Category Archives: Product Innovation

Coping with the Chasm

Coping with the Chasm

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

I’ve been talking about crossing the chasm incessantly for over thirty years, and I’m not likely to stop, but it does beg the question, how should you operate when you are in the chasm? What is the chasm itself about, and what actions is it likely to reward or punish?

The chasm is a lull in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, one that comes after the enthusiasts and visionaries have made their splash and before the pragmatists are willing to commit. At this time the new category is on the map, people are talking about it, often quite enthusiastically, but no one has budgeted for it as yet. That means that conventional go-to-market efforts, based on generating and pursuing qualified leads with prospects who have both budget and intent to purchase, cannot get traction. It does not mean, however, that they won’t entertain sales meetings and demos. They actually want to learn more about this amazing new thing, and so they can keep your go-to-market engine humming with activity. They just won’t buy anything.

Crossing the Chasm says it is time for you to select a beachhead market segment with a compelling reason to buy and approach them with a whole product that addresses an urgent unsolved problem. All well and good, but what if you don’t know enough about the market (or your own product for that matter) to make a sound choice? What if you are stuck in the chasm and have to stay there for a while? What can you do?

First of all, take good care of the early adopter customers you do have. Give them more service than you normally would, in part because you want them to succeed and be good references, but also because in delivering that service, you can get a closer look at their use cases and learn more about the ones that might pull you out of the chasm.

Second, keep your go-to-market organization lean and mean. You cannot sell your way out of the chasm. You cannot market your way out either. The only way out is to find that targetable beachhead segment with the compelling use case that they cannot address through any conventional means. This is an exercise in discovery, so your go-to-market efforts need to be provocative enough to get the meeting (this is where thought leadership marketing is so valuable) and your sales calls need to be intellectually curious about the prospect’s current business challenges (and not presentations about how amazing your company is or flashy demos to show off your product). In short, in the chasm, you are a solution looking for a problem.

Third, get your R&D team directly in contact with the customer, blending engineering, professional services, and customer success all into one flexible organization, all in search of the beachhead use case and the means for mastering its challenges. You made it to the chasm based on breakthrough technology that won the hearts of enthusiasts and visionaries, but that won’t get you across. You have to get pulled out of the chasm by prospective customers who will make a bet on you because they are desperate for a new approach to an increasingly vexing problem, and you have made a convincing case that your technology, product, talent, and commitment can fill the bill.

Finally, let’s talk about what you should not do. You cannot perform your way out of the chasm. You have no power. So, this is not a time to focus on execution. Instead, you have to find a way to increase your power. In the short term, you can do this through consulting projects—you have unique technology power that people want to consume; they just don’t want to consume through a product model at this time. They are happy to pay for bespoke projects, however, and that is really what the Early Market playbook is all about. Of course, projects don’t scale, so they are not a long-term answer, but they do generate income, and they do keep you in contact with the market. What you are looking for is solution power, tying your technology power to a specific use case in a specific segment, one that you could deliver on a repeatable basis and get you out of the chasm. Often these use cases are embedded in bespoke projects, just a part of the visionary’s big picture, but with more than enough meat on the bone to warrant a pragmatist’s attention.

Sooner or later you have to make a bet. You can recognize a good opportunity by the following traits:

  • There is budget to address the problem, and it is being spent now.
  • The results the prospect is getting are not promising and, if anything, the situation is deteriorating.
  • You know from at least one of your projects that you can do a lot better.

That’s about all the data you are going to get. That’s why we call crossing the chasm a high-risk, low-data decision. But it beats staying in the chasm by a long shot.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot

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Is Disruption About to Claim a New Victim?

Kodak. Blockbuster. Google?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You know the stories.  Kodak developed a digital camera in the 1970s, but its images weren’t as good as film images, so it ended the project.  Decades later, that decision ended Kodak.  Blockbuster was given the chance to buy Netflix but declined due to its paltry library of titles (and the absence of late fees).  A few years later, that decision led to Blockbuster’s decline and demise.  Now, in the age of AI, disruption may be about to claim another victim – Google.

