Category Archives: Innovation

Delivering Innovation

How the History of Mail Order Can Help Us Manage Innovation at Scale

Delivering innovation

GUEST POST from John Bessant

2022 was a record year for home delivery of parcels and packages. After the Covid-19 lockdowns the idea of remote shopping became an even bigger reality and changed the behavior patterns of millions. It’s a habit which is hard to break — even when there are increasing disturbances in the delivery end of things like strikes and negative publicity surrounding how packages are actually handled and delivered. Estimates of the market size for this activity vary widely but suggest that it is worth close to $500bn worldwide.

But where did this revolution begin and what’s the innovation history behind remote retailing? For that we need to go back a couple of hundred years and locate ourselves in the beautiful hills of Powys in Wales. In the valley alongside the river Severn is the small town of Newtown, a market center since the 13th century. And in 1856 the home of Pryce Jones, a draper’s assistant who rose to take over the business in which he worked. And for which he had big plans.

He renamed the company the Royal Welsh Warehouse and specialized in selling Welsh flannel. His vision grew out of a belief in the wonderful powers of the soft warm fabric crafted from wool from the sheep he could see on the hillsides all around him. But it was also sharply focused on the potential size of that market — if he could only grow it. Which he did courtesy of two key enabling innovations which reached sufficient maturity to give him the channels to reach his imagined global market.

The channels were the postal system and the railways. Neither was new by this time but they were now coming of age — and enabling hitherto unrealizable dreams to take shape. Back in 1654 Oliver Cromwell had established the idea of a state postal system but it was another 30 years before a reliable system began to operate around the city of London. And another hundred years before Parliament authorized the creation of ‘Penny Posts’ in any town or city; while the idea grew in popularity it was still expensive and local in impact. It wasn’t until the major reforms of the Post Office in 1840 that the idea of a Uniform Penny Post was established, facilitating the safe, speedy and cheap conveyance of letters. With it came the first pre-payment in the form of postage stamps (beginning with the famous Penny Black).

Pryce Jones was quick to spot the possibilities in the newly-emerging postal system and began offering his wares via mail order. The offer was simple; place your order via mail and it will be delivered the next day (effectively anticipating Amazon’s Prime service by 150 years and offering faster delivery!). To explain to his market what he had to offer he developed an illustrated catalogue from which they could choose what they wanted; he launched this in 1861.

He was able to fulfil this delivery promise because the railways had also come of age; from the ‘Rocket’ which George Stephenson demonstrated in 1829 the idea of modern railway network had developed rapidly. The railway came to Newtown and Jones was quick to exploit its possibilities, building a warehouse next to the station and opening his mail order business alongside the post office. He expanded several times and in 1879, he built the Royal Welsh Warehouse, a tall red brick building in the centre of Newtown which still stands today.

His idea paid off; within months his business had started to grow and by the 1880s he had an international operation, counting amongst his patrons included the royal houses of Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Hanover, Italy, Naples, and Russia. Valuable customers not only for their purchases but also for their implicit endorsement. Because Jones wasn’t just skilled at utilising new channels; he also played the role of ‘conveyor’, someone actively encouraging and promoting the use of the new business model along these channels. His mail order catalogue wasn’t simply a price list of items, it was a form of storytelling, complete with pictures and expansive descriptions. He understood the principles of marketing, the need to get consumers to buy into a vision of something which they wanted — and then he was able to fulfil that demand.

(He was also a gifted product innovator; amongst other things he is credited with the invention of the sleeping bag which he patented in 1876 under the name of the Euklisia Rug. He exported the product around the world, at one point landing a contract with the Russian Army for 60,000 rugs.)

Pryce Jones wasn’t alone; like so many innovations the idea of mail order retailing came to several people independently and around the same time, reflecting the changing environment and the enabling technologies. For example in Austria the Thonet family began selling their furniture in 1859 using a mail order catalogue and taking advantage of postal and transport innovations. In fact Pryce Jones’ model was predated by the US luxury goods company Tiffany’s who in 1845 launched their ‘Blue Book’ — arguably the world’s first mail order catalogue though targeted at a very small, select (and wealthy) market.

It wasn’t long before other entrepreneurs began to see the possibilities beyond extending the reach into new markets for particular products. They realised that there was a second side to the new market-place — the suppliers. These days we’re used to seeing examples of ‘platform’ businesses everywhere we look — just glance at your smart-phone to see the array of apps (representing goods and services) being offered across the platform of its shiny screen. But it was 150 years ago that this kind of business model first emerged.

In 1872, Aaron Montgomery Ward from Chicago started his own single-page mail order catalogue; it listed 163 items for sale. He’s credited amongst other things with coining the sales slogan ‘satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!’ The model worked; ten years later the ‘Wish book’ catalogue listed over 10,000 items. Most important was the fact that Ward didn’t manufacture many of these; he effectively created the platform across which the market in multiple goods and services could operate.

In doing so he paved the way for many others spotting and exploiting a similar opportunity. For example in Canada one of the largest department stores was the Eaton Company originally founded in 1869 to sell dry goods, backed by a growing network of factories.

Eaton Company Catalog

Timothy Eaton saw the possibilities in mail order and in 1884 released its 32 page catalogue. He expressed his vision of a network stretching across the sub-continent of Canada in a note accompany the catalogue; “This catalogue is destined to go wherever the maple leaf grows, throughout the vast Dominion. We have the facilities for filling mail orders satisfactorily, no matter how far the letter has to come and the goods have to go.”

And down in North Redwood, Minnesota Richard Warren Sears , a railroad services agent. began a sideline business by purchasing a batch of watches which had been refused delivery and selling them on to local people. In 1886, he used the profits he earned from it to set up a mail-order business selling watches as R.W. Sears Watch Company. That year he met a watch repairman named Alvah Curtis Roebuck and in 1887 the two of them relocated their business to Chicago. In 1888 they launched a printed catalogue offering a range of luxury goods like watches and jewelry; by 1892 this had grown to a 322 page catalogue which included sewing machines, sporting goods, musical instruments, saddles, firearms, buggies, bicycles, baby carriages, and some clothing.

Sears Roebuck

What Sears and Roebuck (and a growing number of others) were doing was developing the new business model of a platform, using the catalogue as the focal point across which remote retailing could expand. But this wasn’t simply a matter of printing and distributing a catalogue; what they were doing was mastering the art of building an ecosystem for retail innovation. They recognized that simply advertising a wide range of products and services to an expectant public would be a very fast way of losing money and reputation. In order to make the system work they needed to pull together a network and get it working to deliver ‘emergent properties’ — where the whole offered more than the sum of the parts.

Making remote retailing work meant finding ways to procure (or manufacture) a wide range of products and then holding them in a warehouse so they are available for quick delivery. But holding stock takes up space and costs money so the trick is to manage the logistics of sales forecasting, order processing and stockholding, plus being able to ensure rapid and reliable delivery. Which places emphasis on reliable channels — as Pryce Jones discovered.

And underneath this web of suppliers and deliverers is the challenge of cash flow — how to ensure enough money comes back into the system fast enough to cover costs and return a profit which helps keep the supply side engaged. New models for financing and payment began to emerge — not least the concept of paying cash on delivery.

The model expanded throughout the world and was often at the heart of a move from remote shopping to direct retail. The origins of the 20th century department store include a sizeable crossover — for example Kastner & Öhler was the first mail order business in Central Europe. The company was founded in 1873 in Austria, releasing its first mail order catalogue in 1885; as it grew it opened its first department store in 1894 and went on the become one of the household names in European retailing.

Mail order was a powerful business model which worked well during most ot the 20th century — but as we’ve learned so often about innovation, nothing lasts forever. New developments opened up new possibilities and it is not always the existing players who are best placed or able to exploit them. In the early 1980s a new channel began to appear — the internet. It opened up not only new opportunities in terms of potential reach, mirroring what Pryce Jones had seen in the emergence of uniform postal systems a century before. But it also changed the underlying thinking behind some of the core warehousing and logistics underpinning the mail order model.

