Helene Cahen Of Fire Up Innovation Consulting On 5 Tips for Accelerating Product Ideation & Innovation
An Interview With Rachel Kline
Involve your users regularly and at all stages.
Often, teams may talk to or test with their end users at the beginning and the end of an innovation project. However, involving the end users and other users regularly throughout the process is valuable. This helps avoid biases of a team who think they know what their user wants or needs. Getting feedback and iterating early in the process can save time and funding and allow for fixing issues before they become costly failures. For example, one of my clients had spent two years on a packaging improvement that the end-users loved, only to discover that the manufacturing cost was prohibitive. Because they had only talked to their end users and not others who were affected by the change, in this case manufacturing, they discovered the problem much later than necessary.
In a world where the pace of change is faster than ever, the power of great ideas has never been more crucial. And yet, developing these ideas into impactful, market-ready products can be an immense challenge. The best products are not born overnight, they’re the result of dedicated ideation and innovation processes. These processes aren’t always easy, but they’re necessary and can be catalyzed with the right strategies and approaches. How do you foster a culture of creativity within a team? How can one rapidly translate ideas into prototypes and eventually finished products? How can roadblocks be anticipated and managed effectively to avoid unnecessary delays. In this series, we’re eager to explore insights, stories, and actionable tips from those at the forefront of ideation and innovation. As part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Helene Cahen.
Helene Cahen, MS, author of Fire Up Innovation: Sparking and Sustaining Innovation Teams (www.fireupinnovation.com/book), is an innovation strategist, trainer, facilitator, and speaker with over 20 years of experience helping companies navigate innovation challenges. She is the founder and principal consultant at Fire Up Innovation Consulting (previously Strategic Insights), where she guides Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, and non-profits to understand innovation, create innovative new products/services, build effective teams, and support a user-centered culture.
Cahen has been a facilitator and lecturer for the Haas School of Business and is now coaching in their Executive Program. She was also the vice president of innovation for a startup and worked in and for package goods corporations in the beginning of her career. She is in demand as a speaker on the topic of innovation, design thinking and creativity, and recently did a TEDx talk on high-performance collaboration for teams.
Trained in creative problem solving and design thinking, Cahen received an MS in Creativity and Change Leadership from the Center for Applied Imagination at the State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo. She also has a business degree from Sciences Po Paris, a prestigious French business school.
Born and raised in Paris, Cahen lives in Berkeley, California, with her family.
For more information visit FireUpInnovation.com.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I was born and raised in Paris, studied business at the prestigious Science Po school, and wanted to find the most creative job possible. So, I started my career working in advertising for packaged goods brands. Then, I moved to the US 30 years ago and worked in marketing research at the Clorox Company. After I had children, I decided to start my own business for more flexibility. I started a marketing research company. After a few years, I returned to school (while pregnant with my 3rd child) and earned an MS in Creativity and Change Leadership from the Center for Applied Imagination at Buffalo University. That allowed me to pivot my consulting business and focus on innovation. I now consult, train, facilitate, and coach teams to enhance their ability to collaborate effectively on innovation projects. I work for different sectors and sizes of companies, from packaged goods to tech, fashion, and non-profit. And I just published my first book, Fire Up Innovation: Sparking and Sustaining Innovation Teams. Creating a highly practical book (as you cannot only read about innovation, but you have to practice it) was my big COVID project, which took me over two years. I am very proud of the results and that it allowed me to share my knowledge broadly.
What led you to this specific career path?
When I look back at my career, the connecting thread is creativity, innovation, and new products and services. I have always been fascinated by solving problems creatively and offering better solutions. I am also good at connecting different areas and seeing trends. Innovation is the perfect place to apply these skills.
Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?
I have been consulting for over 20 years. During COVID, when business slowed down, I dared myself to write a book. Book writing was a personal challenge and a way to share what I knew about thinking, processes, and innovation-related tools. My work is very experiential and practical, so I had to find a format that would reflect how I work with teams and my belief that learning about innovation is about doing. I created a book that includes one or two practices per chapter so that the reader could learn by practicing innovation rather than just simply reading. I added a five-week challenge at the end of the book that readers can do by themselves or with their team, and I plan to offer a coached workshop program, like a book club, around trying new innovation practices.
By March 2023, my book was finalized. However, after attending the TED conference in April, where all the talks were about AI, I realized that a book on innovation had to consider the impact and change that AI brings. So, I revised my manuscript to acknowledge the role of AI. My book Fire Up Innovation: Sparking and Sustaining Innovation Teams was finally published in October 2023, but I did not stop there. I realized this was the opportunity to rebrand my business, create a new website, and build synergies between the book and my consulting practice, which I renamed Fire Up Innovation Consulting.
