Innovation

How To Optimize Your Innovation Strategy by Making Your Idea a Sweet Idea

Published date: January 25, 2018 в 11:11 am

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Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

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innovation strategy

What’s the perfect New Year’s Resolution?

 

Hint: think re: innovation strategy

Well, if that wasn’t sufficient, here are two additional hints…

(1) It’s not only challenging but actually promises a significant change in your life;

(2) It’s not pie in the sky, but applicable to your daily life.

 

Let’s take a more practical approach…

If your goal is to get in shape, watching TV while standing is maybe not the most effective initiative. However, regular mountain climbing is probably a bit of a stretch if you are a fairly immobile city dweller.

This is the Near-Far-Sweet Idea Mapping Model as applied to your daily life.

Near – ideas that are pretty close to current practice. They are new, but probably not impactful enough to be worth your attention.

Far –  exciting ideas, but not viable. Either the market is not ready to accept them, or you will not be able to implement them.

When optimizing your innovation strategy you want your ideas to be neither too close to home (“Near”) nor too challenging to be implementable (“Far”). You want your ideas to be new and exciting but at the same time realistic and useful. This is your Innovation Sweet Spot.

 

Learn How To Enhance Your Innovation Strategy By Making Your Ideas Sweet:

This all sounds pretty obvious and common sense. Surprisingly, the distinction is often overlooked, or at least not given systematic treatment. Categorizing the results of an ideation session or workshop into Near, Far and Sweet – as seen in the visual on the right – will give you an important indication as to the practicality of your ideas. It can also be a useful tool to improve the outcomes of your innovation strategies, by pushing some Nears and Fars into the Sweet Spot.

But before we share a quick guide to applying NFS to NPD, here are some thoughts of how it can serve as a practical tool to support the “Dual Innovation Approach” as defined by Ralph-Christian Ohr. Ohr cites research that shows that the Dual Innovation Approach is used by 70% of the most innovative companies:

innovation strategy

[With Dual Innovation] innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, where the following characterizations hold:

 

  • Exploitation-oriented initiatives are related to running the core business by executing and enhancing existing business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is valued capturing (commercialization). Examples: Product, service or process innovation, portfolio extension, innovation of selected business model components (e.g. channel or operations), market research.
  • Exploration-oriented initiatives are related to developing future business by searching for the novel, and often disruptive, business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value creation (configuration). Examples: Business model development, platform/ecosystem innovation, basic technology research & development, startup engagement, innovation intelligence.

(https://dual-innovation.net/a-model-for-dual-corporate-innovation-management/) Ralph-Christian Ohr

 

Ralph-Christian further introduces three playing fields of dual innovation:

  • Optimize the Core (Optimization of existing business models and technologies)
  • Reshape the Core (Transformation of existing business models and/or scaling up new business models/technologies)
  • Create the New (Creation of new-to-the-company business models and Technologies)

(http://integrative-innovation.net/?p=1765) Ralph-Christian Ohr

 

Integrating Ideas

He then elaborates on the true challenge of dual innovation: neither developing extensions of the product/service portfolio within the existing business model, nor coming up with completely new ideas, but integrating new ideas into your existing innovation strategy:

When it comes to integration, most companies face huge problems. This is the space where two main activities need to be conducted to achieve business impact from innovation and to future-proof the existing business model:

  • Validated breakthrough or even disruptive innovation concepts need to be scaled up for achieving business impact. If a company does not master Scaling-Up there is a high chance that all ideation will remain only innovation theatre.
  • In the light of Digital Transformation, adapting the established core business models by innovating selected elements (e.g. platform strategies, x-as-a-service business models, bypassing the middle man or automatization of service processes) is mandatory. If a company does not master adaptation it risks to lose in Digital Transformation.