Jeff Bezos was aware of the opportunity and had created a list of possible sectors to target with an internet-based model. He chose books, and quickly realized that he could not only reach a huge market via this new channel but he could also service it without the high costs of actually warehousing and distributing the books. He recognized the ‘long tail’ possibilities; with his model he could reach people with highly specific needs and connect them to suppliers who could meet that need. He also saw that the underlying business model was available to anyone — the advantages would come to those who could scale early and build a platform. As the major bookseller Barnes and Noble pointed out in their submission to legal authorities in their lawsuit of 1997Amazon was not a bookseller at all, it was a book broker.

Where Amazon and others paved the way for a new model to emerge, putting the platform kind of business on steroids, others were slower to recognise and adapt. The German firm Quelle had grown since its founding in 1927 to become one of the biggest mail order operations in Europe, with a dedicated logistics and warehousing operation near the town of Fürth in Bavaria. It was, along with Tempelhof airport in Berlin, one of the largest industrial sites in Europe stretching over nearly 7 hectares. But a failure to adapt fast enough to the rapid changes being brought about through internet retailing meant that by 2006 it collapsed into bankruptcy. All that remains today is the 90m high Quelle-Turm (Quelle Tower) built in 1964 and now preserved as a landmark to a different industrial era.

One of the features of the model Pryce Jones developed was the stimulus it gave to local producers, enabling the region around Newtown to prosper with new businesses. And something very similar has happened with the internet-driven mail order business built across the huge Alibaba platform in China. In 2003 Jack Ma launched the idea of a Taobao marketplace where people could trade goods and services using the ability of the platform to reach a large and distributed market and display content in rich and interesting formats.

This model is comprised primarily of small businesses but has grown to be the largest digital retail platform in the country and has spawned many ‘Taobao villages’ — areas where over 10% of the population is engaged in online retailing. It has had a huge impact on the rural economy; by August 2019 there were nearly 4500 Taobao villages in 25 provinces and estimates suggest up to half of the rural population has benefitted from this. It is equivalent to around 600,000 small shops and trading businesses employing around 10 million people with an economic value of around $195 billion worth of e-commerce sales.

The story is of course not over. With the rising expectations of a growing market for instant delivery has come a challenge and opportunity around the ‘last mile’ challenge — how to move from the digital world to physical delivery of products. And whilst there are many major traditional logistics players now operating in this space there are challenges on the horizon — for example drone delivery or even 3-D printing of a growing range of physical products. The virtualisation process has only just begun though it may still be a while before the Welsh flannel beloved of Pryce Jones emerges spinning out of a 3-D wool printer in our homes.

But perhaps the best kept secret is the one shrouded in Arctic mists and dating back hundreds of years. Somehow a single enterprise (the mysterious S. Claus operation) has managed the challenge of reliable overnight delivery on a global basis to millions of expectant children; there are clearly lessons still to be learned around wish fulfilment innovation.

You can also hear this as a podcast or watch it as a video.

If you’d like more songs, stories and other resources on the innovation theme, check out my website or listen to my podcast. And if you’d like to learn with me take a look at my online course here

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons, Unsplash

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The Ultimate Guide to the Phase-Gate Process

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The Ultimate Guide to the Phase-Gate Process

Editor’s Note — Braden Kelley

The Phase Gate Process and Innovation Management

The phase gate process — also called the stage gate process — is a structured project management methodology that divides a project into distinct phases separated by decision checkpoints called gates. At each gate, a review determines whether the project should proceed to the next phase, be redirected, or be stopped entirely. Originally developed for new product development by Robert Cooper in the 1980s, the phase gate process has since been widely adopted across innovation programs, R&D portfolios, and organizational change initiatives.

For innovation leaders, the phase gate process matters for two reasons that go beyond typical project management. First, it provides a structured way to manage the inherent uncertainty of innovation — allowing organizations to invest incrementally rather than committing fully to unproven concepts before they have been validated. Second, it creates a governance framework that balances the need for creative exploration with the organizational discipline required to bring innovations to market effectively.

The most common failure mode of phase gate in innovation contexts is over-engineering the gates — creating such demanding review criteria that promising early-stage ideas get killed before they have had a chance to develop. The best phase gate implementations keep early gates light and exploratory, reserving rigorous financial and operational scrutiny for later stages when the concept has been sufficiently validated to justify that level of scrutiny. Connecting phase gate to a broader innovation framework — rather than treating it as a standalone project management tool — is what separates organizations that use it effectively from those that find it stifles the very innovation it was meant to support.

Dainora Jociute’s comprehensive guide below covers the mechanics of the phase gate process in detail — the stages, the gates, the review criteria, and the implementation considerations that determine whether it helps or hinders your innovation program.

GUEST POST from Dainora Jociute

While improvisation might bring the zest to a comedy performance or to your Saturday night’s Bolognese sauce, in the world of innovation a systematic approach is the way to go. And the zest here is a fitting and well-thought-through innovation management process.

It has been a hot minute since we last covered the topic. So, for the New Year, we will dust off our knowledge and insights and share updated guides to innovation management techniques.

In this guide, we will take a deep dive into the Phase-Gate process, arguably one of the best-known innovation management techniques. What is it, and why it might be just the right approach to innovation management for your organization? Let’s jump right into it.

What is the Phase-Gate Process?

A more linear, sequential approach such as the Phase-Gate process to product innovation and management isn’t all that new.

Already in the mid-20^th century, engineering companies were adapting a segmented manufacturing journey with the aim of better allocating their budgets or shutting down projects that are failing to deliver expected results.

However, a refined version of the Phase-Gate process (under the name Stage-Gate^© Discovery-to-Launch Process) was offered by Dr. Robert G. Cooper in the 1980s. It was originally introduced as a faster way to manage product innovation.

So, what exactly is the Phase-Gate process?

In short, it is a segmented (do-review) innovation management and New Product Development (NPD) technique. It is used to efficiently manage resources, prioritize initiatives, and lead the project from the early ideation steps, through development and prototyping to launch.

Cooper’s Stage-Gate process has a very specific and rigid structure, and while many use that term to refer to their management techniques, in reality, most organizations tweak the original structure and adapt it to their unique circumstances and ways of developing products.

Thus, any process that has a linear, segmented model with regular assessments and go/no-go decisions is commonly referred to as a Phase-Gate process.

How does it Work?

Since day one, the goal of the technique has been to divide a lengthy product development process into several well-defined steps (phases) to ease its evaluation along the way. Such an approach allowed managers to see whether the project is still on track to fulfill the promise of the initial idea or has it missed the perfect time to enter the market.

Just like with anything popular and well-known, the Phase-Gate process attracts a healthy amount of criticism. It is mainly criticized for its rigid structure which can stifle creativity since it is based on extensive research, detailed planning, and continuous double-checking. However, this strict structure and frequent check-ins are also the reason why the Phase-Gate is still popular, decades after its introduction.

Regular review processes allow organizations to identify and address issues early in the development stage. If any shortcomings would be discovered during the regular check-ins (gates), the project would be killed, paused, or sent back for a rework. In return, the elimination of weak projects would allow the organization to save time and money, as well as unlock more value by reallocating resources to more lucrative ideas.

Likewise, a project deemed valuable and promising would be green-lighted and would proceed to the next phase, be it prototyping, testing or launch.

At the end of the day, the Phase-Gate process gives an opportunity for the organization to manage the development of a product systematically and efficiently, minimizing risks, and ensuring that resources get allocated to the most viable projects, thus increasing the chances of the overall innovation portfolio being successful.

The objective of the Phase-Gate process is to minimize risks in product or service development, allocate resources more efficiently, and increase the overall chance of success for the innovation portfolio.

Who Can Benefit from Using the Phase-Gate Process?

The Phase-Gate process can be a great fit for big organizations where a hefty upfront investment (time /money) is typically needed to deliver a product to the market, or in industries where there are specific regulatory constraints.

For example, complicated projects like developing and manufacturing a new drug, or a smartphone device while difficult and requiring a very diligent, well-coordinated approach, are fundamentally predictable, hence they can be successfully planned out in advance and benefit from the Phase-Gate process.

So, common examples of industries where the process is used include the pharmaceutical sector, construction industry, electronics, manufacturing, and similar. Usually, as the applicable industries indicate, those organizations are quite large.

On the other hand, if you are running a low-risk project or a complex, disruptive initiative, the Phase-Gate process might become burdensome and too time-consuming.

