Innovation is the lifeblood of business. You need to harness it to stay ahead. And in 2015, we expect these ten changes will figure prominently in the innovation space. Are you ready to the meet these challenges?

1. Programs will require ever-greater flexibility. Innovation programs will be expected to offer ever-greater flexibility to meet the needs of stakeholders to crowdsource solutions.

2. Wider adoption of innovation programs. More businesses will recognize the need for harnessing innovation, as the process becomes unweildly for those successfully (somehow) keeping it in together now.

3. Fierce competition to innovate faster. Businesses lacking innovation programs will experience greater frustration this coming year, as their competitors will beat them to market with similar ideas.

4. 24/7 Global innovation. Global innovation will become more coordinated, offering 24/7 collaborative insight across time zones.

5. Investor confidence tied to accelerated innovation. Companies hoping to compete, but lacking a collaborative innovation option, will continue to fail fast, but will find it harder to recover investor confidence and push forward to the next idea.

6. Innovation management leader given larger budgets, and expected to show rapid results. Savvy businesses will increasingly budget for innovation management teams and “innovation” will be built in to all job functions enterprise-wide. And innovation teams will be expected to demonstrate ROI faster.

7. Data scientists will drive innovation program needs. Some predictions around increasing importance/need for data scientists to consider here: 2015 and the Data Scientist: 5 Key Predictions.

8. Companies will start running their own Hackathons. As more businesses push to innovate faster, they will use the Hackathon model to drive rapid prototyping and break down internal barriers to development of new ideas.

9. Innovation programs managers get seat at table. Over the past few years, companies have been building small, centralized Innovation teams. 2015 will see the emergence of dedicated roles in that team break out and become more influential in their companies.

10. Innovation software will be a key differentiator! As software dedicated to driving innovation in companies continues to advance, it will reach a tipping point in its functionality – and it will drive cultural change in the organization (without the need for consultants to support it).

Do you agree with this list? Did we miss any? Share YOUR predictions in the comments!

And get your complimentary copy of The Forrester Wave: Innovation Management Tools Report to learn more ways to accelerate innovation processes and programs.

@gretchhof