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Innovation Radar
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Innovation rarely comes from looking straight ahead. The Innovation Radar helps you scan beyond your own industry – from the competitors you know well to the outer edges where tomorrow's disruption is quietly taking shape.
This canvas maps the competitive and innovation landscape across three zones: your own industry, adjacent markets that serve a similar customer or need and periphery markets that are reshaping expectations from the outside. Within each zone, you also assess maturity: from followers who are catching up, through the mainstream keeping pace with the standard, to innovators actively shaping what comes next. The result is a radar that shows not just who you compete with today, but who could disrupt you tomorrow.
how does the method work?
The Innovation Radar is a 3x3 grid. The three columns represent increasing distance from your core business: Own Industry (the companies you compete with directly), Adjacent Markets (industries serving a similar customer or need) and Periphery Markets (industries reshaping expectations from the outside, often unrelated to your sector at first glance). The three rows represent innovation maturity: Followers (catching up or standing still), Mainstream (keeping up with the standard) and Innovators (shaping what comes next). By plotting companies into this grid, you build a structured view of where change is coming from and how far it still is from your core business.
Step by Step Guide
Start with your own industry. Name the industry you compete in directly, then think of one company for each maturity level: an innovator shaping what's next, a mainstream player keeping up and a follower falling behind.
Think in industries first, not boxes. Before moving outward, brainstorm freely: which industries feel adjacent to yours and which feel completely unrelated but could still shape your customers' expectations? Come up with real companies you find genuinely interesting or surprising instead of looking at the empty fields and searching for something to fit it.
Name and fill Adjacent Markets. Write down the industries that serve a similar customer or need, then sort the companies you thought of into the innovator, mainstream and follower rows.
Name and fill Periphery Markets. Write down the industries that are reshaping expectations from the outside, then place your companies accordingly.
Step back and read the radar. Where do the innovators cluster? What are they doing that your own industry hasn't caught up to yet?
For each notable company, ask: what would it mean for us if this became the new standard in our industry too?
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