A good example of low-risk cases might be any small incremental improvements to an existing product, a customer pre-ordering or committing to a contract, then part of the risk consideration is the customer’s responsibility, and rigorous gatekeeping becomes counterproductive.

Complex projects, on the other hand, such as creating a completely new type of business, a disruptive product, etc. are all unpredictable. It means that you can’t know in advance how changing one thing will affect another, so it’s nearly impossible to plan in advance. For these situations, more iterative and agile methods are likely to win against the Phase-Gate technique.

Thus, it is important to know when to adapt the Phase-Gate process to your own projects and when to green-light small endeavors from the get-go and just see them unfold.

While its roots and main benefits come from and for NPD processes, any complicated and time-consuming project can benefit from a well-structured Phase-Gate approach.

any complicated and time-consuming project can benefit from a well-structured Phase-Gate approach

Even in unpredictable projects, key ideas of the process can be useful, shifting focus on eliminating risks one at a time and granting funding in tiers as the team makes progress, not all at once.

To get a better understanding of what parts of the process could be used and when, let’s take a look at all its elements one by one.

The Structure of the Phase-Gate Process

To kick off the Phase-Gate process, you need to have an idea. It can derive from early-stage brainstorming sessions, a fruitful chat over coffee, or maybe even a well-planned ideation process. Either way, this idea-generation period in the Phase-Gate process is called the discovery phase or phase 0.

In an innovation process, the discovery focuses on identifying the right problem or opportunity to address. On top of all the brainstorming and creative thinking, it often includes a lot of field research.

Once you have the idea, you then work toward scoping it (phase 1), ensuring it is feasible (phase 2), developing (phase 3), testing and validating (phase 4), then finally launching it (phase 5). So, in total, the Phase-Gate process consists of six distinct idea development steps: discovery, scoping, feasibility, development, validation, and launch.

The Phase-Gate process consists of six distinct idea development steps: discovery, scoping, feasibility, development, validation, and launch

In addition, there are five continuous and one post-project review point – the so-called gates. Gates are pre-defined checkpoints where decision-makers assess the progress of the process and decide either to cancel the project or grant additional resources to it.

Viima Phase Gate 1

Thus, a review is necessary to harness the full value of your project. The gate review can also act as a short break for a difficult launch, pausing the development or sales process to implement fixes or improvements.

So, in short, the Phase-Gate process might look a little bit like this:

Discovery phase: an innovation opportunity is discovered, and the initial idea is screened for the first time.
Scoping phase: if the idea passes the first gate, the scope will be defined. The idea is thus refined into a proper concept and screened for the second time.
Feasibility: accepted idea moves to the feasibility phase, where a business case is built, and the concept gets screened at the third gate.
Development and Validation: the innovation’s first prototypes are created and evaluated, and testing takes place.
Launch: when the innovation has been validated based on pre-defined criteria, it is launched to the market. After that, a post-launch review takes place

The above is a simplified version of a typical process. However, the Phase-Gate process can be molded to your unique needs, and many organizations indeed choose to do so.

But before we touch on that subject, let’s get a better understanding of each phase and the structure of the most common gates.

Discovery

First, to kick off the innovation process, you need ideas worth developing. In Phase-Gate, this step is called the discovery phase. Discovery creates a perfect environment for the ideation process, during which you and your team are generating and communicating ideas.

For NPD, where the Phase-Gate process is used the most, the discovery phase focuses on the problem or opportunity. Here, it is crucial to know what your potential customer’s needs and wants are. So, for that purpose, an organization can employ a framework such as the Jobs To Be Done theory.

It is worth noting that one should not limit themselves to ideas from their team only. Suggestions can come from outside your organization too, they can be sourced from inter-departmental brainstorming sessions, market research, collecting feedback from customers, suppliers, product teams, etc.

Scoping

In short, during the discovery, you generate a good idea, and during the Scoping phase, you map out some of the key risks and hypotheses associated with the idea and turn it into a tangible concept that you could start to develop.

During this step, the initial feasibility is considered, and market research is conducted. The Scoping phase is an excellent time to utilize SWOT or PESTEL analysis.

During the Scoping phase, it is crucial to understand the current supply and demand in the market, to determine what can be offered.

However, not every good-sounding idea is worth developing and during the scoping phase, it should be evaluated based on the organization’s priorities, not only the market fit.

Feasibility

The Feasibility phase (often referred to as Business Case or Business Viability) is the glue that pulls and holds your project together. In short, it is an important step of the Phase-Gate process, during which an actionable plan for the development of the product/service is created.

If your project gets the green light after this phase, it will move to the development step, thus use this time wisely and consider all “what ifs” in advance to avoid any possible hiccups.

The feasibility phase is complicated and time-consuming, and it is recommended to divide it into the following steps:

Viima Phase Gate 2

Product definition and analysis: one of the first steps is to determine whether the product is desirable and whether it solves the earlier discovered problem. User research during this step can help answer such crucial questions as how to satisfy customers’ needs and according to those, what features should the product have. Both quantitative and qualitative research should be conducted (i.e., interviews, surveys, and focus groups). Additional market and competitive analyses also take place during this phase.
Building the business case: a business case is a document that compares the project’s benefits against the costs, with a focus on whether the benefits truly outweigh the expenditure. It allows decision-makers to understand if the plan is realistic.
Feasibility study: While your business case analyses whether a project should be done, the feasibility study evaluates whether it could be. And at its core, it answers the simple yet key question: in case of launch, will the outcomes of the project justify the cost needed to develop it?
Building the project plan: your project plan will determine what, where, when, and by whom. Think of it as a schedule for your business plan, that overlooks all the steps that you will take to move through the Phase-Gate process. It covers resources needed to complete the project, estimating how much time it would take to develop, and test, and finally when to launch the product.

Development

The developing phase is meant to work on a “tangible” prototype of the new product or service. Design and development teams should work according to pre-set goals and clear KPIs. The SMART goals approach can be a useful tool to break down the process into actionable steps.

In addition to product/service development and design, it is time to focus on a marketing campaign and plan how to reach your target audience.

Early-stage (alpha- or lab-) testing might take place during the development phase. The ideal goal of this stage is to prepare an early working prototype, ready and set to go into the testing phase.

Validation

The goal of the Validation phase is naturally to validate your prototype and for that, testing takes place. It is important to determine whether the prototype delivers any value and did it really meet the needs and objectives defined in the earlier stages. This step is all about polishing the rough edges, testing marketing, and distribution channels, and testing processes around the product.

Early-stage testing took place in the previous phase, but now it is time to see the product in action and gather as much feedback as possible. You do not want to rush a half-operating, half-failing product to the launch phase hoping for the best. You want to be ahead of all the possible issues and during this phase, you should ensure the following tests are taking place:

Near Testing: Run an in-house test involving people who are familiar with the product and process. During this test, the focus is set on finding any issues or bugs and eliminating them before the product hits the market or even before it moves to the beta-testing step.
Field (Beta) Testing: This is the time for your project to leave its nest and get tested in a real-world setting. Typically, this testing involves your customers, partners or to play it super safe – internal staff that has never been part of the development process. The goal of beta testing is to see how testers are using the product, what features they like or find useless, and how much workload, wear and tear it can withhold. Flaws identified in this phase should get fixed.
Market Testing: Now that you have a perfected product, and you have a better understanding of how your future customers will use it, it is time to utilize this knowledge to adjust your earlier set marketing plan. Test several different marketing scenarios, positioning and messaging alternatives, different price points, and channels to see which ones seem to work the best. There is a plethora of different things to test and methods to use and the right ones depend on your unique situation and the hypothesis you need to test.

Launch

The validation step gives a chance to make the final tweaks and fixes to the project and if it passes the post-validation review step, it successfully moves to the launch phase.

However, while it sounds simple on paper, the launch phase is the step where all of the departments meet and have to work in perfect sync. Alongside the marketing department working their magic and the knowledgeable sales team, you must ensure the following are in order too: volume of production, methods, and channels for customer acquisition and delivery.

One thing that is important to plan for the launch is customer support. You might exhaust all the means of testing the product pre-launch, yet you will never be able to 100% predict how it will really behave in the market. In case your product gets a lot of attention, be it good or bad, a knowledgeable and dedicated support team will eliminate possible bottlenecks.

