Last week, we talked about how small, medium and large firms differed in their challenges and approaches to innovation. This week, I want to give you four key elements that must be present for success – regardless of what size firm you are in.
1) Line of Sight
In his book Great by Choice, Jim Collins talks about how it’s better to shoot bullets instead of lobbing cannon balls; and to shoot, you need a very specific line of sight. For businesses, this is a specific use case and customer avatar. This cannot be overemphasized, because the innovation must do something specific for a specific customer – it must create real value in an accessible way. The notion of the customer asking us to do a specific job, as championed in the book “What Customers Want,” is right on track – what job do your customers hire you for?
The larger the organization, the easier it becomes to generalize your market needs and customers. In the case of innovation, line of sight is key. The classic analogy here is the duck hunter who shoots at the flock rather than a specific bird – and usually gets nothing. Taking this to the product development world, think about how the Windows Intel platform evolved to fit everyone and anyone, while Apple built to specific user cases and market segments.
2) Business case
In any enterprise, the best people are overcommitted – which makes them volunteers on any project. If your project is better organized and easier to jump into, you will receive the best support. Having a set of visuals that orients new team members is key to getting work done.
You need a business case that makes sense to everyone in the enterprise. In working with clients, a great tool I use to start this process is the business model canvas by Alex Osterwalder. Working through the visual map – from key partners to customers – and then putting ascribing numbers to a spreadsheet is a great way to get a team to pull together and win support.
3) Validation before scaling (make it good before making it big)
The number one way innovation goes off the rails is to scale before validation. Regardless of the size of the organization, take your business model map to your proposed customer base and share it (under NDA if need be). Steve Blank has documented up to 30 passes before his start-up teams get it right.
The best validation is to find a customer willing to co-invest in solution development – and this is more common than you think. The key is not the monetary investment, but the intellectual investment that a monetary investment brings. When an organization chooses to co-invest, it raises the visibility and structure of its participation.
In the open source world, the currency of participation is to share your contribution to the core back into the “commons.” This model has seen application in many spaces, including servers, big data tools and design. When you use co-development as a tool, you and your partner are in a sense creating a new “private”commons.
4) Plan for Implementation
Innovation doesn’t just happen spontaneously – ideas need plans and support to become reality. In medium to large organizations, it takes a cross-functional team of people to make sure the innovation is truly integrated. When structuring the implementation team, you need to think about steering groups, operational teams and communications efforts – just as you would a major product launch.
Visionary leaders need to be surrounded by operationally-minded team members who know how to capture their wisdom and turn it into a workable plan. Specifically, there need to be people on board who relish the detailed planning and follow up required to make progress with a complex team of participants across disciplines and departments. For the visionary leader, this level of detail is mind numbing. If you need help with effective team structure, you would do well to take a look at Les McKeown’s books, paying particular attention to the VOP model.
Making sure these elements are present and grounded go a long way towards getting an innovation into the customers’ hands.
Based on your experience, what would you add or contribute to this list? Please drop me a line or Tweet me your thoughts.
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