Regularly generating innovative products is a key success factor in established industries. Major companies frequently outpace each other with innovations and product offensives. But what are the effects of such initiatives? And how can companies organize their innovation pipelines in order to successfully manage such ventures? The process in which innovations are developed and integrated into marketable products is highly complex and can be organized in various ways. An important distinction introduced by this paper is to separate between product development processes and processes for innovation generation. In established industries the first ones regularly initiate product development projects and strive to meet certain launch periods. The latter are problem-solution oriented and driven by the search for new, innovative concepts. They are characterized by risk and a high degree of uncertainty regarding success und completion time.This paper introduces a work-in-progress-model of such innovation pipelines oriented at the typical structures in the automotive industry.