Achieving reproducibility in the innovation process.

Reproducibility is essential for innovation but is often hard to achieve in practice. One reason for this is a lack of appreciation of what needs to be reproduced and how in each phase of the innovation process. In the discovery phase, conclusions need to be reproduced through orthogonal investigation. In the translation phase, key attributes and outputs of derived products or processes should be reproducible by defining transferable specifications and protocols, whereas in the application phase, the goal is to achieve reproducible performance in real-world environments through appropriate quality assurance systems.