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At the recent PDMA conference, I heard someone say
that they felt innovation is easy. In fact, his
company has been doing innovation for quite some
time. Their
approach to innovation? Ask customers what they
want and build those products as defined by the
customer.
Leaving aside the risks of simply building what
customers ask for, think about the differences
between what people say they want and their actual
behavior. Certainly talking with customers about
their wants and needs is a good idea, but it cannot
be the entirety of your innovation process. Another
concern - unless your firm does broad customer
sampling, even these incremental ideas may lead you
to build products or services that have very limited
market appeal.
Understanding unmet needs - needs that a customer
has assumed are too difficult to solve, or has
become so accustomed to a work around that he or
she
is unaware of the problem - is probably one of the
most important skills in innovation.
For many disruptive products and services, it would
be almost impossible for a customer to request them
since they either don't know the possibility exists
or have discounted the opportunity as too difficult.
For years, people wanted a technique to cook food
more quickly, but no one ever asked a product
developer to create a microwave oven. In fact the
microwave cooking technique was discovered by
accident, as scientists found animals near microwave
transmitters charred from the microwaves.
The point is - innovation is about a lot more than
simply asking customers what they want. The fact is
that often they don't know and believe that
scientific or bureaucratic constraints will make it
impossible for them to receive the products or
services they really want.
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Innovation Software and Process Framework We've developed some thinking around the processes and tools necessary to support sustainable innovation and we've created this "Framework" to examine how processes and software tools will support innovation. If you have a passing knowledge of physics, you've heard of the GUT - the grand unified theory. This is the concept that pulls together all the knowledge of physics from gravity to atomic-level attraction in one theory. In every area of knowledge, thinkers attempt to synthesize what we know and create a unifying theory or framework to shape and define what we know. With that in mind, we at OVO have begun working on
the grand unified theory for innovation processes
and tools. Note that we are leaving out one
important item - strategy - which is really driven
by an organization's competitive differentiation and
decision making. We believe, however, that
innovation processes and tools can be relatively
consistent across organizations and industries, in
much the same way that purchasing processes and
tools are similar from organization to organization,
or customer relationship management solutions are
similar.
The graphic above reflects our thinking about
innovation processes as a lifecycle, and the data,
systems and information necessary to make
innovation
sustainable and repeatable.
The innovation lifecycle as we define it begins with
trend spotting and moves to idea generation, idea
capture and idea evaluation, then to the development
of the idea as a product or service and finally to
product or service launch. This represents the end
to end innovation process from early idea concept to
final product or service. Underneath that process
and within the steps of that process we've
identified the data, systems and tools necessary to
capture and manage the data and workflow to
support
the process. Much like sales teams have
Miller-Heiman or Strategic Selling methodologies and
CRM software, innovation teams need defined
processes and software tools to improve their
processes.
For example, when a firm "captures" idea it needs a
collaborative, shared database to store those ideas,
add value and context to those ideas and begin to
shape those ideas. As the firm evaluates ideas to
determine whether or not to move forward with them,
it needs the ability to rank ideas, vote on ideas,
create evaluation matrices or other evaluation
techniques that are transparent and consistent.
Underneath the process, it needs tools to capture
metrics across the process, identify participants
and determine the motivations and rewards, and
databases and archives to retain the corporate
knowledge.
Clearly a firm operating in accordance with this
recommended framework would have a significant
data
stream and close monitoring of its ideas and idea
management process. Is all of this information and
process necessary? Not when you get started, but if
your innovation process is to grow and become
sustainable, it must become an integrated, end to
end process with established workflow and tools,
just like any other process in your business.
If this seems somewhat familiar - it is. Your sales
staff has a defined set of processes and a suite of
software tools to support their work. So does your
purchasing team, and most other business processes
within your organization. We work best when a clear
process is defined, and then scale those processes
with supporting software tools. Innovation should
become another managed process within your
organization, and our Framework demonstrates how
we
believe that sustainable framework will be achieved.
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It's almost a fact of life that in any industry
there needs to be a list of the five factors or
seven habits for success. We at OVO have identified
a number of factors that must be in place for an
innovation to succeed, which we call the "C"
factors. Over the next few newsletters we'll reveal
one "C" factor at a time and provide a short
discussion as to why it is important for your
innovation to succeed.