With that said, the launch phase is a long journey away from those first, shy ideation steps you take in the discovery phase. Your initial idea will be analyzed and scrutinized under a magnifying glass during the full Phase-Gate cycle and it will have to pass several gates first.

What is a Gate Review Process?

Traditionally, a project managed with the Phase-Gate process will go through 4 control gates (Idea Screening, Second Screening, Go-to- Development, Go-to-Market Test) until reaching the final pre-launch gate – Launch. If during the final gate, the project gets approved and reaches the launch phase, the last thing that should be done is a post-launch Review, which could be considered as the final gate.

However, the Phase-Gate process can be adapted to the individual organization’s needs and the number of gates can be increased. Or, if a company is using a simplified process for smaller scale projects – decreased. No matter which path you pick for your project, remember that the quality of your gates can determine the quality of your project.

The quality of the gate review process can determine the quality of the whole project.

Gatekeeping

Normally, people responsible for reviewing and gatekeeping the project depend on the organization’s size, type, and scope of the product. Usually, it is a cross-functional executive committee or a steering group.

In a nutshell, this group or person is responsible for ensuring that the project gets a green light to move forward or gets stopped. In addition, they provide feedback and guidance to the project development teams to help them identify risks and to avoid unnecessary mistakes.

For the gatekeeper, it is important to understand all practicalities around the project. While there is a budget to keep an eye on, the progress will be doomed if it’s just the numbers that get looked at. The gatekeeper needs to deeply understand the market, technology, and customers, not just compare business cases and pick the one with the bigger numbers.

Whether the organization assigns a committee or a single supervisor for the gate review process, the crucial part is to ensure that the gatekeeper is not directly related to the project (project sponsor, project manager), to avoid biased assessment.

During the gate review, resources, budget, KPIs, and other success criteria get decided for the next project development phase. In addition, each gate review provides the committee with an update on the status of their innovation portfolio. It also gives an opportunity for both sides of the project (the project team and the evaluating committee) to challenge one another or to have a discussion that would put them on the same page.

However, it should not become a battleground, but rather a safe space to focus on learning, and the clearer the goals and KPIs you have set, the easier to manage and more efficient the gate review process will be.

Assessment of the Quality of the Idea

Gate reviews are checkpoints for assessing the potential, risks, and progress of the project, and making the decision on whether or not to allocate additional resources to it. They also provide a great opportunity to share feedback with all teams involved. This review typically includes a few different steps:

Quality of execution: to evaluate the quality of execution of the previous phase.
Business Rationale: to determine whether the project can be fruitful considering the assessments performed beforehand. It should include a list of key assumptions or hypotheses that the idea relies upon to become successful.
If the project has issues or the assumptions are unrealistic the business rationale step in the gate assessment is when said issues get discovered, and unless a solution is found, the project gets killed.
Action Plan: to evaluate whether the expectations are reasonable and whether there are enough resources to implement all the planned or desired steps.
If the idea is feasible and just the resources are lacking, it is common to pause the project and re-assess it later.

Gate Review Components

The review process must be clear, strict, and simple to leave little to no space for maybes and to make it as easy as possible to weed out weak projects. Usually, it relies on a points-based evaluation system.

There are two groups of criteria for a gate review:

Must meet: Objectives that the project must include and meet at a certain point of the process. If the project failed to meet one, the project is killed (or paused) outright. Usually, it is a checklist of questions that can be answered either yes or no.
Should meet: Objectives that are desirable for the project to meet. While the first group is simple in its structure (no = kill, yes = greenlight), this criterion is evaluated on a point system. Each objective is given points worth and at the end of the step final points get calculated and compared to the in advance set marking system.

Gate Outcomes

There are 4 possible outcomes for each assessment step.

Go – the project is feasible enough to get the green light. The go phase should include an agreement on what the project should deliver in the next phase (having this in place will make the next gate review much easier).
Kill – the project is not feasible and gets shut down. If a project does not have sufficient merit – the kill decision should just put an end to it.
Hold or Pause – the project is considered feasible but not at the current time or state and gets put on hold.
Conditional Go or Rework – the project can proceed to the next phase only if it meets certain requirements and conditions after a rework.

Viima Phase Gate 3

Quite often the Phase-Gate process is seen in black and white – you either kill or launch a project. For some, the outcome is as clear as that, however, it is not the case for every project. Conditional Go is just as important and crucial an outcome as Go or Kill.

For example, some strategically important projects might be sent back for a rework several times just to make them truly viable and garner their full potential. And while to some working on the project, this back-and-forth might be seen as a challenge, it only means that the Phase-Gate process works as intended.

Remember – the gate process is not just a basic review. It is the decision-making point where the project might be completely rejected and killed and for some people, it might be a breaking point in their careers.

Of course, it is always best to nurture a safe environment at work, where a failed project is not seen as a personal problem or career killer, rather failed project should be seen as an opportunity for everyone to learn from mistakes and just improve upon future projects.

Viima Phase Gate 4

Challenges and Benefits of the Phase-Gate Process

As mentioned before, there are those who swear by the Phase-Gate, and there are those, who argue against it. If you are wondering, which camp should you be joining and whether the Phase-Gate would be the right innovation management technique for you, first consider the challenges and benefits of the process.

Challenges

The rigid structure lacks flexibility. As the traditional Phase-Gate process follows a strict flow and rigid review process, it can limit creativity, and lead some projects to spend too much on bureaucracy as opposed to solving the real problems. As development must follow a pre-agreed set of rules and creative changes might cause the project to be rejected during the gate review phase. So, at the end of the day, in some situations, the process can be too heavy and demotivating for innovators.
Can lead to a lack of customer focus. The Phase-Gate process might lead to tunnel vision both for the project developing team and the review committee. The prior might feel pressured to focus on checking off tasks on a strict to-do list before the Gate review phase, instead of focusing on the bigger picture and real customer needs, while the latter might focus too much on early-stage market research, unwilling to accept sorely needed changes later on in the process.
A narrow focus on the business case. Even if the project does fit all the business case set criteria, it means very little in the grand scheme of things. First, every business case is always wrong: some just a little, but some massively so. Plus, there is a built-in incentive for teams to game the numbers to get to work on the project and acquire more resources, so unless reviews are done well, all the wrong projects might get funded. Plus, it doesn’t really account for poor execution or scenarios like a competitor coming out with a similar product, the geopolitical environment changing, or customer preferences changing during the project.
Focus on short-term results and risk aversion. The Phase-Gate process is designed to reduce risk and increase the project’s chances of success, but that can sometimes lead to undesirable biases. It can be tempting to reject a project on the grounds that it is too costly and instead, invest money in easy-to-predict improvements on existing products. In such cases, a risky and unpredictable innovation that might generate the most profit might always lose in favor of quick, predictable, and short-term oriented projects.
Competitive and divisive approach. The Phase-Gate process might create a competitive environment where teams are battling for funding for their project against one another, as well as create “sides” – one that develops the project and another that evaluates it. So, instead of innovation being a strategic pursuit of common goals for everyone in the organization, it might create tension, division, and competition instead.
Not accepting any unpredictability. In many cases, it’s impossible to gather all the evidence before making decisions related to innovation. Some companies strive to eliminate all uncertainty or require detailed business cases for everything when it might be impossible to create it accurately early on in the process. This is highly counterproductive and frustrating for innovators.

Benefits

Eliminates “dead-end” projects. It isn’t uncommon for some projects to get lost or stuck in big organizations. By requiring regular reviews, the Phase-Gate process ensures no project will be forgotten or left pending, hogging valuable resources.
Identifies issues early on. Every idea must pass several reviews. And if the idea is good but the planning around is poor, it simply gets paused and sent for a rework. This way the organization does not lose a good idea and gives it a standing chance.
Minimizes costs and time spent. By eliminating those “dead-end” projects and troubleshooting projects early, the organization is able to save resources. Also, the earlier you can identify, eliminate, and prevent issues, the cheaper it is, both in terms of time and money spent. That is usually preferable to pushing out a broken product into the market and then having to deal with the panic, complaints, returns, brand damage, and so on.
Prevents “politics”. By entailing the same rules, requirements, and stringent review process for each project, the Phase-Gate can prevent top executives from investing too much in their pet projects, freeing resource allocation and giving a fair chance for every project.
Facilitates joint decision-making. Instead of one project manager overseeing, managing, forecasting, and deciding upon the progress of the NPD process, in the Phase-Gate process, multiple stakeholders and teams can influence the decision-making process, making it more objective and inclusive.