(http://integrative-innovation.net/?p=1765) Ralph-Christian Ohr

Ohr presents a challenge: strategic ideas ought to be transformed to have maximum impact – to be innovative enough but not too disruptive. Through the NFS model, the SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) methodology invites you to apply two principles that, together, cover both directions:

1. Qualitative Change. Very often, “near” ideas are generated by incrementally improving on existing offerings, making them “bigger, faster, better”, i.e a quantitative change. The QC principle calls you to observe the basic logic of your product or service but change a fundamental relationship in this logical structure. Example: don’t offer your product at a discount, but offer it for free, generating revenue by a totally different business model. This is easier said than done, of course, but using the right tools, it allows you to push Near ideas into the Sweet Spot.

2. Closed World. The second basic principle of SIT is rather counterintuitive: when innovating, try as much as possible to utilize only those elements that already exist in the system.

innovation strategy

Instead of reaching out of the box, innovate inside the box. Instead of searching for new elements, find new angles and possibilities in the existing ones. By applying several tools under this principle, you will be able to pull in some Far ideas, turning wishful thinking into viable options and improve your innovation strategy

So, here’s a NY’s resolution that hopefully resides within your Sweet Spot: Map your new ideas on an NFS diagram, consider whether enough of them are in the Sweet Spot, and then push and pull those that are not to create exciting but viable options for development of your innovation strategy. Enjoy.

Want to keep learning? Check out what you can learn from an innovation facilitation session.

Useful Lessons to Learn from an Innovation Facilitation Session

Published date: November 1, 2017 в 7:58 am

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Category: Innovation,Innovation Facilitation

Innovation Facilitation Session

Several years ago…

I facilitated a New Product Development workshop (innovation facilitation session) at a large corporation in the American Midwest.  At our insistence, a Sales Manager was added to the team.  Why did his presence require an effort? Pulling a sales rep from his/her daily toil is not an easy task, but we insisted their presence is crucial in a product development effort.

As expected, this extremely energetic, intelligent and experienced Sales Manager, who we shall call Dale, was the soul of the innovation facilitation session. He readily shared his understanding of the company’s clients, their needs, wants, fears and motivations. He also possessed – pardon the stereotype – the classic sales-champion talent for engaging his colleagues in entertaining conversation, and generally spreading around an excellent vibe, telling jokes and recounting sales-battle stories where relevant.

So, it isn’t surprising that we started a bit of back-and-forth good spirited banter. At some point, Dale came up with an idea. And when another colleague pointed out an obvious flaw, Dale immediately pivoted, without losing a second, and came up with an improved version. “That reminds me of a joke,” I said to Dale and the team, and proceeded to tell it:

A Joke or a Misunderstanding?

 

One guy, call him Dale, in my home town of Tel Aviv, applies for a job in a supermarket. After a short conversation, the manager says to Dale: “There’s a customer, let’s see how you assist him.”  Dale walks over and the customer hands him a watermelon that he had just picked up from the shelf and asks to buy only half of it. Dale takes the watermelon, walks over to the manager, and says: “Some idiot asked for half of this watermelon.” The manager, in distress, tries to signal to Dale that the customer had walked behind him and heard Dale’s words. Dale immediately understands, and completes the sentence: “…and this gentleman here, would like the other half.”

 

watermelon innovation facilitation

Laughter, laughter, but the joke doesn’t end here…

 

The manager is really impressed with Dale’s agility and ability and says: “Listen, Dale, that was impressive. How would you like the job of manager of our store in Jaffa?” “Jaffa?” Dale says. “They say everyone there is either a prostitute or a soccer player.” The manager is a bit taken aback and says “Actually, my sister is from Jaffa.” “Which team does she play on?” answers Dale without a second’s hesitation.

Big laughter in the room, but I detect some ambivalence and unease. Was it my mention of the word “prostitutes” (not sure I would dare repeat it nowadays in a corporate setting)? No. Something else, which I discovered only at the end of the day when the two project owners invite me to dinner. One detail I failed to mention: Dale (the real one, not the joke character) was African-American. And to my utter surprise, that evening I learned that “watermelon” has a special connotation in this context. From Wikipedia: “Watermelons have been viewed as a major symbol in the iconography of racism in the United States since as early as the nineteenth century.”