A very brief history of Google’s AI efforts

In 2017, Google Research invented Transformer, a neural network architecture that could be trained to read sentences and paragraphs, pay attention to how the words relate to each other, and predict the words that would come next. 

In 2020, Google developed LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, using Transformer-based models trained on dialogue and able to chat. 

Three years later, Google began developing its own conversational AI using its LaMDA system. The only wrinkle is that OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022. 

Now to The Financial Times for the current state of things

“In early 2023, months after the launch of OpenAI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT, Google was gearing up to launch its competitor to the model that underpinned the chatbot.

.

The search company had been testing generative AI software internally for several months by then.  But as the company rallied its resources, multiple competing models emerged from different divisions within Google, vying for internal attention.”

That last sentence is worrying.  Competition in the early days of innovation can be great because it pushes people to think differently, ask tough questions, and take risks. But, eventually, one solution should emerge as superior to the others so you can focus your scarce resources on refining, launching, and scaling it. Multiple models “vying for internal attention” so close to launch indicate that something isn’t right and about to go very wrong.

“None was considered good enough to launch as the singular competitor to OpenAI’s model, known as ChatGPT-4.  The company was forced to postpone its plans while it tried to sort through the scramble of research projects.  Meanwhile, it pushed out a chatbot, Bard, that was widely viewed to be far less sophisticated than ChatGPT.”

Nothing signals the threat of disruption more than “good enough.”  If Google, like most incumbent companies, defined “good enough” as “better than the best thing out there,” then it’s no surprise that they wouldn’t want to launch anything. 

What’s weird is that instead of launching one of the “not good enough” models, they launched Bard, an obviously inferior product. Either the other models were terrible (or non-functional), or different people were making different decisions to achieve different definitions of success.  Neither is a good sign.

When Google’s finished product, Gemini, was finally ready nearly a year later, it came with flaws in image generation that CEO Sundar Pichai called ‘completely unacceptable’ – a let-down for what was meant to be a demonstration of Google’s lead in a key new technology.”

“A let-down” is an understatement.  You don’t have to be first.  You don’t have to be the best.  But you also shouldn’t embarrass yourself.  And you definitely shouldn’t launch things that are “completely unacceptable.”

What happens next?

Disruption takes a long time and doesn’t always mean death.  Blackberry still exists, and integrated steel mills, one of Clayton Christensen’s original examples of disruption, still operate.

AI, LLMs, and LaMDAs are still in their infancy, so it’s too early to declare a winner.  Market creation and consumer behavior change take time, and Google certainly has the knowledge and resources to stage a comeback.

Except that that knowledge may be their undoing.  Companies aren’t disrupted because their executives are idiots. They’re disrupted because their executives focus on extending existing technologies and business models to better serve their best customers with higher-profit offerings.  In fact, Professor Christensen often warned that one of the first signs of disruption was a year of record profits.

In 2021, Google posted a profit of $76.033 billion. An 88.81% increase from the previous year.

2022 and 2023 profits have both been lower.

Image credit: Unsplash

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An Innovation Lesson From The Rolling Stones

An Innovation Lesson From The Rolling Stones

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

If you’re like most people, you’ve faced disappointment. Maybe the love of your life didn’t return your affection, you didn’t get into your dream college, or you were passed over for promotion.  It hurts.  And sometimes, that hurt lingers for a long time.

Until one day, something happens, and you realize your disappointment was a gift.  You meet the true love of your life while attending college at your fallback school, and years later, when you get passed over for promotion, the two of you quit your jobs, pursue your dreams, and live happily ever after. Or something like that.

We all experience disappointment.  We also all get to choose whether we stay there, lamenting the loss of what coulda shoulda woulda been, or we can persevere, putting one foot in front of the other and playing The Rolling Stones on repeat:

“You can’t always get what you want

But if you try sometimes, well, you might just find

You get what you need”

That’s life.

That’s also innovation.

As innovators, especially leaders of innovators, we rarely get what we want.  But we always get what we need (whether we like it or not)

We want to know. 
We need to be comfortable not knowing.

