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We have helped countless innovation teams create focus fast, and we want to help you do the same. Here are six steps you can take to stop wasting time and money, and achieve your goals more quickly..
If your innovation efforts aren't being driven by market traction and speed, how well are you innovating? Can your organization win? Possibly, but you need a team that has more than random good idea alignment; you need focus.
If you are one of the many corporate innovation teams that have been set up over the last few years, then chances are things haven't been as smooth and simple as you thought they would be. Teams that are tasked with solving big problems can find it hard to prioritize and decide what it is they should focus on – which leads to paralysis analysis. There is no useful work being done, designed, built, or shipped.
We have helped countless innovation teams create focus fast, and we want to help you do the same. Here are six steps you can take to stop wasting time and money, and achieve your goals more quickly.
Too often, innovation teams get started on their projects without a clear understanding of how the work they're doing ties back to company strategy. Without this context, it's easy for teams to waste valuable time and, even worse, invest in things that don't do anything to move their businesses forward.
Just like you would with your customer, make sure you are talking to leadership to really understand what success means to them. For example, is the goal to create adjacent innovations? Improve existing products? Create new ventures entirely? How comfortable is leadership really with something so different than today?
It could be as simple as a short conversation about how your project will fit into broader initiatives in the organization or as involved as taking the time to develop prototypes and get their reactions. Either way, the important thing is that everyone has a shared vision of the end goal and how your team will contribute toward it.
The role of innovation is to create value for your customers. To do that, you need to understand them.
We recommend going as specific as possible when defining your target customer. But if you’re at the beginning of your innovation team’s exploration, maybe you don’t have a specific target market; that’s okay. Start by asking yourself: Who would benefit most from this innovation? Maybe it’s Millennials who work from home; maybe it’s existing customers; maybe it’s bakery shop owners in New York City; maybe it’s aspiring entrepreneurs. Getting feedback from real customers is essential at this stage because it will help validate assumptions and inform future steps.
At a minimum, you want to find 5-10 people who fit into your target customer segment. They can be found through word-of-mouth or websites like UserInterviews.com. Engage them about their daily lives, their aspirations, and their frustrations. Whether you're trying to gain empathy or learn how they use your product, these conversations are invaluable. For tips and tricks on conducting customer interviews, check out this article.
Once you’ve conducted research, synthesize your observations by asking yourself: what are patterns emerging across users? What are their pain points and aspirations? What surprised me? How do they view the world in a way that I didn’t before?
The customer empathy exercise is an important part of your innovation team’s journey. It helps you understand who you are building for, what they need, and what they value. This will help you define the problem(s) you’re solving and inform your product roadmap.
When innovation is the goal, it's tempting to jump straight into brainstorming and prototyping – but these steps should be done after you've done your research. The time spent researching will allow you to create a strategy that will give your team the greatest chance of finding innovative solutions faster.
The first step toward doing this is finding out what the market and technology are doing. This will help you stay on top of any trends or changes that could affect your business and alert you to any opportunities that might arise from other industries. Doing secondary research will help you understand what's going on out there so that you can look for ways that your business can be the one to improve upon it—or even just come up with a better way of doing something that already works.
Researching analogous technologies in other industries or products can be helpful as well since many times, companies find inspiration in other industries and then make it their own. If you see something interesting, ask yourself if there's an application for your company. It could lead you to new ideas or new markets (or both).
Opportunity lies at the intersection of customer pain/aspiration and market/technological trends.
In other words, if there’s something you want to see happen in the world — or if there’s something you want to see your customers get — then there’s probably some convergence happening between what they want and what the market will allow.
Write down a few opportunities that you think might be worth exploring further. They should be grounded in research, but also rely on gut instinct, personal experience, and intuition. For example: “We imagine a world where [users]....” or “There's an opportunity at the intersection of X, Y, and Z to deliver [this kind of value or experience] to [this customer segment]".
Here's another way to think about it: “What if we combined our expertise in software development with our knowledge of analytics? Might we create something valuable?” Or “What if we paired up with this other company that focuses on user experience design? Together we could create something new.”
When creating opportunity hypotheses, it’s important to consider both the customer and business value. Customers need to benefit from your product or service, but so do you.
Once you’ve settled on 2 to 4 opportunity hypotheses that excite you, make them visual. This might mean having a designer create a mock-up of a new digital or physical experience. Maybe you’re sketching, or simply writing out what features and functionality you’d like to see in the product. The important thing is that you’re making these hypotheses tangible so that your team and leadership can wrap their heads around them and see how they might come to life. This is a great opportunity to excite others about the possibilities for your company.
As innovators, it's important to have a lot of ideas. But it can also be paralyzing. You have a lot of good ideas, but you can't take action on all of them. The next step is to narrow down the field.
If you're having trouble deciding which is idea best, lay out the opportunities before you and have a discussion with your team.
What would it look like to explore each of these in-depth?
Which ones excite you and your leadership the most?
Where would there be most customer value?
How do they align with strategic objectives and constraints?
If you’re comfortable making a decision framework, do that, but timebox your efforts. There likely will be many good options and that’s ok! Choose one, make it work for you, and don't look back.
Your team is likely resource-constrained and is best served by focusing on a few things versus spreading too thin. The other ideas and hypotheses aren’t going away; they’re in your innovation portfolio and can be focused on at a later date.
Innovation is an ongoing process that requires constant attention and effort. There’s no one right way to do it — but one thing we know for sure is that it requires focus. If you want to be successful at innovation, you need to know what matters most at any given point in time and where your efforts will have the biggest impact.
As a leader of an innovation team, it's your job to keep your team focused and on track. This process can feel difficult if you're used to working in corporate environments, but it should be a fun, energizing process too!
We've helped numerous companies get their innovation teams set up and running smoothly, and we want to help you too. Please feel free to reach out with your questions.
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