First thing I did the next morning was, of course, have a conversation with Dale. He had noticed obviously in the innovation facilitation session, but he assured me he had no doubt whatsoever that I had been ignorant of the context and connotations, so he was not offended in any way. He did feel uncomfortable though with his colleagues’ looks and concern. He knew it was nonsense. They knew it was nonsense.

So why the unease? A hard loop to get out of, but, as often happens in the corporate context, we had a task to accomplish which didn’t leave time for brooding. We went back into the room, and I shared with the group that my blunder had been pointed out to me.  I was using my privilege as an ignorant outsider to point out the absurdity of it all. The ice was then broken, and we jumped back into the work.

Now that you’ve read about a pitfall that can happen in an innovation facilitation session, check out how you can overcome your innovation challenges.

Innovation Sighting: Task Unification and Drug Dispensing Contact Lenses

Published date: September 6, 2016 в 1:55 pm

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Category: Innovation

Medical device makers have been trying for years to replicate the success of drug-eluting stents – devices that do a particular job while at the same time, delivering a therapeutic drug. Here’s a new one that demonstrates the Task Unification pattern. Task Unification is defined as: assigning an additional task to an existing resource. That resource should be in the immediate vicinity of the problem, or what we call The Closed World. In essence, it’s taking something that is already around you and giving it an additional job.
From UPI:

After 50 years of trying, researchers may have found an effective way to use contact lenses to deliver drugs for conditions treated with eye drops.
Glaucoma patients may soon be able to treat the condition using a lens that slowly releases medication to the eye, with some tests with monkeys suggesting the treatment method could be more effective than the standard eye drops, researchers at Harvard Medical School report in a new study.
The leading cause of irreversible blindness, glaucoma has no cure but doctors attempt to slow its development by prescribing drops for patients. The drops, however, often cause stinging and burning, and may be difficult for some patients to use, if they try to use them at all.
“If we can address the problem of compliance, we may help patients adhere to the therapy necessary to maintain vision in diseases like glaucoma, saving millions from preventable blindness,” Dr. Joseph Ciolino, an ophthalmologist at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an assistant professor at Harvard, said in a press release. “This study also raises the possibility that we may have an option for glaucoma that’s more effective than what we have today.”
Using a novel design, researchers created a contact lens with a thin film of drug-encapsulated polymers around its edges. The polymer film slows release of the drug — previous attempts at a drug-eluting lens released medications far too fast — while remaining on the side of the lens so its center remains clear for vision.

To get the most out of the Task Unification technique, you follow five basic steps:

1. List all of the components, both internal and external, that are part of the Closed World of the product, service, or process.
2. Select a component from the list. Assign it an additional task, using one of three methods:

  • Choose an external component and use it to perform a task that the product accomplishes already
  • Choose an internal component and make it do something new or extra
  • Choose an internal component and make it perform the function of an external component, effectively “stealing” the external component’s function

3. Visualize the new (or changed) products or services.
4. What are the potential benefits, markets, and values? Who would want this, and why would they find it valuable? If you are trying to solve a specific problem, how can it help address that particular challenge?
5. If you decide the new product or service is valuable, then ask: Is it feasible? Can you actually create these new products? Perform these new services? Why or why not? Is there any way to refine or adapt the idea to make it viable?

