11 Questions to Ask Before Starting an Innovation Project
Ask good questions and you get good answers. Ask the wrong questions, or worse still, don't ask questions at all, and you're essentially driving blind with no sense of direction.
When it comes to innovation in a large company, it is an end-to-end commitment and each stage of the innovation lifecycle must perfectly integrate into the stage before and after it.
If the foundations aren't stable, then chances are that all of the subsequent steps will be flawed, ultimately resulting in questionable outcomes and little benefits realisation, if any.
Particularly one that focuses on Horizon 2 adjacent innovation or Horizon 3 disruptive innovation, we need to ask the following relevant questions:
Is the job of a lawnmower to cut grass or is it actually to keep the lawn tidy and amongst other things, spare us the judging eyes of neighbours? Understanding the customer job helps us identify pain points and gains sought.
Once we understand the customer jobs we can define pain points and gains sought, This puts us in a position to design solutions and ultimately define the value proposition.
If we defined the customer job of a lawnmower as 'cut grass' then we will only come up with solutions that have blades. However, if we defined the job as 'keep the lawn tidy' then it lends itself to a whole range of solutions.
Understanding whether a customer is over-served or under-served by existing solutions allows us to determine the size of the opportunity and prioritise between competing ideas.
This is pretty straightforward. Can we build it? If not, can we find somebody else to build it at a reasonable price? Early on all we want to do is build a prototype to help us test assumptions underlying our value proposition and business model. If we can validate these core assumptions then we can justify spending a little bit more building out the next phase of the product.
Entering an already polluted red sea where competition is rife is no way to innovate. Innovation is about capturing new markets - if you can be first to market with a disruptive innovation you are six times more likely to succeed and the revenue generating potential is 20 times greater. If you enter a red sea, margins are slim, cost to market is high and growth opportunities are small.
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The WorkFlow podcast is hosted by Steve Glaveski with a mission to help you unlock your potential to do more great work in far less time, whether you're working as part of a team or flying solo, and to set you up for a richer life.
To help you avoid stepping into these all too common pitfalls, we’ve reflected on our five years as an organization working on corporate innovation programs across the globe, and have prepared 100 DOs and DON’Ts.
