Innovation is NOT a Luxury You Can Afford to Skimp On
When I talk to product managers about the work I’ve done on dedicated innovation teams in the legal tech and telecommunications industries, it’s greeted with envy and admiration. “I wish we had something like that!”
These are the people whose very jobs are to create for and capture value from customers. And every decent product manager knows that from the moment a product has launched, it is lurching towards the end of its lifecycle. Something better be there to replace it.
Why is it so hard for us to invest in ‘what’s next’?
I’ve spent the better part of the past 6 years asking myself (and others) this question. Turns out there are a LOT of excuses — I mean reasons — which I’ll be introducing in blog posts in the upcoming weeks and months. But I don’t even want to give them credence now. If you are running a company and you want it to continue to grow and thrive for at least the next 5 years, you need to be engaging in activities to determine ‘what’s next’.
It’ll take time to get good at this stuff. Start as soon as you can.
Don’t worry, I’m not recommending you host a hackathon next month.
I said activities, and innovation. Did your mind immediately turn to brainstorming and hackathons? It’s ok, you’re not alone. Humans are creative and we like to imagine new things.
But we can imagine a LOT of things, and many of them aren’t actually going to be good business ideas.
Don’t waste your time and money putting the cart before the horse.
Two ears, one mouth.. you know the rest
At Frameplay, we introduce our clients to design thinking: an approach that focuses on designing solutions that are desirable, technically feasible, and financially viable.
We do this by starting first with understanding the problem space; we start with inspiration. Before we come up with a rash of possible product ideas, we want to be sure we’re eliminating a pain or offering delight to our target customer. Which means we need to get to know them, and what’s important to them.
Surprise! This helps with your existing product too
Although I started out talking about how you need to be thinking about the new product you need to introduce to replace your existing one, developing deep customer empathy: conducting jobs-to-be-done interviews and creating customer journey maps can dramatically improve how your product, marketing and sales teams build for and communicate with your existing customers.
As you open your eyes to the importance of investing in your future, start with learning from your existing customers.
It was exactly this research that lead ReadyTalk to spin off its first internal startup. The existing product and engineering teams were conducting interviews about their existing web conferencing product. But they kept hearing about a different problem their customers faced related to conferencing. Their existing customers were clearly asking them to build something new; they just had to listen and respond.
No more excuses — how to get started
Start with the inspiration stage — gathering customer insights.
- Start the conversation internally. Call out the elephant in the room.
How is the world changing?
How is your market changing?
How are your customers changing?
Challenge anything anyone says in response to that last point. Get actual data.
2. Run jobs-to-be-done interviews. Create a customer journey map. Stop assuming you know what’s best for your customers and take the time to ask them.
3. Use this information to update your internal personas/sales scripts/documentation. Consider what it means for your planned feature development.
4. If you get stuck at any point during the Inspiration stage, reach out to me at andrea AT frameplay.co. This is what I do. Let me help.
Your customers — and your employees, AND your shareholders — will thank you for investing in their future.
Andrea Hill is the Founder of Frameplay Consulting LLC, an innovation consultancy that helps software companies achieve sustained growth through innovation program development and support. She has over 15 years experience in new product development and customer research, and most recently helped a 150-person telecommunications company establish a dedicated innovation team. Ready to start investing in your company’s future? Still unsure what that even means? Contact her at andrea AT frameplay.co to see how she can help.
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