Innovation Metrics: How to Stay on Track

Published date: August 22, 2016 в 1:25 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy,Uncategorized

Before you launch your innovation campaign, you want to set up key performance indicators or KPIs for short. Key performance indicators help you keep track of your overall strategy and your individual innovation programs. They alert you when it’s time to intervene and take action to get things back on track. Without KPIs, you’re flying blind, so to speak, and you run the risk of falling short of your overall goal.
To be most effective, each KPI should be quantifiable and measurable. You can have as many as you want, but don’t measure a KPI just because you have the data. If you’re not going to use it, don’t bother. It’s a waste of time.
Measure something only if you plan to take action from it. That’s why we set thresholds around each one. Each KPI should have a target of what you expect to happen plus a high and low number around that target. For those thresholds, you and your planning team should agree in advance what action you’ll take if those thresholds are exceeded.
Here’s an example. Assume you create a KPI about the number of new products created each year. You set your target at 50, and also specify a high and low threshold of 60 and 40 respectively. If your actual products per year is more than 60, you might consider taking action such as reducing R&D spending. On the low end, if you’re below 40, you could consider increasing innovation projects.
Each KPI should be linked to the key parts of your innovation plan including your goal, key targets, technologies, risk, and launch tactics. For the goal, you might have KPIs around the timing of revenues, the type of customers you’re converting, and whether you’re taking customers from the right competitor.
For technologies and risk, you want to measure changes in technology and your company’s ability to adopt it. You may also want to measure how well the technology has lived up to expectations across industry sectors. You need to carefully monitor whether you’re achieving the technology positioning that you had hoped for.
For launch tactics, you could create a KPI for each of the 4Ps if needed. For example, you might have measures around communications objectives, sales force effectiveness, distributor activity, store promotions, search engine ratios, social media activity, pricing and discounting rates, product performance, waiting times, and service complaints.
Good innovators not only reach their financial goals, but they also know whether those goals were achieved the way they expected them to be achieved. They also take immediate action when they detect something is going in the wrong direction.
KPI’s help you and your innovation team stay aligned and do what’s needed to succeed.

Creating New “Benefit Delivery Vehicles”

Published date: August 1, 2016 в 1:00 pm

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Category: Innovation,Methodology

Innovation is all about delivering value to customers, and you do that by offering them the right products and services. Think of products and services as benefit delivery vehicles. They’re a collection of various features that create value when customers use them.
So how do you build the right product or service? For that, you need to do a detailed comparison of how your product compares to the competition’s, feature by feature.
You’ll also need to do a customer analysis, especially on what factors are most important to customers when they buy a product as well as how they perceive your brand versus the competition.
Finally, you’ll need your marketing strategy as expressed in your value proposition. As an innovator, you have to give your development team guidance on four aspects so they build the right product.
First is what features the product must have to compete against the competition and also satisfy the customer. You have to especially guide them on what feature or features to emphasize the most. Look at your value proposition. What benefit are you promising? Then look at your competitive comparison. Find a benefit and its associated features where you outperform the competitors. You want to make sure those features are most evident when the customer uses the product.
Next, your development team needs guidance on performance of each feature. Once again, your value proposition should guide you on whether the product needs to work better than, the same as, or slightly less effectively than the competition. Also look at your market research. If consumers perceive your product as less effective on a particular feature, you may need to have the development team increase its performance.
Your development team also needs guidance on design, meaning the “look and feel” of the product or service. What does your brand stand for? Given that, what must your product or service look like to express that brand essence?
Finally, your team must think of the product or service as an entire customer experience. Think of each step as a touch point, where you as the innovator have an opportunity to figuratively touch the customer with something about your product or service. Touch points include things like the service customer’s get in a store and how your products are displayed. It also includes things like the packaging and perhaps the instructions on how to use the product. Everything the customer comes in contact with, including things online, are touch points.
Based on their experience at each touchpoint, the customer will form beliefs about what your brand stands for, whether it’s consistent, believable, and authentic. The more authentic, the more loyal your customers will become. And that’s a very good way to build your business.