In this new adventure, I applied the skills I teach my clients: getting out of your comfort zone, trying new things, learning as you go, iterating or pivoting when needed, and discovering synergies and opportunities you were unaware of.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Working as a Haas School of Business coach is one of my favorite projects. I am a coach for the Product Management Class offered by the Berkeley Executive Education program. I coach the Product Management Canvas (a variation of the Business Model Canvas approach described in the Business Model Generation book by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur). In this class, each participant has to complete a canvas for their business, which I then review and provide feedback. I enjoy meeting each participant individually and helping them see their business differently. In particular, they learn the importance of defining a product or service’s value to their customers rather than focusing on features. For example, you are working on a translation app. You would need to transform a feature like “translate your sentences from English to any language” (which is a strict description of your feature) to a value proposition like “save the cost and time of requiring a translator for international meetings” or “increases meeting efficiency by avoiding misinterpretations.” My constructive one-on-one discussions help product managers better understand their business focus and opportunities for innovation.
You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?
My three traits are listening, creativity and problem-solving, and being passionate.
These skills are critical as a leader and as an innovation consultant. I use design thinking in my work, and one of the principles is being user-centered. As a consultant, I must understand my client’s needs and wants to create customized programs. Clients sometimes come to me with a specific idea for a training program or a tool they want me to facilitate, so I have to backtrack the discussion to focus first on the outcomes they want to achieve and build trust that I can then offer the appropriate solutions (which may be different than what they brought up initially). I ask questions like: What is your biggest challenge? What are your goals, and what is stopping you from achieving them? What does success look like?… Asking these questions and listening deeply for answers shifts the discussion and helps me diagnose the issues and create customized programs that often differ from what the client had in mind originally. For example, a client comes to me and says they want to do a brainstorming session with their team. Once I had a chance to ask questions, I may realize they need to start earlier in the process by identifying the right problem first and creating clear criteria to evaluate their ideas and then ways to develop and test prototypes. Instead of a brainstorming session, offering a broader scope of work is more likely to lead to innovative solutions.
Finally, being passionate (about innovation) is a way to demonstrate my leadership because it shows that I care and want to help. By being sincere and sharing some of my stories, for example, about how I started activities that forced me out of my comfort zone, like singing or rock climbing, I can demonstrate that I live by those values and that it is more than just a business for me.
It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Let me think about it.
When I started my career at Clorox, having just moved from France, I was invited to a luncheon where you had to make your plate. I saw some space along the long table where the food was and started serving myself. Then, I realized there was a line, and people were waiting their turn to serve themselves. I apologized to the people around me, but I laughed when I realized what had happened. In France, people rarely wait in line (for food or at a bus or metro stop), and it is more of a free-for-all. I had assumed it was the same here, and seeing easy access to the food table, I just moved. What I should have done is observe first to understand the situation. I learned to be better at observing my environment and being aware of what we believe are truths are often assumptions. I sometimes start a project with a tool called a “Wall of Assumptions,” where all the team members write down everything, except facts, as assumptions (including, for example, the idea that “the product needs to be profitable”). Once you have identified these assumptions, you can challenge them. Think of Airbnb or Uber, for example. Years ago, nobody would have thought that people would be willing to host strangers in their homes or go into a stranger’s car, and yet the success of these businesses is based on challenging these assumptions.
Do you have any mentors or experiences that have particularly influenced your approach to product ideation and innovation?
Mary C. Murdock was my first professor when I studied to obtain my MS in Creativity and Change Leadership. How she saw creativity as a place of freedom and possibilities influenced me profoundly when I think about innovation. Innovation starts with challenging assumptions, asking, “What if…? Or What else”? and being open to making new connections. The other thing I learned from her teaching is the importance of a straightforward process to innovate and the critical role of a trained facilitator, a role rarely considered and for which few are trained.
In your experience, what is the anatomy of a strong product idea?
Creating a strong product idea starts with being user-centric and considering not only the end users but all those affected by the change. A strong product idea is about something other than a cool feature or technology; it is about helping its users do their jobs better, improve their lives, or meet a need, a want, or a gap. A strong product idea should also delight current or potential users and bring value to them. And the idea is only the beginning. More than 90% of new products fail, and while it is sometimes because the concept does not offer something of value, it is also because of poor execution. I often joke that ideas are easy to come up with, the rest is the hard part. A strong idea does not guarantee that the finalized product is appealing or that the marketing, sales, partnership, or financial model will make it successful. A lot can happen when you move from idea to prototype to a final product available for sale. So considering all aspects of a launch, not only the idea is critical.
What approach does your team use for coming up with new ideas for products and features?
