When you innovate on a regular basis, you create another problem for yourself…how to evaluate new product ideas to see which ones to pursue. Evan Williams has outlined a useful set of criteria to do just that in his article: “Will it Fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea.” He has even applied the criteria to some of his own creations like Blogger and Twitter. Those criteria are:
- TRACTABILITY
- OBVIOUSNESS
- DEEPNESS
- WIDENESS
- DISCOVERABILITY
- MONETIZABILITY.
I offer three ideas and suggestions to complement Evan’s model:
First, try using some type of weighting to these criteria. To do this, convert the ratings such as “High” into numbers (for example: High = 5, Medium = 3, and Low = 1). Then assign a percentage to each criteria based on the importance of that criteria. Ask your customers to do the assignment of weights. What criteria are most important to them. This makes the scoring results more meaningful.
Second, try using the model not only on past successful ventures, but also on past unsuccessful ventures. See what the model does to hits AND misses. Otherwise, we are committing the Space Shuttle Challenger mistake of not using ALL the O-Ring temperature data to decide whether or not to launch.
Third, try applying the criteria to more than web/computer-based ventures. Try it on toaster ovens, ATM’s, wallpaper, etc. See if the criteria have “legs” beyond the web domain. My sense is that you will find other insights about these criteria that will make them even more useful.
People often ask when is the best time to innovate: early in the pipeline process, middle, or late. Teams tend to resist innovation late in the process when they are busy launching a new product. Teams tend to resist innovating in the middle of the NPD process because they are too busy developing the next generation product. Teams tend to resist innovating early in the process because they are too busy developing franchise strategy.
So when is the best time to innovate? Anytime.
Early in the process, you need innovation to develop a large stock of potential novel product ideas. Tie these early ideas to your franchise marketing strategy. This makes your strategy more robust and believable.
Early in the process, you need innovation to trigger modifications or enhancements to the product now in development. This gives you potential differentiating features that you can still build into the new product.
Late in the process, you need new concepts just when launching a new product to show your company and your customers that you have a sustainable pipeline of ideas behind you. This gives you credibility.
Innovating is like putting in golf. Never leave yourself short.
Katie Konrath has the right idea when she tackles this question, “Can you make me be more creative?”
Yesterday, I was talking with a couple friends when one asked two of my favorite questions. “What happens when someone can’t think of any ideas? You can’t force them to be more creative, right?” I rubbed my hands together, thrilled at the challenge that was coming. Actually, I can.
Her approach is to combine ideas and concepts that seem pretty silly at first, but then she mentally forces these constructs to have some sort of value or purpose. This, in essence, is a systematic approach to innovating that can be trained and repeated.
The key to becoming extremely effective at innovation is to learn all the tools and templates that help create an initial, undefined construct, or what innovation researchers call “the pre-inventive form.” This ability to apply a template, then find a useful purpose for the for what comes out of that template is what allows one to innovate on demand. Templates “make” people innovate.
Katie’s also recognizes the value of involving many people in the use of innovation templates. Innovation is a team sport. Diverse, cross-functional teams using a facilitated process can overcome the inherent challenges people face when when innovating.
Here is what executives say when asked why their firms cannot innovate:
1. Risky
2. No Method
3. Fear of Failure
4. All the good ideas are gone
5. Unpredictable
6. Company Culture
7. Lack of Time
8. Lack of Resources
9. Fear of Change
10. Competing Priorities
A systematic, routine way to innovate can break through these challenges. For example, a method such as S.I.T. (see www.sitsite.com) gives employees a way to innovate in real time. This eliminates the first five reasons on the list. With a routine and successful way to innovate, innovation is no longer risky, people are no longer afraid of failure, and innovation becomes predictable. When properly applied, an innovation method will create many new ideas for products and services even though people assume all the good ones are gone.
What about the last five reasons? From my experience, once a company experiments with an innovation method and sees how successful it can be, it is more willing to deal with the organizational aspects that hold innovation back. Companies need to create a culture that provides both the time and resources to innovate. A change in the culture can help overcome the fear of change. Putting priorities in order is easier once companies know they can innovate on command.
Seeing is believing. Put innovation in practice.
Companies want innovation more than anything as a way to drive true organic growth. Yet leaders often feel frustrated in their ability to bring successful innovation to their organizations. When I speak to executives, I hear this frustration, and I hear a list of reasons or excuses why innovation is so difficult. That list includes: lack of resources, lack of time, company culture, and lack of process of innovation. Many executives feel innovation is unpredictable and therefore too risky to invest in, even if they had the resources.
Innovation does not have to be unpredictable. A method called Systematic Inventive Thinking is a set of tools used in a facilitated environment to generate predictable, progressive ideas. This innovation process uses templates to help regulate individual thinking and channel the ideation process in a structured way that overcomes the randomness of brainstorming. Briefly, the method works by taking a product, concept, situation, service, process, or other construct, and breaking it into its component parts or attributes. The templates manipulate the components or variables to create new to the world constructs that the inventor of less than find a valuable use. This notion of taking the solution and finding a problem that can solve is called function follows form, and it is at the heart of the systematic inventive thinking method. This method of innovation can be used across a wide range of business issues. For example, it can be used to create new products, new services, or new processes. It can also be used to create new strategy including both corporate and marketing strategy. It can be used to create new organizational designs. You can also be used to create new marketing communications or launch tactics.
Innovation should be viewed as a skill, not as a gift reserved only for special or uniquely-talented people. Innovation can be learned as with any other business skill such as finance, process excellence, or leadership. By embracing a method like systematic inventive thinking, companies have a clear pathway to bring innovation to their firms to drive growth.