Most of us want to know the answer because if we know the answer, there is no risk. There is no chance of being wrong, embarrassed, judged, or punished.  But if there is no risk, there is no growth, expansion, or discovery.

Innovation is something new that creates value. If you know everything, you can’t innovate.

As innovators, we need to be comfortable not knowing.  When we admit to ourselves that we don’t know something, we open our minds to new information, new perspectives, and new opportunities. When we say we don’t know, we give others permission to be curious, learn, and create. 

We want the creative genius and billion-dollar idea. 
We need the team and the steady stream of big ideas.

We want to believe that one person blessed with sufficient time, money, and genius can change the world.  Some people like to believe they are that person, and most of us think we can hire that person, and when we do find that person and give them the resources they need, they will give us the billion-dollar idea that transforms our company, disrupts the industry, and change the world.

Innovation isn’t magic.  Innovation is team work.

We need other people to help us see what we can’t and do what we struggle to do.  The idea-person needs the optimizer to bring her idea to life, and the optimizer needs the idea-person so he has a starting point.  We need lots of ideas because most won’t work, but we don’t know which ones those are, so we prototype, experiment, assess, and refine our way to the ones that will succeed.   

We want to be special.
We need to be equal.

We want to work on the latest and most cutting-edge technology and discuss it using terms that no one outside of Innovation understands. We want our work to be on stage, oohed and aahed over on analyst calls, and talked about with envy and reverence in every meeting. We want to be the cool kids, strutting around our super hip offices in our hoodies and flip-flops or calling into the meeting from Burning Man. 

Innovation isn’t about you.  It’s about serving others.

As innovators, we create value by solving problems.  But we can’t do it alone.  We need experienced operators who can quickly spot design flaws and propose modifications.  We need accountants and attorneys who instantly see risks and help you navigate around them.  We need people to help us bring our ideas to life, but that won’t happen if we act like we’re different or better.  Just as we work in service to our customers, we must also work in service to our colleagues by working with them, listening, compromising, and offering help.

What about you?
What do you want?
What are you learning you need?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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3 Ways to View Your Innovation Basket

(including one that makes Radical Innovation easy)

3 Ways to View Your Innovation Basket

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a rolling stone, and that means you gather no moss!  You read the September issue of HBR (and maybe last week’s article), tossed out your innovation portfolio, and wove yourself an innovation basket to “differentiate the concept from finance and avoid the mistake of treating projects like financial securities, where the goal is usually to maximize returns through diversification [and instead] remember that innovation projects are creative acts.”   

Then you explained this to your CFO and received side-eye so devastating it would make Sophie Loren proud.

The reality is that the innovation projects you’re working on are investments, and because they’re risky, diversification is the best way to maximize the returns your company needs.

But it’s not the only way we should communicate, evaluate, and treat them.

Different innovation basket views for different customers

When compiling an innovation basket, the highest priority is having a single source of truth.  If people in the organization disagree on what is in and out of the basket, how you measure and manage the portfolio doesn’t matter.

But a single source of truth doesn’t mean you can’t look at that truth from multiple angles.

Having multiple views showing the whole basket while being customized to address each of your internal customer’s Jobs to be Done will turbocharge your ability to get support and resources.

The CFO: What returns will we get and when?

The classic core/adjacent/transformational portfolio is your answer.  By examining each project based on where to play (markets and customers) and how to win (offerings, profit models, key resources and activities), you can quickly assess each project’s relative riskiness, potential return, time to ROI, and resource requirements.

The CEO: How does this support and accelerate our strategic priorities?

This is where the new innovation basket is most helpful.  By starting with the company’s strategic goals and asking, “What needs to change to achieve our strategy?” leadership teams immediately align innovation goals with corporate strategic priorities.  When projects and investments are placed at the intersection of the goal they support, and the mechanism of value creation (e.g., product, process, brand), the CEO can quickly see how investments align with strategic priorities and actively engage in reallocation decisions.

You: Will any of these ever see the light of day?