October's "C" - Choice and Control
This month we'll look at the C factors "Choice" and "Control". I am borrowing these "Cs" from a book I reviewed recently called "Follow the Other Hand" which is a book about magic and applying the concepts of magic to running a business. One of the key ideas from the book is presenting a customer with more choice and control. For an innovation to succeed, it must provide
the consumer more choice than what's currently
available without a loss of control
or sacrifice of options. Henry Ford lost control of
the automobile market when Alfred Sloan created cars
that had more options and colors, giving the
consumer greater choice. Most successful
innovations create more choice for consumers, and
increasingly enable and simplify making the choice.
In many
ways Amazon and other online retailers simplify
choice by presenting options that are similar to
books or products you've purchased before. In this
matter the choice is actually simplified and more
options are presented that are more likely to be of
interest to you.
Traditionally, choice and control were tradeoffs. If I gave you a choice, then I as the vendor had control over options. If you had control, you had very few choices. Most innovation succeed when they provide more control to the consumer, without limiting choice. Successful innovations provide a consumer with more control. Open source software is a great example of increased control. Packaged software provides necessary functions at a reasonable cost, but provides the user virtually no control. The features in the software are those determined by the developer of the software. A purchaser has virtually no control over new features and when those features will be implemented. Open Source software provides the consumer with much more control - allowing the software to be updated with new features when and where the user demands, without a significant sacrifice in quality or choice. To succeed, an innovation needs to provide a user or
consumer more choice and control than a product or
service
already in use. An innovation can provide either
more choice - in other words greater variety - or
improve the consumer's choice process and criteria.
However, the increase in choice should not limit
options or reduce the consumer's control of the
product, service or transaction.
What can your firm do about the Choice and Control
factors? Any idea can look good on paper, but as
you evaluate your ideas and begin to pick the ones
to bring to market, ask yourself if your innovation
gives the customer more choice and/or more control
than the existing solutions. If not, can you change
the idea to provide more choice or control?
Next Month, the next "C" - Convenience
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OVO has recently announced that its software - specifically Spark and Incubator - are now available as a hosted service. What this means to you is that your team can get started very quickly and easily generating and capturing ideas in a hosted model, for much less cost and effort than you might expect. Spark, a web-based application for brainstorming,
ideation and whiteboarding, is priced in the hosted
model at $20 per concurrent user per month.
Incubator, a collaborative idea management system,
is priced at $40 per concurrent user per month.
These are powerful software applications offered at
a price that
means you should act now to get your innovation
teams started generating and capturing ideas in a
consistent application framework.
There are two real innovations in this offer: the
concurrent software model and the ability to move
quickly from a hosted version to an internally
managed licensed version.
OVO offers its hosted software in a concurrent
model. This means you can license the software in
blocks of 5 concurrent users, but sign up 5 users
for each concurrent license. For example, if you
buy 5 concurrent users, your team can establish as
many as 25 registered users. Any 5 of those
accounts can be active at one time. You'll pay less
but
provide the functionality to a much broader audience.
OVO also offers the ability to quickly move from a
hosted model, where we host and manage the data
for
you, to an internally managed and licensed model,
where your team hosts and manages the software.
This means your team can get started quickly, often
within a day or two, using the hosted model, and
bring the management of the ideas and software in
house when the time is right.
With this offer there is simply no reason to wait -
your team can access powerful software and get
started using that software very quickly at an
exceptionally affordable price. Robert Tucker, in
his book "Driving Growth through Innovation"
recommends using a collaborative idea management
system as one of the first steps towards becoming
more innovative. You won't find a more powerful
application that provides you with the flexibility
and capability that OVO offers right now.
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If you'd like to discuss how OVO can work with you to improve your innovation strategies, ideation sessions, innovation processes or software, contact us today at our website or (919) 844-5644 x789. If you enjoyed this innovation newsletter, please pass it along to your friends. If you wish to unsubscribe, please see the link below.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Phillips
OVO
email:
jphillips@ovoinnovation.com
phone:
919-844-5644 x789
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