In addition, it is important to note that a well-planned and well-structured Phase-Gate process counters some of the challenges that many fear experiencing while implementing it.

If done correctly, the Phase-Gate process can and will:

Foster holistic thinking. When done well, it helps to make sure everyone is thinking about the problems holistically: e.g., business, customer, and technology, which helps avoid unnecessary mistakes.
Systematize innovation. The structured approach gives clarity to the process, eliminates challenges, and bottlenecks, and gives a set of rules on how to make your idea into an innovative, valuable solution. While some might find this frustrating, it can also help turn more employees into successful innovators.
Reduce risk. Making a list, and checking it twice does help avoid unnecessary waste, mistakes, and any other mishaps. In addition, the Phase-Gate approach makes you detail all of your assumptions before you move forward with the project which allows solving all the potential issues before they have a chance to arise.

Tips to Improve the Phase-Gate Process

The Phase-Gate process is an adaptable and scalable approach that can help transform your business by identifying new opportunities and unlocking more innovation. And while on paper it all sounds pretty straightforward, in reality, it requires a dedicated management team to make it work for your organization’s unique business environment and culture.

To reach its full potential, consider some of the following:

Clear gate criteria. Set clear, objective criteria to pass each gate in advance, communicate it across all the involved teams and ensure they are accepted by each team before you move on. In addition, consider if you will want to proceed with a point-based rating system or whether another type of evaluation fits your processes better.
Clear gate function. While the primary goal of your gates is to stop/green-light a project, they should also work as a guide to the teams on what to do next. Make sure each gate makes the team outline and test the assumptions built into their plans and business models. Reviews should help guide teams on the right track, not just pass judgment. Finally, discuss and determine the types of meeting you will hold in-person, virtual, or hybrid. Which one caters to the needs of everyone and delivers the best results for your organization?
Diverse and educated gatekeepers. First, gather a diverse, multidisciplinary gate review committee that understands the customers and the technology intimately. Gatekeepers will after all determine the overall success of the Phase-Gate process. And second, as the gate review process touches on every possible aspect of product or service development, make sure your review committee is knowledgeable and constantly up to date on market changes, customer needs, legal or regulatory aspects, etc.
Regular check-ins. The timeline of your process will vary depending on the project you are developing, but either if it is moving at a fast or slow pace, regular (at least monthly) meetings are important to keep all projects moving. And this applies to meetings during each phase, not just during the review steps. It will allow teams to stay aligned and on top of resources.
Customer-first. Unless you are implementing changes aimed at improving employee engagement or other internal aspects, customers should always remain the focus of your attention. Staying customer-focused through every phase and gate will help you avoid internal politics, unnecessary competitiveness, and friction that might arise between project-developing and project-reviewing teams. And of course, it will ensure that you are still working on a relevant product or service.
Input from stakeholders. Retain open communication channels. First of all, it ensures transparency and trust top-down and bottom-up, by giving a clear view of the process to everyone involved. In addition, it improves the overall flow of the process and reviews steps by providing additional insights and feedback that otherwise might have been missed.

Lastly, consider your organization’s unique culture. It can take time and sometimes even resistance to introducing a completely new innovation management process.But patience, planning, clear communication, and internal support will set you on the right track to successfully implementing the Phase-Gate process.

Conclusion

Overall, the Phase-Gate process is a valuable tool for managing the development of new products and services, and it can help your organization to be more efficient, effective, and innovative.

For some, the Phase-Gate process might work great, while other organizations might need something a little different.

The Phase-Gate approach might have the biggest name in the group, but it is not the only innovation management process out there. If after reaching the end of the article you are still not sure whether it is the right fit for your organization, you can check our past entries on Innovation Management. Maybe it will help you discover just the thing you’ve been searching for.

But, if you are curious to proceed with the Phase-Gate process, you can try it on for size for example via the Viima app. To make your onboarding experience smooth, and your innovation project management easy, we have created a Phase-Gate process template ready to be used just after a few clicks.

Frequently Asked Questions About the Phase Gate Process

What is the phase gate process?

The phase gate process is a structured project management methodology that divides a project into distinct phases — typically discovery, scoping, business case development, development, testing, and launch — separated by decision checkpoints called gates. At each gate, a review committee evaluates the project against predefined criteria and decides whether to proceed, redirect, or stop. Originally developed by Robert Cooper for new product development, phase gate is now widely used in innovation management, R&D portfolio management, and organizational change programs. It enables organizations to invest incrementally in projects, killing weak ideas early before they consume significant resources, while giving promising projects the structured support they need to move from concept to market.

What is the difference between phase gate and stage gate?

Phase gate and stage gate refer to the same fundamental methodology — a project management approach that divides work into segments with formal decision checkpoints between them. The terms are used interchangeably in most contexts. “Stage gate” is the more commonly used term in product development and innovation management, particularly when referencing Robert Cooper’s original Stage-Gate® model (which is a registered trademark of Stage-Gate International). “Phase gate” is more commonly used in traditional project management and engineering contexts. Regardless of terminology, the underlying structure — phases of work separated by gates where go/no-go decisions are made — is identical.

What are the typical phases in a phase gate process?

A typical phase gate process for new product development includes five phases: Discovery (identifying opportunities and generating ideas), Scoping (quick preliminary assessment of technical and market feasibility), Business Case (detailed investigation and preparation of a full business case), Development (actual development of the product or solution), and Launch (commercialization and market launch). Each phase is preceded by a gate — an entry checkpoint — and followed by a gate where the output of the phase is reviewed. Some organizations add a sixth phase (Post-Launch Review) to systematically capture learning after launch. Phases and gates can be customized based on the type of project, the organization’s risk tolerance, and the innovation portfolio’s strategic priorities.

How does the phase gate process relate to innovation management?

The phase gate process is one of the most widely used frameworks for managing innovation portfolios because it provides governance structure without eliminating the exploratory flexibility that innovation requires. By investing incrementally — committing only enough resources to complete the next phase before evaluating whether to continue — organizations can maintain a larger portfolio of early-stage ideas without overcommitting resources to concepts that haven’t yet been validated. The most effective innovation programs use phase gate in combination with broader innovation frameworks that address not just project governance but also idea generation, team dynamics, and the change management required to implement innovations successfully.

What are the most common reasons phase gate processes fail?

Phase gate processes most commonly fail for four reasons: over-engineering early gates with financial criteria that are appropriate for later stages but kill promising early-stage ideas before they can be properly developed; treating gates as bureaucratic checkpoints rather than genuine strategic decision points, so projects that should be killed continue out of organizational inertia; applying the same gate criteria to all project types regardless of their strategic purpose, novelty, or risk profile; and failing to give gate reviewers the training, authority, and information they need to make genuinely informed decisions. Organizations that get the most value from phase gate are those that keep early gates light and exploratory, reserve rigorous scrutiny for later stages, and treat the gate review as a genuine strategic conversation rather than a compliance exercise.

This article was originally published on Viima’s blog.

Image Credit: Viima, Unsplash

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Using Limits to Become Limitless

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Using Limits to Become Limitless

GUEST POST from Rachel Audige

While it dates back to the 1970s, the expression ‘think outside the box’ is still in vogue. Yet the idea of creativity being best when unrestrained is at best a bit of a fable and at worst, unhelpful – particularly when we are confined to the four walls of our home! What is really helpful is when people actually impose constraints on their thinking. It’s counter-intuitive but creativity loves constraints.

So, what sort of constraints does it love? In my experience, there are five. The first — contrary to popular belief — is to artificially create a frame or a ‘box’. In her inspiring TEDx talk at Newark Academy, Tess Callahan spoke about “the love affair between creativity and constraint.” We all admire people who think outside the box but how do they do it? What if the key to thinking ‘outside the box’ is to create a box to think outside of?”, she says.

For many, thinking ‘outside the box’ means exploring new paths and “being open-minded” and “brainstorming without judgement”. This makes sense but how to do this is not very clear. Subject to the rigour of the facilitator, brainstorming sessions are likely to generate a huge list of ideas that are more or less out of reach. I call these ‘aromatherapy ideas’ (inspired by an ad where the brainstorm led to aromatherapy candles in the hire car putting everyone — even the driver! — to sleep). The team feels empowered and hyped but months later when nothing has happened to their ideas, they are cynical and will boot out the next person who wants to talk innovation.

In workshops we illustrate the difference between outside and inside-the-box thinking by asking people to go create a piece of exercise equipment that we’ve never seen before. Faces look blank, the buzz is low but the pairs come up with a few nice ideas. In a second round we ask them to do the same but to make it exercise equipment that we can use at the wheel of our car. The noise level trebles, ideas fuse and even those who had nothing have some interesting ideas (along with the odd aromatherapy one!). We then ask them ‘Which exercise was easier?’. 95% will say the second (there’s always an outlier or two…). Give people the context; the box. Zoom in and work from there. This gives people focus and avoids the blank canvas syndrome.

The second constraint loved by creativity is the natural corollary of the first: once you have a defined ‘box’, you should follow a path of most resistance and limit the resources you can use to ideate or create.

Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT), the Israeli company and innovation method that I believe really enhances creative thinking (as opposed to simply providing a process) is grounded in this belief that constraints foster creativity. The founders were so convinced of this that they imposed an artificial constraint on the creative process so that you have to strive to only use resources that are inside what we call the ‘Closed World’. The key to this is being systematic about how you go through the ‘inventory’ of this closed world. If you’re not, your cognitive biases will blind you to some great ideas…

That brings us to the third idea: once you have limited your frame and your resources, creativity is enhanced by drawing on inspiration; on templates. These help bust these biases and take a different path through our minds. When artists want to paint, they often learn by copying the masters. Likewise, in creative thinking and innovation it is powerful to draw on the most inventive ideas. There are countless templates to draw from. Biomimicry is based on the templates tried and tested by Mother Nature. The Speedo swimsuits inspired by shark skin to reduce drag were banned in the Olympics were seen to be a nice example of this. TRIZ (the inspiration for SIT) covers 40 patterns that not only inspire but are said to serve as predictive models for future innovations…

In SIT we work with five inventive thinking tools that come from five patterns present in the 80% of the most inventive ideas (‘surprising for some but there is a sort of DNA to creative ideas). They include removing an essential component (like Apple did with the Shuffle) or dividing up a process or product and moving a component in time or space (like H&M did when they moved the step of paying from the end of the shopping process to the moment the decision is made in the fitting room). The brilliant thing is that these templates not only increase our chances of coming up with something exciting but they help bust the cognitive biases that may lead us to miss resources that are right under our nose.

The fourth constraint is to diligently follow a workflow. In design thinking we have learnt to start with our customers’ needs and pain points (the “function”) and develop a solution (the “form”) to fit. This has been a crucial shift that taught organisations to stop product push but what if we could learn another workflow? And what if this workflow could help us suspend our embedded thinking so that we can unearth more original ideas?

Back in the early 90’s, a group of psychologists made an interesting discovery. When it comes to creating, people are innately better at uncovering the potential benefits of a given form than creating a new form to satisfy a given need. Or, to put it differently, we struggle to come up with a solution to a problem more than a problem for a given solution. Those of us who work with this find that this “back-to-front” approach is great way to stop ourselves from default thinking and embedding the structures, functions and relationships that we are used to into the new idea.

In SIT we call this ‘Function Follows Form’ and the more strictly we apply this workflow constraint, the more impactful it is on our creative thinking. We start by defining the closed world and listing the resources we have available. We then apply a template (depending on the most likely cognitive fixedness). This manipulation leads to a ‘virtual’ process, product or ‘situation’. This is when our resistance is greatest and if we are not strict about limiting our thinking to this oddly manipulated virtual form, we are likely to reject it and possibly miss the opportunities it offers. Once we have visualised it and described how it could work, we then explore its desirability, feasibility and viability, make any necessary adaptations and then test the idea if it warrants it. It is invaluable to know how to think both form to function as well as function to form.

The last constraint is that of embracing unchosen limitations. Phil Hansen (TEDxKC) tells a beautiful story of how he harnessed the power of embracing a ‘shake’’ to create even more extraordinary art.

After years of painting with a method of tiny dots, Hansen developed a shake in the hand that made it impossible to paint as he was used to doing. His dots “had become tadpoles”. It was good for “shaking a can of paint” but for Phil it was “the destruction of his dream of becoming an artist.” He left art school and he left art.

This didn’t work for him, however, so, after a while, he went to see a neurologist who diagnosed him with permanent nerve damage. This wasn’t great. What was great though was what he said to him: “ Why don’t you just embrace the shake?”

So he went home and started making art with nothing but scribbles . He then limited himself to his feet. He then moved to wood… He moved to larger materials where his hand wouldn’t hurt. He started with a single way of painting and ended up with endless possibilities. “This was the first time that I encountered the idea that embracing limitation could actually drive creativity,” he says.

He finished up school and got a new job. This enabled him to afford more art supplies. He explains that he “went nuts” buying stuff and took it home with the intention to do something incredible. He sat there for hours and nothing came. Same thing the next day. And the next. He was “creatively blank”; paralysed by all these choices that he never had before. That was when he thought about what the neurologist had said…

He realised that if he ever wanted his creativity back, he had to quit trying so hard to think outside of the box, and “get back into it”. In fact, he started exploring the idea that he could get more creative by actually looking for limitations? “We need to first be limited in order to become limitless,” he says, very poignantly.

He took this approach to being ‘inside the box’ and did a series of artworks where he imposed tight constraints: he could only paint on his chest, or he could only create with karate chops or what if he created art to destroy after its creation (an image of Jimmy Hendricks made out of 7000 matches — crazy!), what if he used frozen wine…“What I thought would be the ultimate limitation turned out to be the ultimate liberation as each time I created the destruction brought me back to a place of neutrality where I felt fresh to start a new project,” he explains.

He found myself in a state of constant creation “coming up with more ideas than ever…”

We don’t all have the honed creative skills of my new artist friend or of the astonishing Phil Hansen but that’s all the more reason to boost our creative potential. As individuals and in organisations, we need learnable, robust, repeatable tools to be more skilled inventive thinkers — and to be able to harness this on demand. We need methods that impose limitations. So try getting back inside the box and embrace the constraints!

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Is Futurology a Pseudoscience?

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Is Futurology a Pseudoscience?

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Futurology (aka Future Studies or Futures Research) is a subject of study that attempts to make predictions and forecasts about the future. It is an interdisciplinary field that draws from a variety of sources, including science, economics, philosophy, and technology. In recent years, futurology has become a popular topic of debate, with some arguing that it is a pseudoscience and others defending its validity as a legitimate field of study.

One of the main criticisms of futurology is that it relies on speculation and extrapolation of existing trends, rather than on scientific evidence or principles. Critics argue that this makes futurists’ predictions unreliable and that futurology is more of a speculative activity than a rigorous scientific discipline. They also point out that predictions about the future are often wrong, and that the field has had a reputation for making exaggerated claims that have not been borne out by the facts.

“Futurology always ends up telling you more about you own time than about the future.” – Matt Ridley

On the other hand, proponents of futurology argue that the field has a legitimate place in the scientific community. They point to the fact that many futurists are well-educated, highly trained professionals who use rigorous methods and data analysis to make accurate predictions. These futurists also often draw on a wide range of sources, such as history, economics, and psychology, to make their forecasts.

Ultimately, the debate over whether or not futurology (aka future studies or futures research) is a pseudoscience is likely to continue. Some may see it as a legitimate field of study, while others may view it as little more than guesswork. What is certain, however, is that the field is still evolving and that the ability of futurists to accurately predict the future will be an important factor in determining its ultimate validity.

Do you think futurology is a pseudoscience?
(sound off in the comments)

And to the futurists and futurology professionals out there, what say you?
(add a comment)

Bottom line: Futurology and prescience are not fortune telling. Skilled futurologists and futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Creating Great Change, Transformation and Innovation Teams

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Creating Great Change, Transformation and Innovation Teams

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Teams and organizations need to be agile, resilient and able to effectively navigate change and transformation to stay ahead in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Thus, the above question is one I often ponder upon and discuss in my network and circles. I would like to start a conversation here to better identify the key elements to make a team great for adapting to change, managing transformation and driving innovation.

So, this is like a discussion starter. Feel free to engage and follow-up with your ideas and perspectives in the comments!

What are the key benefits for you and your team(s)?

I am working on these three key benefits that a team should strive for as they develop through the building blocks I propose in this context.

1. Improved ability to embrace change and innovation!

Teams need to develop the skills and mindset needed to quickly and effectively respond to new situations, changes, and opportunities, leading to a more agile and adaptive teams and organization.

2. Stronger team cohesion and communication!

By focusing on psychological safety, emotional intelligence, resilience and internal communication around change and transformation, participants can get insights into creating an even more supportive work environment that encourages open communication and collaboration, leading to stronger relationships, a circle of us and a more positive work culture.

3. Continuous growth and development!

When teams and the team-members step outside their comfort zones, foster a culture of continuous learning, and develop a growth mindset this can lead to ongoing personal and professional growth for all team members.

The Building Blocks to Apply for Stronger Teams

Here, I share a range of topics that teams can work more specifically with in order to get better at adapting to changes, managing transformation and driving innovation.

Maybe you can suggest others like this or let me know what you think is really relevant here or not so at all?

1. Adaptability and Agility: The ability to be flexible and responsive in a fast-paced environment, adapting to change and embracing new opportunities.

2. Fostering Psychological Safety: Creating a supportive work environment that encourages open communication, experimentation, and learning.

3. Developing a Growth Mindset as a Team: Cultivating a curious, learning-oriented approach to challenges and opportunities, fostering a team environment that values personal and professional growth.

4. Internal Communication Around Changes and Transformation: Clear and effective communication of vision, strategy, and goals to team members and stakeholders to help them understand and navigate changes and transformations.

5. Collaboration Capabilities: Enhancing the ability to collaborate effectively with stakeholders, partners, and other teams, both within and outside the organization, to achieve common goals.

6. Emotional Intelligence (EI): Recognizing, understanding, and managing emotions to effectively navigate social interactions and build positive relationships.

7. Resilience: Bouncing back from challenges, maintaining positivity, and adapting to adversity through proactive approaches.

8. Strategic Vision: Aligning goals and vision with the organization’s future, anticipating future trends and challenges, and thinking systematically about goals, resources, and challenges.

9. Expanding One’s Comfort Zone: Encouraging personal and professional growth by embracing new challenges and taking calculated risks while continuously learning and developing.

10. Continuous Learning: Fostering a culture of continuous learning, growth, and development.

11. Stakeholder Engagement: Identifying and effectively engaging with internal stakeholders to ensure their support for successful implementation.

12. Data-Driven Decision Making: Making informed decisions by identifying, analyzing, and utilizing relevant data and insights from within the organization.

13. The Circle of Us: Identifying and focusing on the people elements and interpersonal interactions that need to be address to a higher degree to build stronger teams.

14. Empowerment: Many team leaders struggle with empowerment as in giving this to their own teams. Among several reasons for this, two might stand out. 1) They are unsure what they are allowed to do for their own leaders and 2) they don’t know how to increase the level of empowerment for their team members.

15. The “being too busy” Challenge: Everyone is so busy today. This can lead to a focus on the “wrong” things which in particular can have a negative impact in the mid and long-term range. A key issue here is to understand if and how being too busy impacts you in negative ways and then how to address this.

I believe these capabilities and mindset indicators help teams and employees develop and improve in areas critical to their success and growth, allowing them to be more effective and confident in their roles. This is highly needed for change, transformation and innovation.

Please be sure and share your reactions and additions in the comments.

Image Credit: Pexels

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Creating Productive Interactions During Difficult Times

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Creating Productive Interactions During Difficult Times

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When times are stressful, it’s more difficult to be effective and skillful in our interactions with others. Here are some thoughts that could help.

Decide how you want to respond, and then respond accordingly.

Before you respond, take a breath. Your response will be better.

If you find yourself responding before giving yourself permission, stop your response and come clean.

Better responses from you make for even better responses from others.

If you interrupt someone in the middle of their sentence so you can make your point, you made a different point.

If you find yourself preparing your response while listening to someone, that’s not listening.

If you recognize you’re not listening, now there are at least two people who know the truth.

When there are no words coming from your mouth, that doesn’t constitute listening.

The strongest deterrent to listening is talking.

If you disagree with one element of a person’s position, you can, at the same time, agree with other elements of their position. That’s how agreement works.

If you start with agreement, even the smallest bit, disagreement softens.

Before you can disagree, it’s important to listen and understand. And it’s the same with agreement.

It’s easy to agree if that’s what you want to accomplish. And it’s the same for disagreement.

If you want to move toward agreement, start with understanding.

If you want to demonstrate understanding, start with listening.

If you want to demonstrate good listening, start with kindness.

Here are three mantras I find helpful:

Talk less to listen more.

Before you respond, take a breath.

Kindness before agreement.

Image credit: Wikimedia

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Cultivating Prescience to Increase Innovation

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Cultivating Prescience to Increase Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Prescience is the ability to foresee or predict the future with accuracy. Although it may be perceived as a supernatural power, prescience is actually a skill that can be cultivated through practice and dedication. Here are some tips for developing prescience and leveraging these skills in your innovation efforts:

1. Learn About the Past

The past is a great teacher, and it can provide valuable insight into the future. By studying history, you can get an understanding of how certain events have played out in the past, and you can use that information to make predictions about the future.

2. Develop Your Intuition

Intuition is a powerful tool that can help you make decisions and anticipate upcoming events. Spend some time each day focusing on your intuition and trying to hone in on your instincts.

3. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the practice of being present in the moment and paying attention to your thoughts and feelings. This can help you become more aware of your surroundings and the potential future outcomes of any given situation.

4. Take Risks

Taking risks can be a great way to develop prescience. By pushing yourself out of your comfort zone, you can learn to anticipate potential outcomes and see things from different perspectives.

5. Study Patterns

Pay attention to patterns in your life and the world around you. This can help you identify potential trends and make predictions about the future.

By developing these skills, you can begin to cultivate your own prescience and become better prepared for whatever the future may bring. With practice and dedication, you can become a master of predicting the future and leverage this to increase your innovation capabilities and capacity.

Bottom line: Futurology and prescience are not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of January 2023

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of January 2023 Drum roll please…

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 January’s ten most popular innovation posts:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022 — Curated by Braden Kelley

Back to Basics: The Innovation Alphabet — by Robyn Bolton

99.7% of Innovation Processes Miss These 3 Essential Steps — by Robyn Bolton

Top 100 Innovation and Transformation Articles of 2022 — Curated by Braden Kelley

Ten Ways to Make Time for Innovation — by Nick Jain

Agility is the 2023 Success Factor — by Soren Kaplan

Five Questions All Leaders Should Always Be Asking — by David Burkus

23 Ways in 2023 to Create Amazing Experiences — by Shep Hyken

Startups Must Be Where Their Customers Are — by Steve Blank

Will CHATgpt make us more or less innovative? — by Pete Foley

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in December that continue to resonate with people:

3 Steps to a Truly Terrific Innovation Team — by Robyn Bolton

Why are so many people quitting? — by Mike Shipulski

Why is it important to innovate in 2023? — by Janet Sernack

Forbidden Truth About Innovation — by Robyn Bolton

3 Things Politicians Can Do to Create Innovation — by Greg Satell

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

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Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last three years:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022

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Leveraging Hindsight and Foresight for Innovation

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Leveraging Hindsight and Foresight for Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Innovation is essential for businesses to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing economy. To stay ahead of the competition, businesses need to be able to anticipate the future and plan accordingly. To do this, they must leverage both hindsight and foresight in their innovation processes.

Hindsight is the ability to look back and learn from the past. By understanding the successes and failures of prior initiatives, businesses can identify areas for improvement. This can help them to create better decision-making processes and develop more effective strategies. By leveraging hindsight, businesses can also avoid repeating past mistakes and take advantage of opportunities that may have been overlooked.