While there are many processes for innovation (such as design thinking, lean thinking, and Six Sigma), there are universal steps needed to innovate, which I will describe using a model I like called Foursight.
1) Understanding the Problem and clearly defining the problem you want to solve
2) Ideating and selecting ideas to move forward
3) Developing solutions, prototyping, testing, and narrowing them down
4) Implementing and deciding how to launch and successfully launch your innovation
I prefer using design thinking (which roughly follows these steps) because of the principles of being user-centered, prototype-driven, and iterative, which I believe ensure that your product is relevant to your users by incorporating and testing throughout the process and learning as you go along, including from failures. The principle of iterativity acknowledges that when things fail, it is an opportunity to go back, learn, correct, and try again, which is why the process is iterative and not linear.
A good process is essential, but having simple yet powerful tools for each part of the process helps get to the outcome faster and more easily. My favorite tools include doing ethnographic research upfront, clustering thoughts (be it a set of insights, problems, or ideas), using physical or virtual post-its on whiteboards to help team members work at the same time, ideation tools (like random connections), prototyping and testing with users and a tool called POINt (Pluses, Potential, Issues, and New thinking) to evaluate concepts.
What is the story behind the most successful product or feature idea your team has ever had — what was the need, how did the idea come about, and what was the outcome?
I like this example because it shows that a good idea is not enough; it needs to be the right product at the right time and be meaningful to consumers. Years ago, I worked for a packaged goods company that came up with the concept of cleaning wipes, but their early concept tests did not do well. Somebody brought the idea back at a meeting, and I suggested that the best way to get a sense of the product was to put it in the consumer’s hand (even if the formula was not finalized yet). At the time, there were no wipes in the market, and we sent them to 20 households and called them back on the phone. To our surprise, consumers were raving about the wipes and using them in ways we had not imagined. They used the wipes to clean quickly without having to wash a dirty rag or sponge, with the additional benefit of eliminating germs. They used them for everything from the kitchen, bathroom, and kids’ toys. The innovation was the form, bringing convenience and portability. After that simple testing, the company fully developed their cleaning wipes and launched it successively. Since then, the disinfecting wipes market has kept growing, now representing a $ 6.1 Billion market globally in 2022 and still growing 5.7 % a year (source: https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/industry-report/disinfectant-wipes-market-2244).
How does your product team manage new product and feature ideas?
Since I am a consultant, I do not directly manage teams. However, I recommend reviewing features from a value perspective to ensure they bring value to their users and are not based only on feasibility or matching a competitor. Organizations sometimes overfocus on their competition, rushing to copy a competitor’s new features. However, your users may value different things than your competitors. A price war is a good example: your competitor may have come up with a cheaper product, but if your value is about ease of use and the cheaper product may be hard to use, you may not want to offer it. Focus on what makes sense to market under your brand when you innovate. Value propositions can be used as criteria for innovation. If the new idea or feature reinforces your value propositions or creates a new one that is attractive to your customers, consider it; if it does not, consider whether it is a good use of your team’s time and funding.
Many new features or product ideas always come up; it is essential to have a shared process to evaluate them and decide whether your organization should invest in development and testing or if they are not worth your effort. Establishing clear criteria for success for your organization and/or your team is critical to better manage your efforts with new products or features.
What, in your view, is the biggest challenge with respect to innovation?
The biggest challenge for innovation teams and organizations is the exponential role of LLMs and generative AI. On the one hand, many companies focus on integrating generative AI in their offer of products, services, or experiences to create better, cheaper, or easier user experiences. And like any fast-paced business, only a few will likely succeed, and many may fail. AI focused businesses will also likely get consolidated (which we already see with the critical role of a few companies like Open AI, Google, and Microsoft). One of the challenge these companies have is keeping pace with the changes (as it is easy to become obsolete even before the launch) and ensuring that it provides value to users, particularly in terms of being user-friendly, as the technology can be overwhelming.
On the other hand, the challenge for the teams working on innovation projects (whether AI is part of the outcome or not) is when and how to use AI to speed up and improve the innovation process. For now, AI may be considered a tool to support human teams. AI can be beneficial in providing background information and additional ideas or creating prototypes. However, I would be cautious about using AI for decision-making, given that the LLMs are black boxes, making it impossible to understand the sources and reasoning behind a recommendation.
Based on your experience, what are your “5 Tips for Accelerating Product Ideation & Innovation”?
1 . Involve your users regularly and at all stages.
Often, teams may talk to or test with their end users at the beginning and the end of an innovation project. However, involving the end users and other users regularly throughout the process is valuable. This helps avoid biases of a team who think they know what their user wants or needs. Getting feedback and iterating early in the process can save time and funding and allow for fixing issues before they become costly failures. For example, one of my clients had spent two years on a packaging improvement that the end-users loved, only to discover that the manufacturing cost was prohibitive. Because they had only talked to their end users and not others who were affected by the change, in this case manufacturing, they discovered the problem much later than necessary.
