Phil McKinney asks: are customers a source of ideas for innovation?
Two years ago The Economist published a report where it indicated that by 2020 customers will replace R&D as the main source of new ideas. Well, apart from customers, there are many sources where companies can get ideas for innovation; partners, competitors, non-competing companies and employees.
Some of the most innovative ideas can come from customers themselves. But, you must involve them.…
in Innovation
This is part three of the series on how to leave small thinking behind. In the first post, I showed you a simple technique for coming up with radical ideas. On the second part, I showed you how to evaluate ideas so they don’t fit into “me-too” territory. Here, I’ll tell you how to determine which ideas might work.
A short recap from part 1 and part 2:
In part 1 of this series I elaborated a little bit on how to shift from “me-too” thinking to “radical thinking” by taking your existing strategy and stretching it to an extreme, and scaling them back a little bit. This technique yields ideas that are impractical, super expensive and dangerous. But you can scale them back a little bit to make them doable.
In part 2, I showed you how to further filter those initial ideas by using an evaluation criteria of creativity, business, and people impact.
Great, but after you’ve developed a list of radical ideas how do you decide which ones to pursue?…
in Innovation
It seems that since design thinking and lean startup methodologies have a “talk to potential customers to validate” component, it may seem that ethnography is becoming mainstream.
It isn’t.
In my opinion, of all the innovation techniques available to an innovation practitioner, entrepreneur, marketer or business leader none is more important than getting out on the field and observing people in their domains. And, we have ways to go before this ever becomes mainstream.…
in Innovation, Strategy
“The side that learns and adapts the fastest often prevails.” – General David Petraeus
You can’t mess with evolution. That’s the message I got from the book Little Bets by Peter Sims.
If you are well versed with the state of current innovation thinking, you will find that the main ideas are heavily influenced by design thinking. This is not a recipe book for design thinking. There are no how to’s. It’s strength lies in it’s synthesis of the main principles of experimental innovation. Today, more commonly known as design thinking.
It’s a well written and engaging book. I read Little Bets in a little over 6 hours. It’s a short read but entertaining read.
What stands out about the book is the distinctive stories and characters Mr. Sims uses to illustrate the main ideas. For example, how Chris Rock tests new jokes in small venues with small audiences before taking them to bigger events. This helps him tests and refine jokes that he knows will resonate with audiences at bigger events. The story of how Pixar’s Toy Story begun from little bets. How the the success of the U.S. Military’s ‘Surge Strategy’ is influenced by Design Thinking.…
What did I miss?
I don’t get these Powerade bottles. They have a ‘security strip’ to hold the lid in place (see strips next to bottle in photo) to make it harder for people to open them. I mean if you’ve been working out and are thirsty, the last thing you want is to ‘waste time’ opening a bottle of Powerade! You want to quench your thirst. This new lid design is not making easier for me to do that.
The lid becomes an obstacle in towards my goal, to quench my thirst.
It’s not intuitive either. I’m not one to read instructions (Which it has on the side. When did we need instructions to open a bottle?!) so it probably took me 30 seconds to a minute to figure out the security strip and then finally open this thing.
Makes me think they never market tested these new bottles. It also makes me think they don’t know who their customer is, athletes.
Great design takes into account a users desired outcome and then removing obstacles from their path in achieving that outcome. If we wanted to ‘make it harder’ (a pain) for people to quench their thirst, Powerade did a great job at doing exactly that.