Foresight is the ability to plan for the future. By gaining an understanding of current trends and anticipating future changes, businesses can stay ahead of their competitors. This requires the ability to think creatively and develop innovative solutions. By using foresight, businesses can take calculated risks and create new products and services to meet emerging customer needs.

The best way to use both hindsight and foresight for innovation is to create a dynamic innovation process. This process should be agile and responsive to changes in the market. It should also incorporate feedback from customers, partners, and other stakeholders. This feedback should be used to inform the innovation process and help businesses to identify areas for improvement.

Innovation is essential for businesses to stay relevant in the ever-changing marketplace. By leveraging both hindsight and foresight, businesses can create more effective strategies and develop innovative solutions to meet customer needs. By creating a dynamic innovation process, businesses can stay agile and responsive to changes in the market, allowing them to stay one step ahead of the competition.

Bottom line: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Kickstarting Change and Innovation in Uncertain Times

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Kickstarting Change and Innovation in Uncertain Times

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our last article, we described why innovation is transformational, and why, at this moment in time, it is more important than ever to innovate. We stated that innovation-led growth is absolutely critical and that people need to be enabled and equipped to adapt, connect and collaborate in new ways to kickstart change in agile, constructive, equitable, and sustainable ways to innovate in uncertain times. Yet, our research and experience at ImagineNation™ over the past 10 years has revealed that many governments, communities, organizations, teams, and leaders, feel somewhat – but not very – confident in their readiness, competence, and capacity to change and innovate in a world of unknowns.

Six Strategies to Kickstart Change and Innovate in Uncertain Times

To help build this confidence we have identified six key strategies and the key first steps to help you focus your attention, kickstart change, and drive and execute your change and innovation initiatives, to survive, thrive, and flourish in uncertain times.

Strategy #1

Build change readiness and receptivity to survive and thrive in an uncertain world by:

Giving people permission and safety that allows them to accept and acknowledge the range of emotional reactions (fears), physical consequences (exhaustion), and work-life imbalances as a result of the imposed WFH environment.
Acknowledging how people are feeling helps them better re-balance, adapt, and become resilient by supporting them to develop a work-life balance to better connect with others, tolerate uncertainty to change, and innovate in uncertain times.
Challenging people’s habitual default patterns of remaining in the safety of their comfort zones, breaking habitual “business as usual” habits, inertia, and complacency.
Being empathic and compassionate with people’s anxieties, confusion, insecurity, and uncertainties about their futures at work, and supporting them through their personal conflicts.

Strategy #2

Allow, accept and ack knowledge people’s fears and struggles about change, help manage their anxiety, improve their productivity and attune them to the possibilities and potential opportunities in the current business environment by:

Providing individual and collective support to enable people to take back and refocus their attention, self-manage anxiety, and become grounded, mindful, and fully present, with self and with others.
Investing in time and money to enable people to unlearn, learn and relearn how to be change ready and change-receptive, and become adaptive to effectively facilitate successful business and digital transformation initiatives.
Helping people get familiar with the brain’s basic cognitive functions, and build the foundations to help get work done by regulating emotions, suppressing biases, switching tasks, solving complex problems, and thinking creatively.
Developing 21st-century skills to shift old mindsets, develop new behaviors and the reasoning, problem-solving, planning, and execution skills to initiate and sustain business, cultural and digital transformation initiatives to embed the changes and to innovate in uncertain times.
Developing the fundamental foresight and energizing vision to perceive innovation strategically and systemically, adopting an approach that is holistic, human, and technology-centered, to align, enable, and equip people to adapt and grow and to change and innovate in uncertain times.

Strategy #3

Make sense of innovation, and develop a common understanding and language as to what innovation means in a unique context by:

Developing an awareness that innovation is, in itself, a change process, and paradoxically requires rigorous and disciplined change management processes and a chaotic creative and collaborative interchange of ideas.
Clarifying an energizing and compelling “why” innovation is important to an overall “cause” developing a passionate purpose and a sense of urgency towards leveraging innovation to achieve long-term success, competitiveness, and growth.
Knowing how to both make connections and distinguish and leverage the differences between creativity, invention, and innovation.
Building the safety, permission, and trust that helps facilitate, educate and coach people to deal with the emotional consequences of failure, to reframe it as opportunities to encourage a culture of taking small bets to learn quickly.
Taking a disciplined and methodical approach to risk planning and management, that allows and encourages a culture of smart risk-taking to reduce risk adversity.
Creating a consistent and common understanding as to what innovation means in their unique government, community, social, organizational, leadership, or team context and creating an engaging and compelling narrative around it.

Strategy #4

Optimize the notion that innovation is transformational and leverage it as an overall energizing strategic and systemic alignment mechanism and set of processes to kickstart change by:

Improving engagement, energizing and maximizing people’s potential and intentionally cultivating their collective genius to learn how to execute and deliver deep change and innovate in uncertain times.
Aligning technological, processes and adopting a human-centered structure for change management to deliver business breakthroughs and digital transformation initiatives.
Breaking down silos and supporting people to collaborate; re-connect, re-energize and re-invent themselves in a disrupted world.
Maximizing differences and diversity that exist between people’s demographics, cultures, values, perspectives, knowledge, experiences, and skillsets to deliver their desired outcomes.
Learning and coaching people to adapt to survive and thrive by solving complex problems, uncertainty, instability, and trends that are constantly emerging.
Improving both customer centricity and the customers’ experience.
Building accountable, equitable, and sustainable business enterprises that people value, appreciate, and cherish.

Strategy #5

Challenge the status quo and conventional ways of perceiving innovation to unleash the possibilities and the opportunities and kickstart change that true innovation offers by:

Taking a strategic perspective in the longer term and the need for investment in innovation, rather than being reactive, and short-term profit-focused.
Developing an understanding of the different types of innovation and how they can be applied, including incremental, breakthrough, sustaining, and disruptive, depending on their strategic imperative and motivation for change, and not just focussing on making continuous and process improvements.
Improving trust in organizational boards and leadership decisions, reducing self-interest and eliminating corruption, and focussing on being in integrity to successfully empower people in change and innovate in uncertain times.

Strategy #6

Explore opportunities for measuring, benchmarking, and contextualizing the impact of innovation on business performance, leadership, executive team, and organizational ability to adapt, innovate and grow by:

Embracing new business models, developing leadership capabilities and collaborative competencies, capacities, and building people’s confidence to perceive their worlds differently, and with fresh eyes.
Letting go of “old” 20th century methods of diagnosing and assessing culture, based solely on the “nice to haves” rather than exploring the emerging “must haves” to enable people to survive and thrive by experimenting with new assessment tools like the OGI® and the GLI® to quantify and qualify current and potential strengths and weaknesses.
Using data to know what new mindsets, behaviors, and skills to embody and enact, differently to become future-fit and succeed in the 21^st century, and accepting that some of these are “not nice”.
Cultivating an innovation culture to embed deep change, provide learning and coaching to evoke, provoke and create mindset shifts, behavior and systems changes, and radically new sets of artifacts and symbols.

Taking the first steps to change and innovate in 2023

Embracing a range of new and different strategic and systemic approaches governments, communities, organizations, teams, and leader organizations can successfully kickstart change and innovate in uncertain times.

By using this moment in time to choose to refuse to walk backward and sleepwalk through life, by simply committing to take the first baby steps in allowing and enabling people to pause, retreat, reflect and:

Recover from the effects of working mostly alone, from home, and online.
Re-balance work and home lives through reconnection and resolving loneliness and rebuilding a sense of belonging.
Know how to tolerate uncertainty and become resilient and adaptive.
Reimagine and refocus a more energizing, compelling, and sustainable future.
Reinvent themselves, their professions, business practices, and teams in meaningful and purposeful ways.

We can then confidently, meaningfully, and purposefully energetically engage and enroll people, mobilize and harness their collective genius, to innovate in uncertain times in ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives in ways they appreciate and cherish.

To kickstart changes that contribute effectively to global stability, security, connectedness, and sustainability in the current decade of transformation and disruption.

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starting Tuesday, February 7, 2023.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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