2 . Early prototype and testing
Involving your users throughout the innovation process requires creating and testing prototypes as soon as possible. Early prototypes do not need to be functioning. It can be as simple as a flow chart, a skit, or a story that describes the new product or experience. In innovation, you must let go of the idea of perfection and realize that sharing an early prototype of your ideas will provide valuable information to help you iterate repeatedly until you address key issues. And you may only need a small number of users during these early stages. Showing a prototype to 5–10 users may provide you with information about significant flaws you can correct right away. You do not need 100 people telling you they are confused about how to purchase your product on a home page (and that home page does not even need to be live). When I worked as a VP of innovation in the design area, we tested our ideas with basic images of our home page app and got great feedback about what made sense and what was confusing so we could quickly refine our concepts. And we did the testing before engineering was even involved, saving us a lot of time and money.
3 . A diverse team
In a world where we have to solve complex problems, an innovation team must have diversity in all aspects: from background to experience, roles, identity, race, sexual orientation, level of experience, and diversity of thinking, an element of diversity that is rarely discussed. Bringing multiple perspectives to a challenge makes the solution more relevant to diverse users, and the team more likely to consider all aspects related to the new product or service. Including different functions in an innovation team avoids silo thinking and helps anticipate issues that may happen later in the innovation process. In my example above, if manufacturing had been involved in the new packaging redesign from the beginning, the discussion about feasibility and cost would have been brought up earlier.
4 . Shared process and tools
Shared processes and tools help innovate faster and with less conflict while giving a voice to every team member. First, training all team members on a common process provides a road map, steps, and common expectations about a project. This can ease the discomfort of innovating and not knowing how and if we may succeed. Whether it is design thinking, agile, lean thinking, Six Sigma, or other processes, the most important thing is that everybody is familiar with the process used by the team. Within the process, having tools that the team knows moves the project along more efficiently. One of the most straightforward tools is paper or virtual sticky notes and whiteboards. They allow team members to work simultaneously during a meeting and to give everybody an even voice. I see virtual whiteboards as the new “war room” where everything related to a project can be in one place. They also allow the team to work asynchronously and in between meetings, which is very useful when teams are spread around the world. Finally, having a facilitator (internal or a hired expert) who can lead the whole project or rotating facilitators is critical. The facilitator should think about the process before the meetings and facilitate the process, tools, and decision-making process, using the best tools to achieve the outcome. A good facilitator saves time and money on innovation projects because the meetings are more efficient and collaboration is enhanced. I used to do three-day workshops with clients (now they tend to be more spread out), and my clients were amazed about how fast we could move a project when well-planned and facilitated rather than extending it over a couple of months. In three days, we could go from defining a problem to ideas, developing solutions, and creating early prototypes tested with users on the last day.
5 . A supportive culture
Finally, an organization’s culture is critical to faster and better outcomes in innovation. Innovation is about taking risks and trying new things. As I write in my book Fire Up Innovation, “A culture of perfection hurts innovation.” There has to be a space to fail (early, so it is not too costly) and celebrate failures as an opportunity to learn and grow. In the early stages of innovation, if the team needs to prove the value of their work all the time and are judged harshly for early failures, they will likely get discouraged and lose their enthusiasm and willingness to stretch and take risks.
During the early stages of an innovation process, protecting a team so their ideas are not judged too early makes a difference. Having a champion at the executive level may provide the team with some freedom to try new things and test them. Of course, the projects need to have clear criteria for success so the team knows how to evaluate and make decisions throughout the process; however, having the flexibility to try, fail, learn, and iterate is critical. I sometimes use the metaphor of the early stage of innovation being a seed, then a fragile sprout, and it may be essential to see what kind of plant it becomes before destroying it.
Before I start a training program, I will discuss with my clients whether their business culture will be supportive. While I can train a team to be more innovative, I know the real test is what will happen when the team presents their new ideas to management. If their work is not appreciated and everything is judged and shut down before they can evaluate the potential, my training will be worthless. An innovation process requires a supportive environment to have a chance to succeed (which is why start-ups that are bought by large companies often end up failing).
We are very blessed that very prominent leaders read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)
I would have loved to have met Sir Ken Robinson. He was a global authority on creativity, education, and human potential. I appreciate that he raised the issue of how schools are killing creativity in his famous TED talk. I would have been curious to get his take on how AI will affect education and creativity in children (and adults).
Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!
Thank you. I enjoyed our discussion.