As much as you hope the answer is “Yes!”, you know the answer is “Some.  Maybe.  Hopefully.”  You also know that the “some” that survive might not be the biggest or the best of the basket.  They’ll be the most palatable.

Ignoring that fact won’t make it untrue. Instead, acknowledge it and use it to expand stakeholders’ palates.

Start by articulating your organization’s identity, the answers to “who we are” and “what we do.” 

Then place each innovation in one of three buckets based on its fit with the organization’s identity:

  • Identity-enhancing innovations that enhance or strengthen the identity
  • Identity-stretching innovations that “do not fit with the core of an organization’s identity, but are related enough that if the scope of organizational identity were expanded, the innovation would fit.”
  • Identity-challenging innovations that are “in direct conflict with the existing organizational identity.”

It probably won’t surprise you that identity-enhancing innovations are far more likely to receive internal support than identity-challenging innovations.  But what may surprise you is that core, adjacent, and transformational innovations can all be identity-enhancing.

For example, Luxxotica and Bausch & Lomb are both in the vision correction industry (eyeglasses and contact lenses, respectively) but have very different identities.  Luxxotica views itself as “an eyewear company,” while Bausch & Lomb sees itself as an “eye health company” (apologies for the puns). 

When laser-vision correction surgery became widely available, Bausch & Lomb was an early investor because, while the technology would be considered a breakthrough innovation, it was also identity-enhancing.  A decade later, Bausch & Lomb’s surgical solutions and ophthalmic pharmaceuticals businesses account for 38% of the company’s revenue and one-third of the growth.

One basket.  Multiple Views.  All the Answers.

Words are powerful, and using a new one, especially in writing,  can change your behavior and brain. But calling a portfolio a basket won’t change the results of your innovation efforts.  To do that, you need to understand why you have a basket and look at it in all the ways required to maximize creativity, measure results, and avoid stakeholder side-eye.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Why You Should Care About Service Design

Why You Should Care About Service Design

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

What if a tool had the power to delight your customers, cut your costs, increase your bottom line, and maybe double your stock price? You’d use it, right?

That’s precisely the power and impact of Service Design and service blueprints. Yet very few people, especially in the US, know, understand, or use them. Including me.

Thankfully, Leala Abbott, a strategist and researcher at the intersection of experience, innovation, and digital transformation and a lecturer at Parsons School of Design, clued me in.

What is Service Design?

RB: Hi, Leala, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today.

LA: My pleasure! I’m excited about this topic. I’ve managed teams with service designers, and I’ve always been impressed by the magical way they brought together experience strategy, UX, and operations.

RB: I felt the same way after you explained it to me. Before we get too geeked up about the topic, let’s go back to the beginning and define “service.”

LA: Service is something that helps someone accomplish a goal. As a result, every business needs service design because every business is in the service industry.

RB: I’ll be honest, I got a little agitated when I read that because that’s how I define “solution.” But then I saw your illustration explaining that service design moves us from seeing and problem-solving isolated moments to seeing an integrated process. And that’s when it clicked.

LA:  That illustration is from Lou Downe’s talk Design in Government Impact for All . Service Design helps us identify what customers want and how to deliver those services effectively by bringing together all the pieces within the organization. It moves us away from fragmented experiences created by different departments and teams within the same company to an integrated process that enables customers to achieve their goals.

Why You Need It

RB: It seems so obvious when you say it. Yet so often, the innovation team spends all their time focused on the customer only to develop the perfect solution that, when they toss it over the wall for colleagues to make, they’re told it’s not possible, and everything stops. Why aren’t we always considering both sides?

LA: One reason, I think, is people don’t want to add one more person to the team. Over the past two decades, the number of individuals required to build something has grown exponentially. It used to be that one person could build your whole website, but now you need user experience designers, researchers, product managers, and more. I think it’s just overwhelming for people to add another individual to the mix. We believe we have all the tools to fix the problem, so we don’t want to add another voice, even if that voice explains the huge disconnect between everything built and their operational failures.

RB: Speaking of operational failures, one of the most surprising things about Service Design is that it almost always results in cost savings. That’s not something most people think about when they hear “design.”

