Phase I of Air Force Innovation: Identify, Prioritize, & Scope the Problem
Our mission hasn’t changed, but the world has. The tools and tactics of yesterday are outdated on the battlefields of today and tomorrow.
More than ever, we depend on Airmen at the level of execution for innovative solutions to the challenges we face. The goal is to develop and evaluate innovative ideas, make a plan to move those ideas into execution, and forge connections with a broader network of innovators.
Ultimately, the ideas that work are scaled up and applied appropriately to the entire organization.
Where to Begin
The Four Phases of Air Force Innovation starts with two things, a problem and the desire for a solution. There are three phases to problem-solving; identifying problems, prioritizing problems, and gaining buy-in.
Here’s a quick overview of the process:
Identify the Right Problem
Identifying problems is the easy part — they’re everywhere. The difficulty comes in defining the problem. What is the scope of the problem? Who is affected, and how? Who has the authority to approve a solution? Pointing out the problems isn’t enough; developing solutions requires a thorough understanding of the problem. How do you achieve this understanding?
1. Establish the Need for a Solution
Why does this problem need a solution? How will the solution benefit end-users?
2. Justify the Need
What is the cost of leaving the problem unsolved? What is the cost of potential solutions? Solutions should offer clear, measurable benefits.
3. Contextualize the Problem
Have there been previous efforts to solve this problem? If so, what went wrong? Innovation means going beyond what’s been done before.
4. Write a Problem-Definition Statement
Finally, you’ll distill what you’ve learned about the problem and your potential solution into a single statement. This will highlight what success looks like when the problem is solved, what the issue you’re facing is, and the process you’re using to solve the problem.
Your problem statement should take the following form: “We are looking for X in order to achieve Z as measured by W.” This aligns the problem with the organizational benefit, and can serve as a starting point for your future work.
Example:
We’d like to improve the wellbeing of our 700 thousand Airmen, Spouses/Partners, Civilians, and their families.
Our Forces must cope with a lot of stress in their roles, and this stress extends to their children, spouses/partners and other family members.
We will run an AFWERX Challenge to help gather the right information and make available the appropriate resources at the right time to allow Airmen and their families to lead healthy and fulfilled lives and effectively cope with stressors, all while maintaining military readiness.
Prioritize and Select Your Problem
Some problems are more important than others. Some problems are urgent, while others can wait. Because we don’t have unlimited resources, we can’t solve every problem at once.
By choosing problems that are both urgent and important, you can avoid wasting time, energy, and limited resources on less valuable efforts. This ensures that resources go where they can do the most good.
Research and Collaboration
Successful innovation requires partnership to scale, but there is no reason to wait to get started! You should seek out opportunities to work with individuals and teams who are thinking about the same challenges.
By leveraging existing research and finding potential collaborators, you can gain ground much faster than if you go it alone.
The Air Force has a central place to share ideas and work on these projects at usaf.ideascalegov.com. With more than 1,100 ideas shared on this platform, you can go here to see what others are working on and connect with them.
Scoping the Problem & Establishing a Product Vision
Once you have identified, defined, and prioritized your problem, you need to “scope” your problem and solution to force decisions about what to include, but also what to exclude in developing the solution.
Investing time upfront to establish the appropriate boundaries can help mitigate unplanned scope creep, the addition of features, attributes, or requirements that complicate the original goal of the effort.
Creating a product vision helps mitigate scope creep and establishes the fundamental difference that results from the solution.
When developing a product vision, two frameworks worth considering are Amazon’s “Press Release” approach and Geoffrey Moore’s “Elevator Pitch” template. Both approaches are iterative, in that they need to be refined until they describe a problem that is worth solving, and the solution will actually address the problem in a way that users will value.
Example:
Our Comm Flight spends 100 hours a month printing inventory sheets, tracking down, and reading tiny serial numbers on IT assets to accomplish a simple inventory. The solution is RFID tagging all the laptops and installing scanners at key places so that they can complete their inventory in 8–12 hours. Unlike the alternative barcoding system, our solution allows for inventory to be completed more quickly because the RFID technology can scan every IT asset in a room or area at once!
Creating MVPs and Evaluating Against Your Value Proposition
Minimum Viable Product
A minimum viable product (MVP) is a new product released with minimally sufficient features to satisfy the needs of early adopters. Releasing an MVP version provides you and your team the opportunity to quickly gather feedback and learn from users to refine the next iteration.
An MVP has three key characteristics:
• It has enough value that people are willing to use it or buy it initially
• It demonstrates enough future benefit to retain early adopters
• It provides a feedback loop to guide future development
You and your team will continually design, test, and develop features based on feedback and learning from your product users.
Writing a Strong Value Proposition
Writing a strong value proposition helps you focus on the nature of the solution and the expectations of the user, which allows you to quickly evaluate whether your proposed solution will address your desired users’ needs.
Below is a sample value-proposition canvas you can use for this:
Aligning to Mission
Once you have an idea of what your MVP should look like and a strong value proposition, you will still want to do a landscape review to make sure that the environment will support your proposition.
As with the value-proposition canvas, you may want to use the Mission Model Canvas to identify the key components of a successful effort.
Early on, you may not have all of the pieces you need, but you should be thinking about which partners, stakeholders, beneficiaries, and resources you will need to be effective.
Ready to move on to Phase II? See our next blog on how to get tactical during the Air Force Innovation Process.
Check out our Innovation Handbook for more in-depth information on how to innovate in your organization.
