Time out - Planning for growth may be an offline activity.
It is hard enough to keep your customers satisfied, the plant running efficiently and your suppliers on schedule. On top of all that, how can you profitably grow the business? Here is one method to kick-start the process.
There is great comfort in buying into a specific process to manage innovation.
Walter Isaacson articulated how the concept of ‘bending reality’ helped Steve Jobs push for breakthrough innovations at Apple. This approach is also sometimes covered through the concept of stretch goals.
One objective of innovation processes such as Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI), Voice of the Customer (VOC) or Lean Product Development (Lean PD) is to bring more reliability to a highly conceptual and ambiguous environment. These tools can also promote an environment that focuses exclusively on inductive and deductive logic. These styles of reasoning rely on rules and data to predict future outcomes. To balance this analytical approach to innovation an intuitive reasoning process is essential. Intuitive reasoning is known in some circles as abductive reasoning.
There are many interviewing and observational techniques that help inventors and teams learn about the customer environment. These techniques provide the structure to discover hidden problems ripe for innovation. The excitement of finding real hidden problems or unmet needs can entice the innovator or team to skip an important step in the innovation process: reflect before you innovate.