LA: The significant impact on the bottom line is one of the most persuasive aspects of service design. It shifts the focus from pretty pictures to the actual cost implications. Bringing in the operational side of the business is crucial. Building a great customer journey and experience is important, but it’s also important to tie it back to lost revenue and increased cost to serve

Proof It Works 

LA: One of the most compelling cases I recently read was about Autodesk’s transition to SaaS, they brought in a service design company called Future Proof. Autodesk wanted to transition from a software licensing model to a software-as-a-service model. It’s a significant transition not just in terms of the business model and pricing but also in how it affects customers.

If you’re a customer of Autodesk, you used to pay a one-time fee for your software, but now you are paying based on users and services. Budgeting becomes messy. The costs are no longer simple and predictable. Plus, it raises lots of questions about the transition, cost predictability, control over access, managing subscriptions, and flexibility. Notice that these issues are about people managing their money and increasing costs. These are the areas where service design can truly help. 

Future Proof conducted customer interviews, analyzed each stage of the customer journey, looked at pricing models and renewal protocols, and performed usability studies. When they audited support ticket data for the top five common customer issues, they realized that if Autodesk didn’t change their model, the cost of running software for every customer would increase by 40%, and profit margins would decrease by 15% to 20%.

Autodesk made the change, revenue increased significantly, and their stock price doubled. Service design allows for this kind of analysis and consideration of operational costs.

How to Learn More

RB: Wow, not many things can deliver better service, happier customers, and doubling a stock price. Solid proof that companies, and innovation teams in particular, need to get smart on service design. We’ve talked a lot about the What and Why of Service Design. How can people learn more about the How?

LA: Lou Downe’s book is a great place to start Good Services: How to Design Services That Work. So is Woo, Wow, and Win: Service Design, Strategy, and the Art of Customer Delight by Thomas A Stewart and Patricia O’Connell.  I also recommend people check out The Service Design Network for tools and case studies and TheyDo, which helps companies visualize and manage their service design.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Leaders Avoid Doing This One Thing

Leaders Avoid Doing This One Thing

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton


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.

After all, “80% of success is showing up.”

Image credit: Pixabay

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How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power

How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You are a leader. The boss. The person in charge.

That means you know the answer to every question, make the right decision when faced with every choice, and act confidently when others are uncertain. Right?

(Insert uproarious laughter here).

Of course not. But you act like you do because you’re the leader, the boss, the person in charge.

You are not alone. We’re all doing it.

We act like we have the answers because we’ve been told that’s what leaders do. We act like we made the right decision because that’s what leaders do in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world where we must work quickly and flexibly while doing more with less.

But what if we didn’t? 

What if we stopped pretending to have the answer or know the right choice? What if we acknowledged the ambiguity of a situation, explored its options and interpretations for just a short while, and then decided?

We’d make more informed choices. We’d be more creative and innovative. We’d inspire others.

So why do we keep pretending?

Ambiguity: Yea! Meh. Have you lost your mind?!?

Stanford’s d.School calls the ability to navigate ambiguity “the super ability” because it’s necessary for problem-finding and problem-solving. Ambiguity “involves recognizing and stewing in the discomfort of not knowing, leveraging and embracing parallel possibilities, and resolving or emerging from ambiguity as needed.”

Navigating ambiguity is essential in a VUCA world, but not all want to. They found that people tend to do one of three things when faced with ambiguity:

  • Endure ambiguity as “a moment of time that comes before a solution and is antagonistic to the objective – it must be conquered to reach the goal.”
  • Engage ambiguity as “an off-road adventure; an alternate path to a goal. It might be rewarding and helpful or dangerous and detrimental. Its value is a chosen gamble. Exhilaration and exhaustion are equally expected.”
  • Embrace ambiguity as “oceanic and ever-present. Exploration is a challenge and an opportunity. The longer you spend in it, the more likely you are to discover something new. Every direction is a possibility. Navigation isn’t simple. It requires practice and patience.

Students tend to enter the program with a resignation that ambiguity must be endured. They leave embracing it because they learn how to navigate it.

You can too.