Innovation: A World of Ambiguity

Published date: July 25, 2016 в 3:15 pm

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Category: Innovation

Innovators like you operate in a world of ambiguity. Every situation you face has some uncertainty, and you need to be prepared when unexpected things happen. If you’re not prepared, your strategy may derail and you end up losing competitive ground in the marketplace.
Sometimes those unexpected events happen internally. The priorities in any organization are constantly shifting. You may have had everyone’s full support for your programs only to find out that something’s changed, and now some other parts of the business are getting more attention.
You may also have to face some disruptive factors like a company reorganization or cutbacks in budgets and headcount. Or get resistance from other departments.
For example, what are you going to do if your new product is behind schedule causing you to miss the launch date? What if there are delays in manufacturing or shipping your products and you can’t get enough product on the shelves? That’s a huge problem. What if there’s a quality problem, and your customers start complaining? You must react to that.
Problems can occur externally as well. Things are always changing in the marketplace. New competitors emerge. A bad customer experience may be going viral on social media sites. You wake up one morning and find that your company is on the front page of the business section. Sales of your product are off forecast.
So here are some tips to help you cope with these types of challenges:
First, encourage your team to nimble. You have to act fast when these things pop up. You don’t want to let a small problem become a big problem. Your manager will appreciate when they see that you’re on top of it. So act fast.
Next, gather information. What’s changed to cause this problem? Make sure you separate fact from fiction. You don’t want to react to bad information or just assume you know what’s going on. What may have been the truth before..may not be anymore.
Seek advice, especially from credible experts. You need to leverage the brainpower of others. That’ll help prevent you from getting tunnel vision around the problem or possible solutions.
Next, get your team into the solution mode. By that I mean stop wishing the problem will go away. Have your team develop a list of possible alternatives, then work with your team on selecting and implementing the best one. Work on the things you can change and avoid the ones you can’t.
Be flexible here. You may have to give up on certain aspects of your plan to keep things moving forward. If you dig in too hard, you could make your situation worse.
Finally, look for ways to innovate. My experience suggests that the best way to revitalize a struggling marketing campaign is to unlock new value. If the organization is stuck, use systematic creativity methods to generate new opportunities for your business.
And that’s what great innovation leaders do. They help lead the company forward especially in challenging times.

New: Innovate! App Brings Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) to Your Computer and Tablet

Published date: July 18, 2016 в 1:38 pm

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Category: Digital Transformation,Innovation

Want innovation at your fingertips? Consider the Innovate! Inside the Box web application, which acts as a digital sherpa for Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT).
This web app (available for an annual subscription of $12) takes you inside the box and into the world of creativity. With a few clicks of the mouse, you can generate thoughtful, fresh ideas to solve a problem or improve a product.
For those who have yet to read “Inside the Box: A Proven System of Creativity for Breakthrough Results,” the SIT method uses techniques that evolved through research that examined thousands of innovative products, demonstrating that innovation is teachable and accessible to anyone. SIT refutes the traditional view of creativity, which is typically considered as thinking “outside the box” to find big ideas. The app harnesses this method to help you generate ideas digitally.
How to use the web app:

  • First register and create log-in credentials.
  • Once logged in (and paid), review the five techniques to understand how each one works and how to apply them.
  • View the sample project, Refrigerator, under My Projects. Review the Ideas List for examples of ideas generated with each technique. You may recognize some of these already from reading the book.
  • Create your own new project and follow the instructions on how to apply the SIT method techniques.
  • After applying the method(s), see the idea(s) you’ve generated. If you’re happy with your idea, the tool will allow you to write a more detailed description, get a new virtual product and share your breakthrough innovation via email, Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #InnovateInsidetheBox.

Tips to help you navigate the tool:

  • If you’re not sure where to start, you can always reference previous blogs and categories to view real life examples of each technique. Typically, I recommend starting a new project with subtraction because it helps address fixedness.
  • Remember the difference between a component and an attribute because you will kick your project off by listing both.
  • Don’t go outside of the Closed World. The Closed World includes only the resources available in the immediate area.
  • You have the ability to create groups and add others to your projects.

Professors and instructors who are interested in teaching a course about innovation may want to consider using the Innovate! Inside the Box web app as a supplement. Download the faculty instruction manual, which includes a course guide and suggested materials.

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