Boxed in by your state of the art innovation approach?
There is great comfort in buying into a specific process to manage innovation.
Bending Reality
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.
Do You Really Know Your Customer?
We regularly notice a gap between business organizations and their customers. One source of this chasm comes from an assumption that we already know how customers think. There is a sense that managers can perfectly role-play their customers. We often believe we know what our customers want.
HAMMER + CHISEL ALONE ≠ A BEAUTIFUL SCULPTURE … Why innovation tools are not enough to succeed in innovation
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.
Reflect Before You Innovate
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.
