When you follow the best practice, by definition your work is not new. New work is never done the same way twice. That’s why it’s called new.
Best practices are for old work. Usually, it’s work that was successful last time. But just as you can never step into the same stream twice, when you repeat a successful recipe it’s not the same recipe. Almost everything is different from last time. The economy is different, the competitors are different, the customers are in a different phase of their lives, the political climate is different, interest rates are different, laws are different, tariffs are different, the technology is different, and the people doing the work are different. Just because work was successful last time doesn’t mean that the old work done in a new context will be successful next time. The most important property of old work is the certainty that it will run out of gas.
When someone asks you to follow the best practice, they prioritize certainty over novelty. And because the context is different, that certainty is misplaced.
We have a funny relationship with certainty. At every turn, we try to increase certainty by doing what we did last time. But the only thing certain with that strategy is that it will run out of gas. Yet, frantically waving the flag of certainty, we continue to double down on what we did last time. When we demand certainty, we demand old work. As a company, you can have too much “certainty.”
When you flog the teams because they have too much uncertainty, you flog out all the novelty.
What if you start the design review with the question “What’s novel about this project?” And when the team says there’s nothing novel, what if you say “Well, go back to the drawing board and come back with some novelty.”? If you seek out novelty instead of squelching it, you’ll get more novelty. That’s a rule, though not limited to novelty.
A bias toward best practices is a bias toward old work. And the belief underpinning those biases is the belief that the Universe is static. And the one thing the Universe doesn’t like to be called is static. The Universe prides itself on its dynamic character and unpredictable nature. And the Universe isn’t above using karma to punish those who call it names.
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Using only three words, how would you describe your company?
Better yet, what three words would your customers use to describe your company?
These three words capture your company’s identity. They answer, “who we are” and “what business we’re in.” They capture a shared understanding of where customers allow you to play and how you take action to win.
Everything consistent with this identity is normal, safe, and comfortable.
Everything inconsistent with this identity is weird, risky, and scary.
Your identity is killing innovation.
Innovation is something new that creates value.
Identity is carefully constructed, enduring, and fiercely protected and reinforced.
When innovation and identity conflict, innovation usually loses.
Whether the innovation is incremental, adjacent, or radical doesn’t matter. If it conflicts with the company’s identity, it will join the 99.9% of innovations that are canceled before they ever launch.
Your identity can supercharge innovation.
When innovation and identity guide and reinforce each other, it doesn’t matter if the innovation is incremental, adjacent, or radical. It can win.
Identity-based Innovation changes your perspective.
We typically think about innovation as falling into three types based on the scope of change to the business model:
Incremental innovations that make existing offerings better, faster, and cheaper for existing customers and use our existing business model
Adjacent innovations are new offerings in new categories, appeal to new customers, require new processes and activities to create or use new revenue models
Radical innovations that change everything – offerings, customers, processes and activities, and revenue models
These types make sense IF we’re perfectly logical and rational beings capable of dispassionately evaluating data and making decisions. SPOILER ALERT: We’re not. We decide with our hearts (emotions, values, fears, and desires) and justify those decisions with our heads (logic and data).
So, why not use an innovation-typing scheme that reflects our humanity and reality?
Identity-enhancing innovations reinforce and strengthen people’s comfort and certainty in who they are and what they do relative to the organization. “Organizational members all ‘know’ what actions are acceptable based on a shared understanding of what the organization represents, and this knowledge becomes codified u a set of heuristics about which innovative activities should be pursued and which should be dismissed.”
Identity-stretching innovations enable and stretch people’s understanding of who they are and what they do in an additive, not threatening, way to their current identities.
Identity-challenging innovations are threats and tend to occur in one of two contexts:
Extreme technological change that “results in the obsolescence of a product market or the convergence of multiple product markets.” (challenges “who we are”)
Competitors or new entrants that launch new offerings or change the basis of competition (challenges “what we do”)
By looking at your innovations through the lens of identity (and, therefore, people’s decision-making hearts), you can more easily identify the ones that will be supported and those that will be axed.
It also changes your results.
“Ok, nerd,” you’re probably thinking. “Thanks for dragging me into your innovation portfolio geek-out.”
Fair, but let me illustrate the power of this perspective using some examples from P&G.
Radical Moved P&G into services and uses a franchise model
Identity-stretching Dry cleaning service is consistent with P&G’s identity but stretches into providing services vs. just products
Do you see what happened on that third line? A Radical Innovation was identity-stretching (not challenging), and it’s in the 0.1% of corporate innovations that launched! It’s in 22 states!
The Bottom Line
If you look at innovation in the same way you always have, through the lens of changes to your business model, you’ll get the same innovation results you always have.
If you look at innovation differently, through the lens of how it affects personal and organizational identity, you’ll get different results. You may even get radical results.
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With one eye open and the other closed, you have no depth perception. With two eyes open, you see in three dimensions. This ability to see in three dimensions is possible because each eye sees from a unique perspective. The brain knits together the two unique perspectives so you can see the world as it is. Or, as your brain thinks it is, at least.
And the same can be said for an organization. When everyone sees things from a single perspective, the organization has no depth perception. But with at least two perspectives, the organization can better see things as they are. The problem is we’re not taught to see from unique perspectives.
With most presentations, the material is delivered from a single perspective with the intention of helping everyone see from that singular perspective. Because there’s no depth to the presentation, it looks the same whether you look at it with one eye or two. But with some training, you can learn how to see depth even when it has purposely been scraped away.
And it’s the same with reports, proposals, and plans. They are usually written from a single perspective with the objective of helping everyone reach a single conclusion. But with some practice, you can learn to see what’s missing to better see things as they are.
When you see what’s missing, you see things in stereo vision.
Here are some tips to help you see what’s missing. Try them out next time you watch a presentation or read a report, proposal, or plan.
When you see a WHAT, look for the missing WHY on the top and HOW on the bottom. Often, at least one slice of bread is missing from the why-what-how sandwich.
When you see a HOW, look for the missing WHO and WHEN. Usually, the bread or meat is missing from the how-who-when sandwich.
Here’s a rule to live by: Without finishing there can be no starting.
When you see a long list of new projects, tasks, or initiatives that will start next year, look for the missing list of activities that would have to stop in order for the new ones to start.
When you see lots of starting, you’ll see a lot of missing finishing.
When you see a proposal to demonstrate something for the first time or an initial pilot, look for the missing resources for the “then what” work. After the prototype is successful, then what? After the pilot is successful, then what? Look for the missing “then what” resources needed to scale the work. It won’t be there.
When you see a plan that requires new capabilities, look for the missing training plan that must be completed before the new work can be done well. And look for the missing budget that won’t be used to pay for the training plan that won’t happen.
When you see an increased output from a system, look for the missing investment needed to make it happen, the missing lead time to get approval for the missing investment, and the missing lead time to put things in place in time to achieve the increased output that won’t be realized.
When you see a completion date, look for the missing breakdown of the work content that wasn’t used to arbitrarily set the completion date that won’t be met.
When you see a cost reduction goal, look for the missing resources that won’t be freed up from other projects to do the cost reduction work that won’t get done.
It’s difficult to see what’s missing. I hope you find these tips helpful.
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You are a savvy manager, so you know that you need an innovation portfolio because (1) a single innovation isn’t enough to generate the magnitude of growth your company needs, and (2) it is the best way to manage inherently risky endeavors and achieve desired returns.
Too bad you’re wrong.
According to an article in the latest issue of HBR, you shouldn’t have an innovation portfolio. You should have an innovation basket.
Once you finish rolling your eyes (goodness knows I did), hear me (and the article’s authors) out because there is a nuanced but important distinction.
Our journey begins with the obvious.
In their article “A New Approach to Strategic Innovation,” authors Haijian Si, Christoph Loch, and Stelios Kavadias argue that portfolio management approaches have become so standardized as to be practically useless, and they propose a new framework for ensuring your innovation activities achieve your strategic goals.
“Companies typically treat their innovation projects as a portfolio: a mix of projects that, collectively, aim to meet their various strategic objectives,” the article begins. “MOO,” I think (household shorthand for Master Of the Obvious).
“When we surveyed 75 companies in China, we discovered that when executives took the trouble to link their project selection to their business’s competitive goals, the contribution of their innovation activities performance increased dramatically,” the authors continue. “Wow, fill this under N for No Sh*t, Sherlock,” responded my internal monologue.
The authors go on to present and explain their new framework, which is interesting in its focus on asking and answering seemingly simple questions (what, who, why, and how) and identifying internal weaknesses and vulnerabilities through a series of iterative and inclusion conversations. The process is a good one but feels more like an augmentation of an existing approach rather than a radically new one.
Then we hit the “portfolio” vs. “basket” moment.
According to the authors, once the management team completes the first step by reaching a consensus on the changes needed to their strategy, they move on to the second step – creating the innovation basket.
The process of categorizing innovation projects is the next step, and it is where our process deviates from established frameworks. We use the word “basket” rather than “portfolio” to denote a company’s collection of innovation projects. In this way, we differentiate the concept from finance and avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities, where the goal is usually to maximize returns through diversification. It’s important to remember that innovation projects are creative acts, whereas investment in financial securities is simply the purchase of assets that have already been created.
“Avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities” and “remember that innovation projects are creative acts.” Whoa.
Why this is important in a practical sense (and isn’t just academic fun-with-words)
Think about all the advice you’ve read and heard (and that I’ve probably given you) about innovation portfolios – you need a mix of incremental, adjacent, and radical innovations, and, if you’re creating a portfolio from scratch, use the Golden Ratio.
Yes, and this assumes that everything in your innovation portfolio supports your overall strategy, and that the portfolio is reviewed regularly to ensure that the right projects receive the right investments at the right times.
These assumptions are rarely true.
Projects tend to enter the portfolio because a senior executive suggested them or emerged from an innovation event or customer research and feedback. Once in the portfolio, they progress through the funnel until they either launch or are killed because of poor test results or a slashed innovation budget.
They rarely enter the portfolio because they are required to deliver a higher-level strategy, and they rarely exit because they are no longer strategically relevant. Why? Because the innovation projects in your portfolio are “assets that have already been created.”
What this means for you (and why it’s scary)
Swapping “basket” in for “portfolio” isn’t just the choice of a new word to bolster the claim of creating a new approach. It’s a complete reframing of your role as an innovation executive.
You no longer monitor assets that reflect purchases or investments promising yet-to-be-determined payouts. You are actively starting, shifting, and shutting down opportunities based on business strategy and needs. Shifting from a “portfolio” to a basket” turns your role as an executive from someone who monitors performance to someone who actively manages opportunities.
And this should scare you.
Because this makes the challenge of balancing operations and innovation an unavoidable and regular endeavor. Gone are the days of “set it and forget it” innovation management, which often buys innovation teams time to produce results before their resources are noticed and reallocated to core operations.
If you aren’t careful about building and vigorously defending your innovation basket, it will be easy to pluck resources from it and allocate them to the more urgent and “safer” current business needs that also contribute to the strategic changes identified.
Leaving you with an innovation portfolio.
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What if a tool had the power to delight your customers, cut your costs, increase your bottom line, and maybe double your stock price? You’d use it, right?
That’s precisely the power and impact of Service Design and service blueprints. Yet very few people, especially in the US, know, understand, or use them. Including me.
Thankfully, Leala Abbott, a strategist and researcher at the intersection of experience, innovation, and digital transformation and a lecturer at Parsons School of Design, clued me in.
What is Service Design?
RB: Hi, Leala, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today.
LA: My pleasure! I’m excited about this topic. I’ve managed teams with service designers, and I’ve always been impressed by the magical way they brought together experience strategy, UX, and operations.
RB: I felt the same way after you explained it to me. Before we get too geeked up about the topic, let’s go back to the beginning and define “service.”
LA:Service is something that helps someone accomplish a goal. As a result, every business needs service design because every business is in the service industry.
RB: I’ll be honest, I got a little agitated when I read that because that’s how I define “solution.” But then I saw your illustration explaining that service design moves us from seeing and problem-solving isolated moments to seeing an integrated process. And that’s when it clicked.
LA: That illustration is from Lou Downe’s talk Design in Government Impact for All . Service Design helps us identify what customers want and how to deliver those services effectively by bringing together all the pieces within the organization. It moves us away from fragmented experiences created by different departments and teams within the same company to an integrated process that enables customers to achieve their goals.
Why You Need It
RB: It seems so obvious when you say it. Yet so often, the innovation team spends all their time focused on the customer only to develop the perfect solution that, when they toss it over the wall for colleagues to make, they’re told it’s not possible, and everything stops. Why aren’t we always considering both sides?
LA: One reason, I think, is people don’t want to add one more person to the team. Over the past two decades, the number of individuals required to build something has grown exponentially. It used to be that one person could build your whole website, but now you need user experience designers, researchers, product managers, and more. I think it’s just overwhelming for people to add another individual to the mix. We believe we have all the tools to fix the problem, so we don’t want to add another voice, even if that voice explains the huge disconnect between everything built and their operational failures.
RB: Speaking of operational failures, one of the most surprising things about Service Design is that it almost always results in cost savings. That’s not something most people think about when they hear “design.”
LA: The significant impact on the bottom line is one of the most persuasive aspects of service design. It shifts the focus from pretty pictures to the actual cost implications. Bringing in the operational side of the business is crucial. Building a great customer journey and experience is important, but it’s also important to tie it back to lost revenue and increased cost to serve
Proof It Works
LA: One of the most compelling cases I recently read was about Autodesk’s transition to SaaS, they brought in a service design company called Future Proof. Autodesk wanted to transition from a software licensing model to a software-as-a-service model. It’s a significant transition not just in terms of the business model and pricing but also in how it affects customers.
If you’re a customer of Autodesk, you used to pay a one-time fee for your software, but now you are paying based on users and services. Budgeting becomes messy. The costs are no longer simple and predictable. Plus, it raises lots of questions about the transition, cost predictability, control over access, managing subscriptions, and flexibility. Notice that these issues are about people managing their money and increasing costs. These are the areas where service design can truly help.
Future Proof conducted customer interviews, analyzed each stage of the customer journey, looked at pricing models and renewal protocols, and performed usability studies. When they audited support ticket data for the top five common customer issues, they realized that if Autodesk didn’t change their model, the cost of running software for every customer would increase by 40%, and profit margins would decrease by 15% to 20%.
Autodesk made the change, revenue increased significantly, and their stock price doubled. Service design allows for this kind of analysis and consideration of operational costs.
How to Learn More
RB: Wow, not many things can deliver better service, happier customers, and doubling a stock price. Solid proof that companies, and innovation teams in particular, need to get smart on service design. We’ve talked a lot about the What and Why of Service Design. How can people learn more about the How?
Ever since Eric Reis published his bestselling book, The Lean Startup, the idea of a minimum viable product (MVP) has captured the imagination of entrepreneurs and product developers everywhere. The idea of testing products faster and cheaper has an intuitive logic that simply can’t be denied.
Yet what is often missed is that a minimum viable product isn’t merely a stripped down version of a prototype. It is a method to test assumptions and that’s something very different. A single product often has multiple MVPs, because any product development effort is based on multiple assumptions.
Developing an MVP isn’t just about moving faster and cheaper, but also minimizing risk. In order to test assumptions, you first need to identify them and that’s a soul searching process. You have to take a hard look at what you believe, why you believe it and how those ideas can be evaluated. Essentially, MVP’s work because they force you to do the hard thinking early.
Every Idea Has Assumptions Built In
In 1990, Nick Swinmurn had an idea for a business. He intended to create a website to sell shoes much like Amazon did for books. This was at the height of the dotcom mania, when sites were popping up to sell everything from fashion to pet food to groceries, so the idea itself wasn’t all that original or unusual.
What Swinmurn did next, however, was. Rather than just assuming that people would be willing to buy shoes online or conducting expensive marketing research, he built a very basic site, went to a shoe store and took pictures of shoes, which he placed on the site. When he got an order, he bought the shoes retail and shipped them out. He lost money on every sale.
That’s a terrible way to run a business, but a great — and incredibly cheap — way to to test a business idea. Once he knew that people were willing to buy shoes online, he began to build all the elements of a fully functioning business. Ten years later, the company he created, Zappos was acquired by Amazon for $1.2 billion.
Notice how he didn’t just assume that his business idea was viable. He tested it and validated it. He also learned other things, such as what styles were most popular. Later, Zappos expanded to include handbags, eyewear, clothing, watches, and kids’ merchandise.
The Cautionary Tale Of Google Glass
Now compare how Swinmurn launched his business with Google’s Glass debacle. Instead of starting with an MVP, it announced a full-fledged prototype complete with a snazzy video. Through augmented reality projected onto the lenses, users could seamlessly navigate an urban landscape, send and receive messages and take photos and videos. It generated a lot of excitement and seemed like a revolutionary new way to interact with technology.
Yet criticism quickly erupted. Many were horrified that hordes of wandering techno-hipsters could be surreptitiously recording us. Others had safety concerns about everything from people being distracted while driving to the devices being vulnerable to hacking. Soon there was a brewing revolt against “Google Glassholes.”
Situations like the Google Glass launch are startlingly common. In fact, the vast majority of new product launches fail because there’s no real way to know whether you have the right product-market fit customers actually get a chance to interact with the product. Unfortunately, most product development efforts start by seeking out the largest addressable market. That’s almost always a mistake.
If you are truly creating something new and different, you want to build for the few and not the many. That’s the mistake that Google made with its Glass prototype.
Identifying A Hair On Fire Use Case
The alternative to trying to address the largest addressable market is to identify a hair-on-fire use case. The idea is to find a potential customer that needs to solve a problem so badly that they almost literally have their hair on fire. These customers will be more willing to co-create with you and more likely to put up with the inevitable bugs and glitches that always come up.
For example, Tesla didn’t start out by trying to build an electric car for the masses. Instead, it created a $100,000 status symbol for Silicon Valley millionaires. Because these customers could afford multiple cars, range wasn’t as much of a concern. The high price tag also made a larger battery more feasible. The original Tesla Roadster had a range of 244 miles.
The Silicon Valley set were customers with their hair on fire. They wanted to be seen as stylish and eco-friendly, so were willing to put up with the inevitable limitations of electric cars. They didn’t have to depend on them for their commute or to pick the kids up at soccer practice. As long as the car was cool enough, they would buy it.
Interestingly, Google Glass made a comeback as an industrial product and had a nice run from 2019 to 2023 before they went away for good. For hipsters, an augmented reality product is far from a necessity, but a business that needs to improve productivity can be a true “hair-on-fire” use case. As the product improves and gains traction, it’s entirely possible that it eventually makes its way back to the consumer market in some form.
Using An MVP To Pursue A Grand Challenge
One of the criticisms of minimum viable products is that they are only suited for simple products and tweaks, rather than truly ambitious projects. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that the higher your ambitions, the more important it is for you to start with a minimum viable product.
IBM is one company that has a long history of pursuing grand challenges such as the Deep Blue project which defeated world champion Garry Kasparov at chess and the Blue Gene project which created a new class of “massively parallel” supercomputers. More recently were the Jeopardy grand challenge, which led to the development of its current Watson business and the Debater project.
Notice that none of these were fully featured products. Rather they were attempts to, as IBM’s Chief Innovation Officer, Bernie Meyerson, put it to me, invent something that “even experts in the field, regard as an epiphany and changes assumptions about what’s possible.” That would be hard to do if you were trying to create a full featured product for a demanding customer.
That’s the advantage of creating an MVP. It essentially acts as a research lab where you can safely test hypotheses and eliminate sources of uncertainty. Once you’ve done that, you can get started trying to build a real business.
If you could get another good job at the drop of a hat, how would you work differently? Would you speak your mind or bite your tongue?
If you didn’t care about getting a promotion, would you succumb to groupthink or dissent?
If your ego didn’t get in the way, would you stop following the worn-out recipe and make a new one?
If you don’t judge yourself by the number of people who work for you, would your work be better? Would you choose to work on different projects? How do you feel about that?
If you knew your time at the company was finite, how would your contribution change? Who would you stop working with? Who would you start working with? Wouldn’t that feel good?
If you didn’t care about your yearly rating, wouldn’t your rating improve?
If you cared more about helping others, wouldn’t your talents (and the returns) be multiplied?
If your time horizon was doubled, wouldn’t work on projects that are important at the expense of those that are urgent?
If your ego didn’t block you from working on projects that might fail, wouldn’t you work on projects that could obsolete your best work?
If you cared about the long-term success of the company, wouldn’t you work more with young people to get them ready for the next decade?
If you cared solely about doing the right projects in the right way, wouldn’t you help your best team members move to the most important projects, even if that meant they worked for someone else?
If you cared about helping people develop, would you formalize their development areas and help them grow, or take the easy route and let them flounder?
If you didn’t care about getting the credit, how would you and your work be different? Would the company be better for it? How about your happiness?
If you declined every other meeting and just read the meeting minutes, would that be a problem? And even if there are no meeting minutes to read, don’t you think that you’d get along just fine? And don’t you think you’d get more done?
What would you have to change to work more often with young people?
What would you have to change so your best people could be moved to the most important projects?
What would you have to change so you’d dissent when that’s what’s needed?
What would you have to change to develop others, even if it cost you a promotion?
What would you have to change so you could ditch the urgent projects and start the meaningful ones?
What would you have to change so you could spend more time developing young talent?
What would you have to change so you could attend fewer meetings and make more progress?
What would you have to change so you could work on the most outlandish projects?
What’s in the way of looking inside and figuring out how to live differently?
If you were able to change, who would you start work with? Who would you stop working with? Which projects would you start and which would you stop? Which meetings would you skip? Who are the three young people you’d help grow?
If you were able to change, would you be better for it? And how about the people that work with you? And how about your family? And wouldn’t your company be better for it?
So I ask you – What’s in the way? And what are you going to do about it?
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Several years ago, my now-husband and I were in London. It was his first time in the city but my 4th or 5th so, naturally, I talked a big game about how well I knew the city and how I would be, with the help of our handy tourist map, our tour guide.
Things were going fine until I took the wrong road leading away from Buckingham Palace. I thought we were heading straight to Parliament. We were not.
After a walk that lasted far longer than it should have, he nervously asked,” We’re lost, aren’t we?”
With wounded pride and astounding stubbornness, I declared, “We’re not lost. I know exactly where we are. It’s just not where we want to be.”
Maps are incredibly useful. Until they’re not.
Innovation literature has more maps than a Rick Steves’ guidebook, and most are quite useful. If they’re used at the right time for the right purposes in the right way by the right people (which is a lot of rights that have to be right).
Here are three of my favorites – 2 classics and a new one that blew my mind
Stakeholder Map:
Avoid getting blind-sided, buttering up the wrong people, or ignoring potential champions
What it is: A visual representation of the people, roles, and groups who (1) are involved in and affected by a challenge or system and (2) have the power to affect or are likely to be affected by the proposed solution. Stakeholders can be internal and/or external to the organization
Why you need one: To prioritize where and how you spend your time understanding, influencing, communicating, collaborating, persuading, and selling
When to create it: At the very beginning of a project and then updating as you learn more
Brainstorm who your internal AND external stakeholders are
Prioritize them using an Influence x Interest two-by-two matrix
Engage and communicate based on their place in the chart
Journey Map
Spot opportunities to create radical value through incremental innovations
What it is: A visual representation of what your customer/consumer/user does, thinks, and feels as they move from awareness of a need/want/JTBD to loyalty to a solution. Journey maps should dig deep into moments where customers currently interact with your organization and highlight opportunities where interaction can and should occur
Why you need one: To identify opportunities for innovation by surfacing customer current pain points between your customer and your business (or competitors if your business isn’t there and can/should be)
When to create it:
Create the basic structure (start and end point) or a hypothesized journey before primary research.
During research, work with individual stakeholders to develop their maps using (and adapting) your initial structure.
At the end of research and before ideation, synthesize insights into the smallest possible number of maps to use as inspiration for solution brainstorming
How to use it: IDEO offers simple instructions and tips based on practical use:
Brainstorm who your internal AND external stakeholders are
Prioritize them using an Influence x Interest two-by-two matrix
Engage and communicate based on their place in the chart
Service Map:
Make journey maps actionable (and see how your innovation affects your operations)
What it is: A visual representation of the people, touchpoints, processes, and technology required/desired both frontstage (what customers see) and backstage (what happens behind the scenes). Similar to process documentation with a special focus on the customer
Why you need one: Doing something new (i.e., innovating) often requires changes to internal operations, organizations, and processes, but these changes are often ignored or unexplored until late in the process, potentially slowing or stopping the development and launch of a new solution.
When to create it: Draft a baseline current state once you have 50% confidence in the general area or type of solution to be created (e.g., we want to improve the use of digital tools in classrooms, so let’s create a service map for our current digital offerings and operations). Then continually revise and update it as the solution/service develops.
When you try something new, check to see who has done something similar. Decompose their design approach. What were they trying to achieve? What outcome were they looking for? Who were their target customers? Do this for at least three existing designs – three real examples that are for sale today.
Here’s a rule to live by: When trying something new, don’t start from scratch.
What you are trying to achieve is unique, but has some commonality with existing solutions. The outcome you are looking for is unique, but it’s similar to outcomes others have tried to achieve. Your target customers are unique, but some of their characteristics are similar to the customers of the solutions you’ll decompose.
Here’s another rule: There are no “clean sheet” sheet designs, so don’t try to make one.
There was an old game show called Name That Tune, where contestants would try to guess the name of a song by hearing just a few notes. The player wins when they can name the tune with the *fewest* notes. And it’s the same with new designs – you want to provide a novel customer experience using the fewest new notes.
A rule: Reuse what you can, until you can’t.
Because the customer is the one who decides if your new offering offers them new value, the novel elements of your design don’t have to look drastically different in a side-by-side comparison way. But the novel elements of your offering do have to make a significant difference in the customer’s life. With that said, however, it can be helpful if the design element responsible for the novel goodness is visually different from the existing alternatives. But if that’s not the case, you can add a non-functional element to the novelty-generating element to make it visible to the customer. For example, you could add color, or some type of fingerprint, to the novel element of the design so that customers can see what creates the novelty for them. Then, of course, you market the heck out of the new color or fingerprint.
A rule: It’s better to make a difference in a customer’s life than, well, anything else.
Don’t be shy about learning from what other companies have done well. That’s not to say you should violate their patents, but it’s a compliment when you adopt some of their best stuff. Learn from them and twist it. Understand what they did and abstract it. See the best in two designs and combine them. See the goodness in one domain and bring it to another.
Doing something for the first time is difficult, why not get inspiration from others and make it easier?
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