In fact, as a leader in a VUCA world, you and your team need to.

How to Embrace (or at least Engage) Ambiguity

When you want to learn something new, the library is one of the best places to start. In this case, the Library of Ambiguity  – an incredible collection of the resources, tools, and activities that professors at Stanford’s d.School use to help their students build this super ability.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of resources, so here are three that I recommend:

Design Project Scoping Guide

  • What it is: A guide for selecting, framing, and communicating the intentions of a design project
  • When to use it: When you are defining an innovation project and need to align on scope, goals, and priorities
  • Why I like it: The guide offers excellent examples of helpful and unhelpful scoping documents.

Learning Zone Reflection Tool

  • What it is: A tool to help individuals better understand the tolerance of ambiguity, especially their comfort, learning, and panic zones
  • When to use it: Stanford used this as a reflection tool at the end of an introductory course, BUT I would use it at the start of the project as a leadership alignment and team-building tool:
    • Leadership alignment – Ask individual decision-makers to identify their comfort, learning, and panic zones for each element of the Project Scoping Guide (problem to be solved, target customer, context, goals, and priorities), then synthesize the results. As a group, highlight areas of agreement and resolve areas of difference.
    • Team-building – At the start of the project, ask individual team members to complete the worksheet as it applies to both the project scope and the process. Individuals share their worksheets and, as a group, identify areas of shared comfort and develop ways to help each other through areas of learning or panic.
  • Why I like it: Very similar to the Project Playground concept I use with project teams to define the scope and set constraints, it can be used individually to build empathy and support amongst team members.

Team Dashboards

  • What it is: A tool to build trust and confidence amongst a team working through an ambiguous effort
  • When to use it: At regular pre-defined intervals during a project (e.g., every team check-in, at the end of each Sprint, once a month)
  • What I like about it:
    • Individuals complete it BEFORE the meeting, so the session focuses on discussing the dashboard, not completing it
    • The dashboard focuses on the usual business things (progress against responsibilities, the biggest challenge, next steps) and the “softer” elements that tend to have the most significant impact on team experience and productivity (mood, biggest accomplishment, team balance between talking and doing)

Learn It. Do It.

The world isn’t going to get simpler, clearer, or slower. It’s on you as a leader to learn how to deal with it. When to slow it down and explore and when to speed it up and act. No one is born knowing. We all learn along the way. The Library will help. No ambiguity about that!

Image credit: Pexels

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10 Military Innovation Moments

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Innovation is something different that creates value. Sometimes it’s big, new to the world, world-changing things. Sometimes it’s a slight tweak to make things easier, faster, cheaper or better.

Sometimes, it’s both.

It’s no secret that the military and NASA are birthplaces of incredible inventions (something new) and innovations (something different that creates value). Most people know that Velcro, nylon, and powdered drinks (Tang!) originated at Nasa, and that Jeep, GPS, and the internet come to us from the military.

But did you know that these 10 everyday innovations have their origin in the military?

1. Duct Tape

Invented in 1942 to seal ammo boxes with something that could resist water and dirt while also being fast and easy to remove so soldiers could quickly access ammunition when they needed it. Originally, it was made by applying a rubber-based adhesive to duck cloth, a plain and tightly woven cotton fabric, and has evolved over the years to be used for everything from repairing equipment on the moon to purses.

2. Synthetic Rubber Tires

Speaking of rubber, prior to WWII, most rubber was harvested from trees in South America and shipped to southern Asia where the majority of rubber products were produced. When the Axis powers cut-off access to Asia, the US military turned to Firestone, Goodyear, and Standard Oil to create a replacement substance. The recipe they created is still used today.

3. Silly Putty

Image Credit: thestrong.org

Like most inventions, there were a lot of failed experiments before the right synthetic rubber recipe was found. Silly Putty is the result of one of those experiments. A scientist at GE developed the strange substance but quickly shelved it after it became clear that it had no useful military application. Years later, GER execs started showing off the novelty item at cocktail parties, an advertising exec in attendance saw its commercial potential and bought the manufacturing rights, packaged it into eggs and sold it as a toy. 350 million eggs later, we’re still playing with it.

