the whole innovation process, it seems, entirely on the eureka moment - the lightbulb moment. However is this the most significant step in the innovation process? This article outlines the drawbacks of associating innovation only with creativity and proposes the use of innovation management frameworks for organisations to be more successful in their innovation pursuits.
Benefit attribution of change and innovation projects
By Dr Costas Chryssou 10 Jun, 2022
Although benefit attribution of a project is very important to any organisation, it is considered very hard to implement and therefore organisations do not put any concerted efforts behind it. This article recommends the development of a ‘line of sight’ between the intended benefits, the changes to the organisational blueprint and the project deliverables in order to ensure that the "right" projects are implemented.
Build or Buy an ERP solution?
By Dr Costas Chryssou 09 Jun, 2022
This article builds the case around the advantages and disadvantages of building an ERP solution versus purchasing one from a well established vendor.
Portfolio optimisation using efficient frontier analysis
By Dr Costas Chryssou 20 Mar, 2022
This article discusses the efficient frontier analysis as a means of optimising innovation project selection, developing balanced innovation portfolios.
Organisational structures of an Innovation PMO
By Dr Costas Chryssou 27 Feb, 2022
This article describes a number of structures that an innovation PMO can take such as centralised, decentralised and hub and spoke. It also describes the broad skills that Innovation PMO staff should have.
From strategy to implementation and organisational benefits
By Dr Costas Chryssou 21 Feb, 2022
This article discusses the difficulties that organisations have implementing their vision and strategies and proposes a model to enable a better implementation and success of such endeavours.
Can blockchain technologies transform the government and public sector?
By Dr Costas Chryssou 14 Feb, 2022
This article explores blockchain-based technologies as appropriate to transform governments and public sector organisations. It provides an overview of the technology, challenges of adoption and an update on what is happening in the Middle East.
More Posts
Share by: