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.
What does it mean to have a mindset? How does it shape your actions, and those of the people you interact with? Is it steadfast, or does it evolve? Could it perhaps be a fusion of elements? It’s crucial to understand mindsets as they influence not only our behaviors but also the behaviors of those we engage with, allowing us to better navigate the world.
Research defines “mindset” as a mental frame or lens that selectively organizes and interprets information, orienting an individual’s understanding of experiences and guiding their responses and actions. This definition, adapted from Carol Dweck by Salovey and Achor, illuminates that our mindset, composed of our thoughts and beliefs, influences our perception of ourselves, our environment, and the broader world. Such understanding is vital in team dynamics, leadership, and organizational contexts.
Dweck identified two primary mindsets:
A fixed mindset, in which intelligence is viewed as static, leading to the desire to appear intelligent and influencing specific behaviors.
A growth mindset, where intelligence is seen as something that can be developed, sparking a desire to learn and driving diverse behaviors.
The growth mindset, characterized by the belief that abilities can be honed with consistent effort, is shaped by how we perceive and tackle five critical areas:
Viewing effort as a path to mastery
Demonstrating persistence in the face of obstacles
Seeing others’ success as a source of inspiration and learning
Embracing challenges
Welcoming criticism as an opportunity to learn and grow
However, we need to acknowledge that our mindsets aren’t strictly “fixed” or “growth” in nature. They’re typically a hybrid of both, influenced by the context and phase of our lives. It’s is also situational. Our response to situations can shift, revealing the dominance of one mindset over the other at different times. Recognizing this within ourselves and avoiding prematurely labeling others is vital.
Here are a few case study examples:
Case Study 1 – Education
To give a practical example, let’s look at the world of education. Imagine a student who struggles with math. With a fixed mindset, they might think, “I’m just not good at math,” and subsequently put less effort into learning. However, if they adopt a growth mindset, they would perceive math as a challenge they can overcome with practice and effort. Using different strategies and seeking help when necessary, the student’s math skills can improve, highlighting the practical application of a growth mindset.
Case Study 2 – Microsoft
In the business world, Microsoft provides an excellent case study. Under CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft shifted from a fixed to a growth mindset. Nadella introduced Dweck’s growth mindset concept to the company culture, fostering innovation and collaboration. The shift, encapsulated in the motto “Learn it all” vs. “Know it all,” encouraged employees to remain open-minded, learn from their mistakes, and continually improve. This change in mindset led to increased employee engagement, innovation, and contributed to Microsoft’s recent growth.
Case Study 3 – Sports
In sports, athletes often exemplify the growth mindset. Consider basketball legend Michael Jordan. He was cut from his high school varsity team because he was deemed “not good enough.” Rather than accepting this as an unchangeable state, he viewed it as a challenge and redoubled his efforts to improve. His eventual rise to becoming one of the greatest basketball players of all time showcases how a growth mindset can lead to superior performance in the face of setbacks and criticism.
Conclusion
As I often say, “The essence of the growth mindset in an organizational context is to instill a mindset focused on continuous improvement rather than the need to prove that one is the best.”
Implementing the growth mindset in team dynamics is part of my work. However, it doesn’t stand alone. It must be complemented by other factors like fostering a learning culture, ensuring psychological safety, and navigating the comfort zone. All these components are critical to effective team, leadership, and organizational development.
Image Credit: Stefan Lindegaard
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At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?
But enough delay, here are August’s ten most popular innovation posts:
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P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last three years:
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.
Many say that coding is the new literacy. Kids are encouraged to learn programming in school and take coding courses online. In that famous scene in The Graduate Dustin Hoffman’s character was encouraged by a family friend to go into plastics. If it were shot today, it would have probably been computer code.
This isn’t actually that new. I remember first being taught how to code in middle school in the early 80s in BASIC (a mostly defunct language now). Yet even today, coding is far from an essential skill. In fact, with the rise of no-code platforms, there is a strong argument to be made that code is becoming less important.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s still plenty of coding to be done on the back end and programming is certainly a perfectly reasonable thing to learn. However, there’s no reason people need to learn it to have a successful, productive career. On the other hand writing, as well as other communication skills, will only become more important in the decades to com.
The Future Is Not Digital
During the past few decades, digital technology has become largely synonymous with innovation. Every 18 months or so, a new generation of processors has come out that was faster, more powerful and cheaper than its predecessors. Entrepreneurs would leverage these new capabilities to create exciting new products and disrupt entire industries.
Yet now that’s all coming to an end. Every technology eventually hits theoretical limits and that’s where we are now with regard to digital processors. We have maybe one or two generations of advancement and then, with some clever workarounds, we may be able to stretch the technology for a decade or so, but it’s highly unlikely that it’ll last any longer than that.
That’s not so horrible. There’s no 11th Commandment that says, “Thou shalt compute in ones and zeroes,” and there are nascent architectures that are potentially far more powerful than digital computers, such as quantum and neuromorphic computing. Neither of these, however are digital technologies. They operate on fundamentally different logic and will use different code.
So instead of learning to code, maybe our kids would be better served by learning about quantum mechanics or neurology. Those would seem to be far more relevant to their future.
The Shift From Bits To Atoms
Digital technology is largely virtual. Transistors on silicon wafers compute ones and zeroes so that images can flash across our screens. That can be very useful, because we can simulate things on a screen much more cheaply than in the physical world, but it’s also limited. We can’t eat, wear or live in a virtual world.
The important technologies of the next generation, however, will be based on atoms rather than bits. Advances in genomics have led to the new field of synthetic biology and a revolution in materials science is transforming our ability to develop advance materials for manufacturing, clean energy and space exploration. So maybe instead of learning how to code, kids should be studying genetics and chemistry.
As we develop new technologies, we will also need to design experiences so that we can use them more effectively. For example, we need linguists and conversational analysts to design better voice interfaces. Kids who study those things may be able to build great careers.
The rapid pace of technological advancement over the next generation will surely put stress on society. Digital technology has helped produce massive income inequality and a rise in extremism. We will need sociologists and political scientists to help us figure out how to cope with these new, much more powerful technologies.
Collaboration Is The New Competitive Advantage
When my generation was in school, we were preparing for a future that seemed pretty clear cut. We assumed we would become doctors, lawyers, executives and engineers and spend our entire lives working in our chosen fields. It didn’t turn out that way. These days a business model is unlikely to last a decade, much less a lifetime.
Kids today need to prepare to become lifelong learners because the pace of change will not slow down. In fact, it is likely to accelerate beyond anything we can imagine today. The one thing we can predict about the future is that collaboration will be critical for success. People like geneticists and quantum scientists will need to work closely with chemists, designers sociologists and specialists in fields that haven’t even been invented yet.
These are, in fact, longstanding trends. The journal Nature recently noted that the average scientific paper today has four times as many authors as one did in 1950 and the work they are doing is far more interdisciplinary and done at greater distances than in the past. We can only expect these trends to become more prominent in the future.
In order to collaborate effectively, you need to communicate effectively and that’s where writing comes in. Being able to express thoughts and ideas clearly and cogently is absolutely essential to collaboration and innovation.
Writing Well Is Thinking Well
Probably the most overlooked aspect of writing is that it does more than communicate thoughts, but helps form them. As Fareed Zakaria has put it. “Thinking and writing are inextricably intertwined. When I begin to write, I realize that my ‘thoughts’ are usually a jumble of half-baked, incoherent impulses strung together with gaping logical holes between them.”
“Whether you’re a novelist, a businessman, a marketing consultant or a historian,” he continues, “writing forces you to make choices and it brings clarity and order to your ideas.” Zakaria also points to Jeff Bezos’ emphasis on memo writing as an example of how clarity of expression leads to innovation.
In fact, Amazon considers writing so essential to its ability to innovate that it has become a key part of its culture. It’s hard to make much of a career at Amazon if you cannot write well, because to create products and services that are technically sound, easy to use and efficiently executed, a diverse group of highly skilled people need to tightly coordinate their efforts.
Today, as the digital revolution comes to an end and we enter a new era of innovation, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the rapid advancement of breakthrough technologies. However, the key to success in our uncertain future will be humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines. That starts with writing effectively.
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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Are you one of the 84% of leaders who prioritizes innovation, yet you find your organization’s performance lacking in this area? It’s a familiar conundrum: How do we consistently create lasting impact, generate value, and achieve successful innovation?
The quest for an innovation recipe has been gaining momentum, but is it truly possible to standardize innovation?
The innovation standards that ISO (International Organization for Standardization) started to introduce in 2019 are promising just that.
Are the new ISO standards for innovation truly valuable? And if so, does it make sense to adopt them in the future? These questions don’t have easy answers, so in this article, we’ll delve into the ISO 56000 suite of innovation standards to uncover the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What exactly is the ISO standard for innovation? Who is it designed for? Should your organization consider adhering to these standards? We’ll weigh the pros and cons and provide insights into what it means in practice to be ISO 56000 compliant and whether they have the potential to transform the way you approach innovation.
The paradox of standardizing innovation
When we talk about innovation and standards, we should first clarify a few concepts.
What is innovation?
Why should you manage innovation?
What is a standard in the context of innovation?
First, if you wish to transform the way you innovate, it is crucial to establish a shared understanding of what innovation means for you.
In its simplest form, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines innovation as the introduction of something new. However, there are many types of innovation and therefore, ways of innovating. That’s why it’s important to define it within the context of your organization, your goals, and strategy.
Also, note that innovation is not just an ingredient you add to the mix and hope for a better result than before. It has to be placed at the core of the organization. That’s where innovation management comes into play.
Innovation has to be placed at the core of the organization.
Innovation management is the process through which you get to create and introduce that “something new”. This process can look different from one organization to another, which makes it more challenging to see it in perspective.
We usually structure the core aspects of innovation management into capabilities, structure, culture, and strategy. However, the International Standards for Innovation expand them further into eight principles.
We previously explored each of these topics in detail on our blog, as they all contribute to successful innovation. But maybe the most important one, which should be your North Star, is the creation of value. Unless you add value, you are simply creating innovation theater.
Unfortunately, this is very common in organizations attempting to innovate through sporadic activities. But innovation is a complex, dynamic process that evolves over time.
At the same time, it’s understandable why the skepticism around the standards for innovation. Just as innovation is not easy, neither is adhering to a set of standards that will help you succeed at it.
Obviously, standards come with both downsides and benefits, but as pointed out in the ISO documentation, these innovation management principles are “an open set to be integrated and adapted within the organization”.
Naturally, now you might question how standardization is possible if innovation and its management are so complex and can vary so greatly across organizations and industries.
The problem is that traditionally, innovation has been seen as a creative and sometimes chaotic process that may or may not result in something new that adds value.
However, if we take a closer look at some of the most innovative companies, we see that it’s not about randomly generating wild ideas and hoping for the best.
The myth of the crazy innovator has been popularized by the media that portrays innovators as superheroes. This stereotypical view on innovation fed the belief that innovation and standardization are two opposing forces. Innovation comes from pure chaos, and standards fight it with order. In fact, creativity and standardization can be complementary. You need both for successful corporate management.
Creativity and standardization can be complementary. You need both for successful corporate management.
For example, even though Apple marketed itself as a group of rebels revolutionizing the computer, Steve Jobs actually instilled a disciplined culture where people had to adhere to his methods. In a way, he had his own set of standards for what an innovative product meant.
Similarly, Toyota, renowned for its enduring success, has developed its own system called “The Toyota Way”. Through this system, they have embraced continuous improvement as an approach to innovation, refining it into a set of principles that have become synonymous with their brand.
If it wasn’t for Toyota’s systematic approach to innovation, and Jobs’ eccentricity who insisted on doing things a certain way, today we might have had two very different companies.
Even though their way is by no means a “recipe” that can be replicated by others, we can see how having a framework sets the tone for how an organization is innovating on the long term.
Efforts have been ongoing to develop a comprehensive framework that can be universally adopted by organizations of all sizes and industries. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has taken a significant step in this direction with the introduction of the ISO 56000 suite of innovation standards.
Let’s next take a closer look at these standards to see if they have any practical benefits.
ISO 56000 Suite for Innovation
In essence, standards are meant to be a reference point for organizations, industries, and individuals. They are used to establish best practices, promote efficiency, enhance safety, and facilitate communication and cooperation. Even though they could seem just rigid rules, standards are simply ways of working and they are not meant to hinder creativity.
Where did the ISO standards for innovation come from? The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is developing and promoting international standards that facilitate consistency, interoperability, and quality across various industries and sectors.
