Thought Leadership
Thought Leadership
Framing the Problem: The First Step in Successful Innovation
The way to solve a complex problem is to break it down into smaller problems that are much more easily solved. However, the first step in problem solving is to identify the problem we are trying to solve. If it isn’t written down and critically discussed, we haven’t completed what we call “Framing the Problem.”
Front-End Innovation Should Emulate an Entrepreneur’s Journey
Embrace an entrepreneur’s passion and inspiration to jumpstart your front-end innovation projects.
What is the Value of a Need State?
Imagine walking through an area filled with mountains and your goal is to try to find the highest mountain and climb to the top. As you might envision, it is difficult from the ground to see the highest mountain. You think you have the tallest one and you climb up it. Likely, you can see it’s tall enough but you wouldn’t know if it’s the tallest. Think about the tallest mountain as your biggest opportunity area of needs to solve for consumers.
Product Innovation is Not Only about the Process
Many companies have decent product development processes and yet fall short of generating breakthrough product innovation that is meaningful to the consumer and differentiating enough in the market place. As a matter of fact, our experience as Product Innovation Consultants, working with both large size and midsize companies suggest that the issue, most of the time, is not about generating more ideas but rather identifying the really good ones which are capable to make a difference and generate the desired ROI.
Brand Extension Must be Execution “Agnostic” at the Start
Extending a brand requires thinking through a holistic growth strategy prior to beginning a growth program execution.
Design a More Efficient Innovation Strategy
Business leaders always look to make better decisions on defining and driving an innovation strategy to support their growth strategy.
Improving the Innovativeness of Your Organization
Have you ever been told “no” by a member of your staff? Have you ever been really upset that things aren’t being done the right way? Have you fixed those problems? Well, if so, you just killed the two key factors of innovation – Openness and Freedom. Elements like these affect what we call “the environment” and it is the most overlooked area by executives. What we find is that most executives rarely look at improvement in more than one or two of the three areas necessary to manage an innovative organization: People, Process and Environment.
Innovation Management Requires Assessing Organizations from Several Angles
Innovation management requires assessing the organization from several angles. Many corporate innovation leaders we find are seeking out the next tool or software solution but will it have the effect on innovation results that they want? For most organizational leaders looking to improve their innovation results, focusing on process alone is likely to be the least effective. Why is this the least likely place to start to improve innovation management? Because people run processes.
What’s standing between you getting to know your customer?
Focus groups have been the research standard. Why limit the value you get from that investment when you can experience more?