4. Superglue

The result of another failed experiment, Superglue came onto the market in 1958 and has stuck around ever since (sorry, that pun was intended). Military scientists were testing materials to use as clear plastic rifle sights and created an incredibly durable but impossibly sticky substance called cyanoacrylate. Nine years later it was being sold commercially as Superglue and eventually did make its way into military use during the Vietnam War as a way to immediately stop bleeding from wounds.

5. Feminine Hygiene Pads

Image Credit: Museum of American History

Before Superglue was used to stop bleeding, bandages woven with cellulose were used on the battlefields and hospitals. Seeing how effective the bandages were at holding blood and the convenience of having so many on hand, US and British WW1 nurses began using them as sanitary napkins and bandage makers adapted and expanded their post-War product lines to accommodate.

6. Undershirts

Image Credit: Foto-ianniello/Getty Images

While people have been wearing undergarments for centuries, the undershirt as we know it — a t-shaped, cotton, crewneck — didn’t come into being until the early twentieth century. Manufactured and sold by the Cooper Underwear Co., it caught the Navy’s eye as a more convenient and practical option than the current button-up shirts. In 1905, it became part of the official Navy uniform and the origin of the term “crewneck.”

7. Aerosol Big Spray

Image Credit: National WWII Museum

Soldiers fighting in the Pacific theater of WWII had a lot to worry about, so they were eager to cross mosquitos and malaria off that list. In response, the Department of Defense teamed up with the Department of Agriculture to find a way to deliver insecticide as a fine mist. The first aerosol “bug bomb” was patented in 1941 and, thanks to the development of a cheaper plastic aerosol valve, became commercially available to civilians in 1949.

8. Canned Food

Image Credit: Pacific Paratrooper — WordPress.com

While it’s not surprising that canned foods were originally created for the military, it may surprise you to learn that it was Napoleon’s armies that first used the concept. In response to the French Government’s offer of a large cash reward for anyone who could find a way to preserve large quantities of food, an inventor discovered that food cooked inside a jar wouldn’t spoil unless the seal leaked, or the container was broken. But glass jars are heavy and fragile, so innovation continued until WW1 when metal cans replaced the glass jars.

9. Microwave

RadaRange on the Nuclear Ship NS Savannah

This is another one that you probably would have guessed has its origins in the military but may be surprised by its actual origin story. The term “microwave” refers to an adaptation of radar technology that creates electromagnetic waves on a tiny scale and passes those micro-waves through food, vibrating it, and heating it quickly. The original microwaves made their debut in 1946 on ships but it took another 20 years to get the small and affordable enough to be commercially viable.

10. Wristwatches

Image Credit: Hodinkee

Watches first appeared on the scene in the 15th century but they didn’t become reliable or accurate until the late 1700s. However, up until the early 20th century, wristwatches were primarily worn as jewelry by women and men used pocket watches. During its military campaigns in the late 1880s, the British Army began using wristwatches as a way to synchronize maneuvers without alerting the enemy to their plans. And the rest, as they say, is history.


So, there you have it. 10 everyday innovations brought to us civilians by the military. Some, like synthetic rubber, started as intentional inventions (something new) and quickly became innovations (something new that creates value). Some, like superglue and silly putty, are “failed” experiments that became innovations. And some, like undershorts and feminine products, are pure innovations (value-creating adaptations of pre-existing products to serve different users and users).

Sources: USA TodayPocket-lint.com, and Mic.com

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Want to Innovate like Google?

Be Careful What You Wish For

Want to Innovate like Google?

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

A few weeks ago, a Google researcher leaked an internal document asserting that Google (and open AI) will lose the AI “arms race” to Open Source AI.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t understand much of the tech speak – LLM, LLaMA, RLHF, and LoRA are just letters to me. But I understood why the memo’s writer believed that Google was about to lose out on a promising new technology to a non-traditional competitor.

They’re the same reasons EVERY large established company loses to startups.

Congratulations, big, established industry incumbents, you’re finally innovating like Google!

