PMweekly - Use Innovation to plan the Innovation
Some time ago I posted a praise to the Heroes Who Innovate Innovation.
Today I want to dig a bit deeper into why and how to “Use Innovation to Plan Innovation.” This is one of 7 success factors for getting innovation going in an organisation identified by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D in her The Team W Blog on behavioural science, brain science and design.
If you are charged with getting innovation going, start by using innovation techniques and processes to figure out your implementation plan.
This factor is so often overlooked by companies which stick instead to a tried-and-tested approach to Innovation and New Product Development. An approach with consistently fails 80% of the times.
We at PretotypeCo recognise several efforts by industry leaders to change the status of things. The time is ripe for a change in how innovative companies innovate!
The most forward looking leaders realise that just asking customers about an innovation is not enough. Surveys and focus groups are just great tools to learn what a rather skewed segment of potential customers think about their own preferences. Much less so about what real customers will actually do.
The innovation in innovation is about measuring customers actions, rather than intentions.
Until recently this has been done only at a much later stage in new product development, when the new product had been developed full scale. Today, techniques like Pretotyping allow to bring this learning much earlier in the process, up to the brainstorming and concept testing phases.
With Pretotypes, innovators can observe and measure the experience of a innovative product in context and with real customers, at a cost comparable to a focus group and with a much richer learning.
With Pretotypes it has become possible to test many more concepts in a much shorter timespan, gathering real-life insight of what customers want. Will the innovation engage their attention? Will they buy it / pick it? Will they get it again? Will they recommend it? All essential questions for the success of a product innovation.
The question is to be innovative enough to start using a new approach that requires a completely different mindset and which might not fit in the traditional, tried and tested process. Using a new approach to innovation is an innovation itself, which is worth to test.
By using a new innovation tool, you venture in uncharted territory.
Trying to use a new innovation tool as if it were just another tool of the many you’ve been using in the past, does not make you innovative! By using an innovation tool, you venture in uncharted territory. You certainly will have to test the new tool or system. I’d say that you’ll have to pretotype it! You’ll have to find a way to be able to use the new tools without clashing with your current processes. It’s your task to find the way, you can’t expect the new tool or process to bend itself so to fit outdated schemes!
You need to create an environment in which it is possible to test the new process or tool, and evaluate its fit with your organisation. You want to discover how much will you have to bend your existing processes to fit the new way of validating the market, if it is worth doing it, and if you are willing to do it!
Never make the mistake to think you can buy an innovation process or tool off the shelf and just stick it to your tried and tested processes!
I’m Leonardo Zangrando.
I’m passionate about unlocking potential in people and organisations.
I help transform organisations and increase their innovation leverage.
I help people fulfill their true potential in society.
Follow me on Twitter and meet me #IRL at Launch22 incubator in London.
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