Where and how did Tesla start its main innovation project?
And where and how to start yours
Innovation projects deal with different levels of unknown parameters. You will face limited uncertainties if your project is being implemented in an incremental innovation context or strong uncertainties if it is in a breakthrough innovation context.
Making decisions under conditions of uncertainty is only possible through knowledge. In this blog post, first of a series introducing the EDF and WDS training program, we explore how to be systematic about knowledge acquisition in your innovation project management.
So, where to start?
Did you know that for years, Tesla, hacked Lotus Vehicles into electric vehicles, learning from customer adoption?
At the time they already had a waiting list for those modified vehicles but at the same time a strong learning strategy. Based on the usage of the battery and acquired data, they could later transfer that data to their partner Panasonic. They have kept this culture of ongoing measurement, learning and improvement…
Early in Tesla’s history, the company had solely focused on developing core battery technology, then later, the time came to think about how to approach building a fully integrated EV car.
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Innovation projects require you to identify the right information set. Both for helping you and your stakeholders determine the project’s opportunities and risks as well as efficiently managing the knowledge you acquire during your exploration.
To build on this exploration analogy, innovation projects can be summed up as a journey into the unknown, where all that you can control is:
- Why the project matters (be it to the company or to external stakeholders)
- What knowledge you can mobilise (organisational, technical, about your users…)
- What knowledge you are lacking, identified as critical
- What missing piece(s) of knowledge should be acquired
- How to efficiently build up that key knowledge
So, let’s get back to your project. You might already have…
- Defined a project scope, with key existing or potential players in the project ecosystem
- Defined a first set of feature — processes, technological aspects or functions (How to frame early innovation project themes to maximise value capture or creation strategy will be part of another blog post)
- Built an understanding of and/or assumptions about the needs and expectations of the different stakeholders
- Gathered an existing although incomplete set of knowledge (technical knowledge, organisational knowledge, stakeholder knowledge including potential users or contexts of applications).
If you do so, we have been working on a model that has shown great value synchronising knowledge acquisition in innovation projects, which you should try, “SFKA” :
- Key existing or potential Stakeholder(s),
- Key existing or potential Feature of a project,
- Key existing or missing Knowledge to acquire
- Key Action to acquire missing knowledge or create value from existing feature and knowledge
repeat with efficiency :)
You can see any exploration as a puzzle or path to construct, on which your role is to manage the knowledge acquisition efficiency. In order to get further and in the right direction ( we will explore that notion in our blog post around module 3).
What’s new with starting my innovation project with this method?
Strong innovation/management theories and methods have emerged the last decades but yet the lack of user and stakeholder knowledge within R&D process still exist within our industrial organisations.
Nevertheless, it would benefits both heavy R&D based activities such as fundamental R&D fields, with better transversal value creation opportunities or technology oriented R&D with a richer understanding of the set of stakeholders concerned. And therefore better market fit, as technology now tend to play in complex ecosystems.
In our model (and in more and more models we hope) the user is just a special kind of stakeholder at the end, allowing therefore a continuous mindset of existing and potential stakeholder and user exploration in innovation projects.
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This approach can be applied for any innovation project. In some case stakeholders will be real customers or third parts, in other they will be system stakeholders interacting with your project.
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Some tips to get started with the SFKA canvas
/ Manage your innovation project at the feature’s scale
When you can, manage your innovation project at the feature’s scale to better adopt an incremental or breakthrough innovation knowledge management approach. They are quite different in the effort required to acquire knowledge and manage your knowledge acquisition efficiency. We will review how this impacts on your capability to manage your stakeholder’s buy-in, cohesion, adoption or habit transformation required by the project, in a next blog post of this serie.
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/ Characterize Stakeholders…
Adopting a thorough mapping of existing and potential stakeholders along your exploration helps synchronise your knowledge acquisition. It can be existing stakeholders, new known ones, or potential categories of stakeholders, drawing from the contexts of applications in which existing or potential features could interact with and provide value.
… try out Design Thinking
/ Articulate Features and identify existing or missing Knowledge …
In our SFKA model and canvas, the Features column helps articulate existing or potential features that could be developed. Those are the projects features on which existing or missing knowledge could be acquired.
… Try out the CK Theory
You can apply the CK Theory (Concept Knowledge) outlined by Armand Hatchuel and designed by Hatchuel and Benoit Weil, that offers a framework in order to methodically explore the unknowns by differentiating what is Known, from what if neither true nor false yet.
Familiar with the CK Theory? Check out how we are applying CK to get users inspired by CK. If you are not familiar with the methodology, seriously skip the next 4 paragraphs :)
In the SFKA model, you can apply part of the CK approach (which we love to explore), in which it will play with a different space called “Features” and not an “unknown desirable Concept” as you usually start your C space exploration with the CK approach and keep exploring, for 2 reasons:
First, to characterize both incremental and innovation project features in a joint exploration to maximise value capture or creation strategy. In most innovation projects, specifying what is a breakthrough feature from what is an incremental feature of a project is not systematically done. Those should be managed differently to ease the overall innovation project management and knowledge management.
Second, in our model this space might not only be a use, a technical or technological … proposition (requiring knowledge) but stakeholders requirements turning into project features. And this could be applied even in a breakthrough context of exploration, which a “concept” can’t describe, related to a set of existing or potential stakeholders. Contrarily to Ck, the exploration won’t therefore only be provoked by a back and forth between the feature space and knowledge space, but both independant and parallel (or combined) back and forths in the different spaces.
Third, this model forces to contextually connect the exploration to the company’s internal and external ecosystem’s dominant design in which the innovation project is set. This, in order to better articulate the innovation project to the existing and potential set of stakeholders and related maturity of knowledge as the exploration goes (see our vision of the dominant design , the set of consensually adopted features of their offering if adopted by the market and how their ecosystems depend on it).
/ Identify Actions …
In the SFKA model, we focus on 2 types of Actions, to either acquire new knowledge or valorise Features and associated Knowledge. You will discover in the next blog post how those 2 actions maximise the value capture or creation exploration of your innovation projects.
… Try out the Lean Startup
Download the Stakeholder and user knowledge Canvas and learn more about the Stakeholder and user knowledge management module !
More info about the EDF & WDS blended learning training:
This first module will give you the practical tools and methods to help you manage uncertainty throughout your innovation project. In this module, you will learn:
- to identify the project stakeholders
- to articulate incremental and breakthrough features according needs and expectations
- to map existing and missing knowledge, be it technical, technological, scientific
- to apply the stakeholder & user knowledge driven methodology
- to design a “persona” and its “user journey” which are user centric design tools that helps see projects from potential stakeholders perspective and acquire this new knowledge contextualised.
Next blog posts of this serie will explore:
- How to systematically explore value creation of your innovation projects through the value flows and minimum viable ecosystem method, our 2nd training module
- How to communicate for innovation projects with your internal and external stakeholders, building strategies for buy in and cohesion, adoption or habit transformation strategies at each stage of your innovation projects, our 3rd training module
Learn more about our digital version of innovation project ecosystem management exploration tool: ECOS
The SFKA knowledge management framework we just teased as part of the blended learning module, can easily be part of the knowledge management in the ECOS software developed by WDS, which helps companies build existing and potential business and innovation ecosystems. Check out how companies ecosystems and their offering are connected and how innovation projects and their ecosystem of deployment can be managed for value creation at the ecosystem in this article