(Please note the heavy dose of sarcasm intended).

Innovation at Google Today

The document’s author lists several reasons why “the gap is closing astonishingly quickly” in terms of Google’s edge in AI, including:

  1. “Retraining models from scratch is the hard path” – the tendency to want to re-use (re-train) old models because of all the time and effort spent building them, rather than start from scratch using newer and more flexible tools
  2. “Large models aren’t more capable in the long run if we can iterate faster on small models” – the tendency to want to test on a grand scale, believing the results are more reliable than small tests and drive rapid improvements.
  3. “Directly competing with open source is a losing proposition” – most people aren’t willing to pay for perfect when “good enough” is free.
  4. “We need them more than they need us” – When talent leaves, they take knowledge and experience with them. Sometimes the competitors you don’t see coming.
  5. “Individuals are not constrained by licenses to the same degree as corporations” – Different customers operate by different rules, and you need to adjust and reflect that.
  6. “Being your own customer means you understand the use case” – There’s a huge difference between designing a solution because it’s your job and designing it because you are in pain and need a solution.

What it sounds like at other companies

Even the statements above are a bit tech industry-centric, so let me translate them into industry-agnostic phrases, all of which have been said in actual client engagements.

  1. Just use what we have. We already paid to make it.
  2. Lots of little experiments will take too long, and the dataset is too small to be trusted. Just test everything all at once in a test market, like Canada or Belgium.
  3. We make the best . If customers aren’t willing to pay for it because they don’t understand how good it is, they’re idiots.
  4. It’s a three-person startup. Why are we wasting time talking about them?
  5. Aren’t we supposed to move fast and test cheaply? Just throw it in Google Translate, and we’ll be done.
  6. Urban Millennials are entitled and want a reward. They’ll love this! (60-year-old Midwesterner)

How You (and Google) can get back to the Innovative Old Days

The remedy isn’t rocket (or computer) science. You’ve probably heard (and even advocated for) some of the practices that help you avoid the above mistakes:

  1. Call out the “sunk cost fallacy,” clarify priorities, and be transparent about trade-offs. Even if minimizing costs is the highest priority, is it worth it at the expense of good or even accurate data?
  2. Define what you need to learn before you decide how to learn it. Apply the scientific method to the business by stating your hypothesis and determining multiple ways to prove or disprove it. Once that’s done, ask decision-makers what they need to see to agree with the test’s result (the burden of proof you need to meet).
  3. Talk. To. Your. Customers. Don’t run a survey. Don’t hire a research firm. Stand up from your desk, walk out of your office, go to your customers, and ask them open-ended questions (Why, how, when, what). 
  4. Constantly scan the horizon and seek out the small players. Sure, most of them won’t be anything to worry about, but some will be on to something. Pay attention to them.
  5. See #3
  6. See #3

Big companies don’t struggle with innovation because the leaders aren’t innovative (Google’s founders are still at the helm), the employees aren’t smart (Google’s engineers are amongst the smartest in the world), or the industry is stagnating (the Tech industry has been accused of a lot, but never that).

Big companies struggle to innovate because operating requires incredible time, money, and energy. Adding innovation, something utterly different, to the mix feels impossible. But employees and execs know it’s essential. So they try to make innovation easier by using the tools, processes, and practices they already have. 

It makes sense. 

Until you wake up and realize you’re Google.

Image credit: Unsplash

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The Ultimate Guide to the Phase-Gate Process

The Ultimate Guide to the Phase-Gate Process

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-20th 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:

  1. Discovery phase: an innovation opportunity is discovered, and the initial idea is screened for the first time.
  2. 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.
  3. Feasibility: accepted idea moves to the feasibility phase, where a business case is built, and the concept gets screened at the third gate.
  4. Development and Validation: the innovation’s first prototypes are created and evaluated, and testing takes place.
  5. 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 whatwherewhen, 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 (BetaTesting: 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 ScreeningSecond Screening, Go-to- DevelopmentGo-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 riskMaking 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.

This article was originally published on Viima’s blog.

Image Credit: Viima, Unsplash

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