The ISO 56000 series of standards for innovation is a rather new initiative where experts from 50 countries came together in an effort to establish a common understanding of innovation and support organizations across all industries to improve their ability to survive and thrive in this uncertain world.
Also, note that some standards from the eight-part series are still under development (as per July 2023), so we will get back and update this article when necessary. If you consider complying with these standards, the ISO website is the official source to get them in full.
However, the standards we believe to be the most relevant in helping you succeed have already been published:
ISO 56000 Innovation Management – Fundamentals and vocabulary
ISO 56002 Innovation management – Innovation management system
ISO 56003 Tools and Methods for innovation partnership.
For a better understanding of the use and purpose of the ISO standards, let’s focus on the ISO 56000 Fundamentals and vocabulary, and the ISO 56002 for Innovation management system.
ISO 56000 Innovation management — Fundamentals and vocabulary:
Provides vocabulary, fundamental concepts, and principles of innovation management and its systematic implementation.
Applicable to various organizations, including those implementing an innovation management system, seeking to improve their innovation capabilities, or aiming for effective communication and common understanding in innovation management.
Suitable also for providers of training in, assessment of, or consultancy for, innovation management and innovation management systems.
It can be applied by all types of organizations, regardless of the sector, size, or maturity level. It’s useful for different types of innovations (product, services, processes, etc), and approaches (internal, open, design-driven, etc.)
ISO 56002 Innovation management system
Provides guidance for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and improving an innovation management system in established organizations.
Applicable to organizations seeking sustained success in managing innovation activities, interested parties assessing innovation capabilities, and policymakers supporting innovation and competitiveness.
Provides generic guidance applicable to all types of organizations, innovations, and approaches, with a focus on established organizations.
This standard goes beyond the foundational principles and offers more practical guidance on how to structure, implement, and continuously improve innovation processes. It emphasizes the importance of leadership, communication, and organizational culture in fostering innovation.
However, it does not prescribe specific activities, requirements, tools, or methods for innovation but offers general-level guidance.
How does this translate into innovation practices? Well, let’s take a step back and look at how most organizations approach innovation.
Traditionally, many organizations innovate by focusing primarily on episodic events that are centered around ideas. These could be hackathons, suggestion boxes, idea challenges, brainstorming sessions, or similar events. Something could come out of these sporadic activities, but mostly they turn out to be wasted efforts and resources.
Truth be told, ideas are not worth much. The execution is more important. The issue with the old, funnel approach, which is mostly about collecting numerous ideas, filtering, evaluating, and selecting a few for implementation, is that it can overlook the essence of innovation and focus on the wrong things.
Innovation at the corporate level is not, or should not be, just about creating something new for the sake of novelty. That is an invention and not all inventions are innovations. Instead, innovation should create value and align with the overall business strategy and goals.
All in all, the traditional funnel works fine at the ideation level, but is not an all-encompassing system to repeatedly innovate at an organizational level.
ISO 56002 brings together all the elements that can enable value creation through innovation. The innovation management system, which is at the core of the ISO 56002 is made of different interrelated elements that make up the framework on which an organization can develop and deploy innovation capabilities, evaluate performance, and achieve the intended goals.
As shown in this graphic, the innovation management system can be very complex, especially for larger, more established organizations.
The good news is that you don’t have to adopt all the elements at once. You can gradually integrate them to create a system that works for your organization and its specific context. As their guideline indicates, it all starts with committing and promoting the capabilities required to create such a system.
If you’ve read our articles before, you probably noticed that we talked extensively about continuous improvement, as well as the tools and processes that drive sustained innovation. So, it’s no surprise that the ISO 56002 also integrates the PDCA (Plan – Do – Check – Act) cycle, which enables continuous improvement of the innovation practices.
This model also ties together the business strategy with the innovation strategy. It gives insights into the intent and where the innovation activities should be directed.
So, instead of collecting ideas for projects that may not add anything valuable to the bottom line, you should generate ideas based on opportunities.
In broad terms, this is how standardization can enable innovation. It’s not about a “to do” list, but about the bigger picture. The ISO 56000 suite highlights the need for an end-to-end approach to innovation, where barriers are removed, and creativity can flourish. It enables the conditions for innovation to thrive.
It’s great to see there is this attempt to establish a foundation for managing innovation as a process, through a holistic approach. Even so, there are still shortcomings that sceptics of the ISO standards are right to be concerned about. Let’s see what those are.
The Pros and Cons of ISO Standards for Innovation
What should you know before deciding to make the leap, and what are the downsides of adhering to ISO standards for innovation? Also, what are the benefits, and is it worth investing the effort, time, energy, and resources? Let’s see.
The downsides of ISO standards for innovation
Limited scope
Innovation is multifaceted and complex and the road to success looks very different for each organization. The size, industry, and specific goals of each organization mean that the processes required to innovate can also look very different. Adopting a set of standards with such a broad scope can be very challenging for organizations.
ISO 56000 lays the ground to define fundamental concepts and vocabulary, ISO 56002 provides guidance for establishing and implementing an innovation management system and ISO 56003 focuses on specific types of innovation. Even though they attempt to provide guidance in different scenarios, they still cannot fully address every organization’s unique needs.
That’s why you need committed, knowledgeable leaders who can show the way and understand how to adapt the system to the specifics of their organization.
Not a playbook for success
It should be clarified that even if you adhere to these standards and you put in all the work, the ISO standards are not a playbook for success.
The impact of implementing these standards can vary from one organization to another depending on the industry, maturity of the innovation practices, size, culture, and so on.
So, it’s important to set the expectations right and to take them for what they are. These standards can help you move ahead, but they won’t provide the recipe for disruptive or radical innovations, which can truly set you apart.
Rigidity and too much focus on compliance
A lack of flexibility is on the top of leaders’ minds when they think of standards. Employees also fear that being compliant with specific standards will take away from the flexibility and freedom to think creatively or try unconventional approaches.
But having constraints is not all bad. In fact, constraints can foster creativity. Having constraints can help you understand the problem better, it can force you to be creative and think outside the box, and can ultimately turn into a source of competitive advantage.
Costs and resources
The process of implementing ISO innovation standards can be time-consuming, complex, and costly. It requires allocating resources for conducting assessments, audits, and certifications, which can be a burden for smaller organizations with limited budgets. Other costs may include purchasing the standards, training employees on their implementation, and conducting internal assessments to ensure compliance.
What’s more, adhering to new standards involves a significant commitment of time and effort. Developing new processes, aligning existing practices with the standards, and undergoing audits or assessments demand substantial dedication. This can strain resources and may divert attention from other critical business activities.
Workforce resistance
Embracing ISO standards often require organizational change, which can encounter resistance from employees and management. Change management efforts are essential to successfully integrate the standards, but they can add complexity and take time to fully adopt the new practices.
Leadership commitment is essential and their approach to enforcing change can make or break the initiative. If the standards will be imposed rules, they can become a cause of friction between leaders and employees.
Despite these downsides, it’s important to recognize that investment in ISO standards can bring substantial benefits. What kind of benefits?
Benefits of Adopting ISO Standards for Innovation
Enhanced Innovation Management Practices
With the ISO standards you get the guidance and framework to develop more efficient and structured innovation management processes.
With such a complex endeavor it’s so easy to get lost in the details and forget the big picture. The ISO 56002 standards provide the guidelines on how to ideate, evaluate, and implement innovative ideas, leading to better utilization of resources and increased innovation success rates.
Improved Governance and Organizational Structure
Without structures in place there is no common understanding of how the organization understands innovation. There are inconsistent practices, fragmented activities that lead to no results, and no clear direction or alignment with the overall strategy.
The ISO standards are like a map, showing the team the best route to take and ensuring everyone is on the same page.
Armed with these guidelines, organizations establish a smoother and more organized innovation process. Everyone knows their roles and responsibilities, communication flows better, and collaboration becomes easier. It’s like having a well-oiled machine, where everyone knows what to do and how they fit into the bigger picture.
The ISO standards also emphasize the importance of leadership and accountability. Leaders take charge and guide the innovation process, while everyone is responsible for their part in making innovation successful. For innovation to succeed, you need a strong captain steering the ship and a crew that works together.
Increased Competitiveness and Growth
Armed with these standards, you can identify new opportunities, develop innovative products or services, and gain a competitive advantage.
Standards act as a roadmap, guiding you towards effective strategies and practices that fuel the competitive edge. As we saw in the overall structure of the ISO 56002, it promotes a culture of continuous improvement and learning within organizations. This encourages the exploration of new ideas, the identification of areas for growth, and the development of innovative solutions. It enables organizations to stay agile, responsive, and innovative in a rapidly evolving business landscape.
Better Ability to Manage Risk
The concept of risk is too often seen as purely a negative issue that one should look to minimize by diversifying the innovation portfolio. Instead, you should look at risk through a broader lens, especially when it comes to innovation.
The concept of risk is too often seen as purely a negative issue that one should look to minimize by diversifying the innovation portfolio. Instead, you should look at risk through a broader lens, especially when it comes to innovation.
Risk is the potential of something either gaining or losing value, which means that it simply represents the uncertainty related to that something. Since working on innovation involves a lot of uncertainty, you should look at risk as more than just something to minimize. Of course, the acceptable level of risk depends on ambition, capabilities, and the types of innovations pursued.
Since working on innovation involves a lot of uncertainty, you should look at risk as more than just something to minimize.
For example, startups, particularly early-stage ones, are often more willing to take significant risks by dedicating all their resources to a single ambitious project with a high likelihood of failure but the potential for substantial rewards.
Therefore, even in the context of standards, flexibility and adaptability are crucial. You have to establish unified or separate structures for innovation activities with different leadership styles, competencies, and cultures.
Implementing an innovation management system challenges the status quo, enabling effective management of uncertainties and risks.
Ability to Forge Meaningful and Valuable Partnerships
ISO standards help organizations forge meaningful and valuable partnerships by providing a common framework and shared language for collaboration.
The ISO 56003 can help you decide whether you should enter an innovation partnership, identify, evaluate, and select partners and assess the alignment and perceptions of value and challenges of the partnership.
Even more, through ISO standards organizations can also demonstrate their commitment to best practices and a high level of quality in their operations. This can attract potential partners who value reliability and trustworthiness. When partners see that an organization follows recognized standards, it gives them confidence that they can work together effectively and achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.
When organizations follow these standards, they can collaborate more efficiently and make better decisions together. This fosters trust and strengthens the partnership, leading to more successful projects and innovations.
Effective Intellectual Property Management
IP management is like a safety net for new ideas and inventions. It protects them from being copied or used by others without permission. When innovators get patents, trademarks, copyrights, or keep their secrets, it gives them legal rights over their creations. This protection encourages them to invest in more research and come up with even better things.
If you are concerned about IP management, the ISO 56005 was developed as a guidance and framework to address the management of intellectual property rights.
Clear guidelines for IP management can help you protect and capitalize on your innovations. The ISO 56005 explains the steps to carry out an IP order and create an IP strategy that aligns with your business goals.
Overall, the adoption of innovation standards paves the way for continuous improvement, growth, and impactful collaborations in today’s dynamic and rapidly evolving business landscape. But ultimately, the decision to invest in the ISO standards for innovation depends on your objectives, resources, and long-term commitment to continuous improvement.
What Next?
Now that you know what’s the deal with these ISO standards for innovation, what should you do next?
Assess Readiness: Begin by evaluating your organization’s readiness for implementing standards for innovation. It’s important to understand why transformation is necessary. Assess factors such as your maturity as an organization, your current innovation practices, resources, and commitment to driving innovation improvements.
FamiliarizeYourself with the ISO Standards: Take the time to understand the ISO standards relevant to innovation, such as ISO 56000 and its related standards. Familiarize yourself with the content as much as possible to understand where to start.
Note that you don’t have to get on board with all standards. If you are new to innovation work, you might want to start with the ISO 56000 to establish the concepts of innovation in relation to your organization. From there you will get more familiar with the topic and start to understand the basics.
Define Objectives and Benefits: If you already know you want to adopt ISO standards, make sure you have defined the objectives you aim to achieve. Consider the potential benefits for your organization, such as improved innovation management practices, enhanced competitiveness, and better risk management.
Gain Leadership Commitment: Having that clear understanding of what you want to achieve through the standards will also help secure leadership commitment, which is vital for the successful adoption of ISO standards. Engage top management, to gain their support and endorsement of the initiative.
Make a Plan: Next, develop a detailed plan for implementing ISO standards for innovation. The plan should outline the steps, timelines, responsibilities, and resources required for successful implementation.
Engage Stakeholders: Involve all relevant stakeholders in the process. Seek input from employees, teams, and departments that will be impacted by the adoption of ISO standards to ensure their buy-in and cooperation. Offer training and awareness programs to employees to ensure they understand the importance and benefits of adopting these ISO standards.
Continuous Improvement: As the innovation management system proposed by the ISO organization also outlines, continuous improvement is the backbone of any process. Once you execute the plan and start adhering to innovation standards, you should monitor progress, measure outcomes, and continually assess and improve your innovation management practices.
Consider Certification: Lastly, the elephant in the room. Whenever you think of ISO standards you think of the ISO certificates. While certification can signal a commitment to best practices and continuous improvement in innovation management, it is not mandatory for implementing effective innovation initiatives within an organization.
You can adhere to the standards without additional investment into getting certified. The ISO 56002 is the only one that is eligible for certification, meaning that you can seek certification from accredited certification bodies to demonstrate your compliance with ISO 56002 as well as your commitment to effective innovation management.
Conclusion
Because we don’t like to do things halfway, this was a lengthy article. We didn’t go into the details of each standard because that is beside the point here. Our goal was to provide you with the bigger picture of what it means to standardize innovation practices.
This will hopefully help you better understand that innovation is not a one-time activity you do after a workshop, and that a systematic approach is essential for long-term success and growth.
Innovation can be like deciding to go to the gym or sticking to a workout routine. Sometimes the most difficult part is to get started and make that first step.
With this information at hand, you can start digging deeper into the specifics of each standard that interests you and use them as a compass to steer you in the right direction. They can give a new perspective into the methods you can use to achieve success in innovation, and help you rethink how you manage innovation at an organizational level.
Being a leader isn’t easy. You must BE accountable, compassionate, confident, curious, empathetic, focused, service-driven, and many other things. You must DO many things, including build relationships, communicate clearly, constantly learn, create accountability, develop people, inspire hope and trust, provide stability, and think critically. But if you’re not doing this one thing, none of the other things matter.
Show up.
It seems obvious, but you’ll be surprised how many “leaders” struggle with this.
Especially when they’re tasked with managing both operations and innovation.
It’s easy to show up to lead operations.
When you have experience and confidence, know likely cause and effect, and can predict with relative certainty what will happen next, it’s easy to show up. You’re less likely to be wrong, which means you face less risk to your reputation, current role, and career prospects.
When it’s time to be a leader in the core business, you don’t think twice about showing up. It’s your job. If you don’t, the business, your career, and your reputation suffer. So, you show up, make decisions, and lead the team out of the unexpected.
It’s hard to show up to lead innovation.
When you are doing something new, facing more unknowns than knowns, and can’t guarantee an outcome, let alone success, showing up is scary. No one will blame you if you’re not there because you’re focused on the core business and its known risks and rewards. If you “lead from the back” (i.e., abdicate your responsibility to lead), you can claim that the team, your peers, or the company are not ready to do what it takes.
When it’s time to be a leader in innovation, there is always something in the core business that is more urgent, more important, and more demanding of your time and attention. Innovation may be your job, but the company rewards you for delivering the core business, so of course, you think twice.
Show up anyway
There’s a reason people use the term “incubation” to describe the early days of the innovation process. To incubate means to “cause or aid the development of” but that’s the 2nd definition. The 1st definition is “to sit on so as to hatch by the warmth of the body.”
You can’t incubate if you don’t show up.
Show up to the meeting or call, even if something else feels more urgent. Nine times out of ten, it can wait half an hour. If it can’t, reschedule the meeting to the next day (or the first day after the crisis) and tell your team why. Don’t say, “I don’t have time,” own your choice and explain, “This isn’t a priority at the moment because….”
Show up when the team is actively learning and learn along with them. Attend a customer interview, join the read-out at the end of an ideation session, and observe people using your (or competitive) solutions. Ask questions, engage in experiments, and welcome the experiences that will inform your decisions.
Show up when people question what the innovation team is doing and why. Especially when they complain that those resources could be put to better use in the core business. Explain that the innovation resources are investments in the company’s future, paving the way for success in an industry and market that is changing faster than ever.
You can’t lead if you don’t show up.
Early in my career, a boss said, “A leader without followers is just a person wandering lost.” Your followers can’t follow you if they can’t find you.
For high-tech in much of the 20 century, when start-up capital was scarce and the need for it was great, innovation began at the core and migrated to the edge. Today we have the reverse. Start-up capital is plentiful, the need for it is modest, and innovation is thriving at the edge and moving reluctantly to the core, fearful of the inertia it will encounter once it gets there.
Yet if innovations are going to scale, they must leverage the core-edge dynamic in both directions. That means, in addition to enabling innovation from the bottom up—something today’s start-up enterprises are having great success in doing—we must also be able to manage it from the top down, from the core out, from the acquiring-sponsoring enterprise to acquired-innovating start-up. Here success is not so widespread, but there is a fix for that.
In the core-edge dynamic, the job of the core acquiring institution is not to innovate—it is to get a return on innovation from wherever it is sourced. This could be an internal skunk works project, a major R&D project, a tuck-in acquisition, or a merger with another mature enterprise. The challenge is not, in other words, to bring innovation into existence but rather to capitalize on it in a meaningful way. That is what the pie chart above is all about.
The key claims of this model are 1) that there are three ways to get a positive return from an innovation investment and 2) that they are mutually exclusive. (There are also at least five ways to get a negative return which we will get to in a moment.)
The winning returns can come from:
Differentiation. To win here you must create an offer that dramatically outperforms its competitive set on at least one vector of innovation. You are playing for competitive separation, looking for a 10X result on at least one chosen vector, either in product performance, customer delight, or operational savings. This sort of thing creates the highest return on innovation possible. Think Apple iPad over any prior tablet (or arguably any tablet since).
Neutralization. To win here you must catch up to a competitor’s innovation sufficiently to get your offer back in the hunt. This means getting to “good enough” as quickly as possible. Here you are playing for speed—how fast can you get back in the game. Think Google Android catching up to (and then overtaking) the Apple iPhone.
Optimization. To win here you produce essentially the same offer on a better, faster, cheaper basis. Basically, you are extracting resources from an established effort in order to hit a new price-point, repurpose them for innovation elsewhere or simply taking to the bottom line. Here you are playing neither for separation nor for speed but rather for money. Think Nokia’s long history of success with feature phones.
The critical thing to note about these three sources of return is that they are at odds with one another. If you are going to get maximum separation, you cannot tell exactly when that will occur, so you cannot play for speed. Conversely, if you are playing for speed, you must suppress any impulse to go beyond a “good enough” standard. But in both cases you are willing to spend extra money to achieve your primary goal, be that separation or speed. That puts both approaches at odds with optimization, where the goal is to extract cost from the system.
The net of this is that top-down management of innovation requires leaders to charter their innovation teams with one—and only one—of these objectives. Where you have multiple needs, you need multiple teams. To understand why, let’s turn to look at how innovation investments fail to pay off.
There are at least five ways this can happen, as follows:
The innovation doesn’t work. Ouch. But that is the price of playing innovation poker. In fact, if you have no failed experiments, you probably are not taking enough risk.
The differentiation doesn’t go far enough. Yes, you create something different, but it is a far cry from a 10X separation, and so the market accepts it as good but does not grant you any competitive advantage for it. Basically, you just spent your R&D budget and have nothing to pay you back for it. HP and Dell have both suffered here greatly in recent years.
The neutralization doesn’t go fast enough. The team got caught up in out-doing the competition rather than simply getting to good enough. The problem is, the market will not pay you any return on improvements beyond good enough, so all you have done here is waste time, which is the one thing you cannot afford to waste when your product is out of the game. Nokia was a prime offender here with respect to its tardy response to the iPhone challenge.
The optimization doesn’t go deep enough. Basically, you optimize around the edges and do not attack any of the sacred cows (typically meaning you do not touch either engineering or sales). The gains are minimal, and the bottlenecks that are holding you back are still deeply in place. Ginny Rometti made a version of this point in one of IBM’s earnings calls, but so could every other Tech 50 CEO in any given quarter. This is a really big problem because tech has never been good at optimization.
The innovation project blended two or more goals. The problem here is that either the differentiation goal slowed you down or the neutralization goal dumbed you down or the optimization goal tied you down. One way or another, you went down.
So the net here is simple. Managing innovation is a different discipline from innovating per se. It is all about controlling the charter, targeting one and only one kind of return, and then focusing the team solely on that set of outcomes. It isn’t all that cool. It is just very, very important.
That’s what I think. What do you think?
Image Credit: Pexels
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Drum roll please…
