Innovation Advisors (IA) at RTI International helps our clients innovate by building innovation capacity, discovering and interpreting insights, and accelerating products and technology to market. Whether IA serves as an extension of a client’s team or an objective third party, they know what produces sustainable results in innovation-driven organizations. For over 50 years, RTI Innovation Advisors has helped global organizations solve complex innovation challenges. IA has worked with NASA and federal agencies, and Fortune 500 companies such as Whirlpool and Kimberly Clark. IA has developed innovative programs and ecosystems for non-profits like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and has worked internationally with governments, companies, and non-profits in Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.
IA helps clients build the skills and judgment they need to choose the right approaches to and frameworks for innovating and applying them at the right time. IA has seen processes come and go, and they’ve seen industry practices change the way most organizations innovate—permanently. RTI Innovation Advisors is not swayed by the latest technique, and they don’t believe there’s only one way to innovate or a magic bullet.
Every engagement with RTI Innovation Advisors reflects the perspective on what our clients need most, where they must place their emphasis, and how they should do the work. IA can pare down their 50 years of innovation to these imperatives, which guide their approach.
IA is proud to share recent highlights of their results
Landscaping emerging technologies and products. Organizations considering new forensic technologies often struggle to navigate the myriad options related to existing products and even emerging technologies. It is difficult to identify and choose the one that best meets their needs while conveying the technology’s value to key stakeholders for investment and adoption. Innovation Advisors develops technology landscape reports that educate readers on the value of each technology and identify important considerations when implementing products in the forensic community. IA also brings forward the voice of the forensic community to help make informed decisions, building on feedback from experts and end users who have successfully adopted particular technologies. Access the technology landscape reports.
Driving towards impact from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) R&D portfolio. The NIJ funds research and development grants across forensic disciplines in order to improve forensic evidence identification, collection, preservation, and analysis. Innovation Advisors brought to NIJ a disciplined portfolio management process to improve forensic community adoption of technologies developed by NIJ grantees. The process, which identifies R&D grants with potential value, includes an initial “triage” evaluation followed by an in-depth assessment to coordinate support for awareness-building and adoption. Learn more about the R&D portfolio management process.
Teaching researchers how to help themselves. For researchers, value is directly derived from resulting benefits of real-world application; in fact, future research funding likely depends on this. Innovation Advisors produced a webinar to help NIJ grantees enhance the potential impact of their research by successfully transitioning their technology to real-world use. Our webinar highlights 1) the importance of transition planning and the benefits of starting early; 2) key transition activities and how they meet grantee’s needs, and 3) resources available to support grantees in the transition process. View the webinar.