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Leveraging Data to Drive Innovation Success

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Leveraging Data to Drive Innovation Success

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s hyper-competitive business landscape, the ability to innovate is no longer just a strategic advantage; it’s an imperative for survival. However, innovation is often seen as a mysterious, complex process that is difficult to manage or measure. Enter data-driven innovation—a methodology that combines the vast potential of data analytics with the creative processes of innovation to not only generate groundbreaking ideas but also validate and scale them effectively.

This article explores how organizations can leverage data to foster a culture of innovation, reduce risk, and ultimately achieve greater success. We’ll also dive into case studies of companies that have successfully utilized data-driven strategies to revolutionize their business models.

The Role of Data in Innovation

Data serves as the backbone of informed decision-making, offering insights that can guide businesses through the uncertainties of the innovation process. From identifying unmet customer needs to predicting future trends, data provides the actionable intelligence required for both incremental and disruptive innovation. By leveraging big data, businesses can:

  • Understand customer behavior and preferences more deeply.
  • Identify new market opportunities and emerging trends.
  • Enhance product development processes through insights.
  • Track and measure the impact of innovation initiatives.

Let’s explore two case studies of companies that have successfully harnessed data to drive innovation.

Case Study 1: Netflix’s Predictive Analytics in Content Creation

Netflix is a pioneering example of how data can be leveraged to innovate in the realm of content creation. The streaming giant utilizes data analytics not only to understand viewer preferences but also to predict future content success. Utilizing a plethora of data points such as viewing history, search queries, and ratings, Netflix makes informed decisions about which shows to produce or license.

One of the most notable examples of this strategic approach is the creation of the critically acclaimed series “House of Cards.” Netflix analyzed user data to determine that a political drama starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher would likely succeed. This data-driven gamble resulted in a highly popular show that garnered millions of views and set new standards for original programming.

Case Study 2: Amazon’s Use of Machine Learning for Customer Experience

Amazon is another prime example of leveraging data to foster innovation, particularly in customer experience. The e-commerce giant employs data-driven strategies to personalize the shopping experience, optimize pricing, and streamline operations.

Amazon’s recommendation engine, powered by robust machine learning algorithms, analyzes user behavior and purchase history to suggest products that customers are likely to buy. This not only enhances the customer experience but also boosts sales and customer loyalty. Furthermore, Amazon uses data from customer feedback and return patterns to innovate in product delivery and supply chain management, ensuring faster and more efficient service.

Conclusion

The integration of data into the innovation process has transformed how organizations develop and implement new ideas. By leveraging data strategically, businesses can reduce the risks associated with innovation, tailor their offerings to meet customer needs more effectively, and capitalize on new market opportunities. As technology progresses, those who embrace data-driven innovation will continue to thrive, pushing the boundaries of what is possible and setting new benchmarks for success.

Extra Extra: 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: Pexels

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Using Intuition to Drive Innovation Success

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Using Intuition to Drive Innovation Success

Americans are in love with data, big data, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

… and the rest of the world is catching the same disease.

Data is important, don’t get me wrong, but it is only one side of the coin driving innovation and operational success.

On the other side of the coin is intuition.

As smart organizations try and make greater use of human-centered design, empathy and intuition can and must play an increasingly important role.

Bruce Kasanoff states that “Intuition is the Highest Form of Intelligence” in his article on Forbes.

Intuition is incredibly important to human-centered design from the standpoint that an “intuitive” design taps into our shared understanding as humans of how things should operate.

Intuition is the secret sauce of the quantum human computer, and as the pace of change AND complexity both accelerate, we must change our brain function to develop not just our intellectual capabilities but our instinctual capabilities as well.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote about these two ways of thinking in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Let’s look at a short video looking at intuition, science and dreams:

Science Intuition and Dreams – Dean Radin

Dreams can be an incredibly powerful tool for innovation, in fact the Nine Innovation Roles that play an important role in the best-selling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire came to me in a dream. Many experts recommend that you keep a pen and a notebook next to your bed to capture these flashes of brilliance.

Dreams and shared understanding are but two manifestations of intuition, of our interconnectedness with each other and energies greater than ourselves. But how do we leverage our intuition for innovation?

One way is to use your innovation as an input to use with a tool like The Experiment Canvas™:

The Experiment Canvas

Which is available as a free tool here on my web site from the forthcoming Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

You can use it to craft a hypothesis based on your intuition that you want to test, it keeps you focused on what you hope to learn during the experiment, and to consider the setup, operation, and wrapup of your experiment – among other things.

Too often people ignore their intuition because it doesn’t seem scientific. But, turning intuitive insights into hypotheses to test will help you overcome your hesitancy until you train your intuition and to learn to trust it as the potential human quantum computer that it could be. The other reason that people ignore their intuition is that well, they just can’t hear it. For many people, their intellectual mind is so busy that they can’t receive and react to what their intuitive mind is telling them.

Here is an interesting video that highlights these two points and how humans communicate behind the scenes:

Are you drowning out your intuitive mind? Are you failing to consider what is saying, and to test its assertions?

If so, please stop it, and learn new ways to keep innovating!

SPECIAL BONUS:

If you’d like to watch and learn even more about intuition…

Here is a video on Nikola Tesla and the Power of Intuition:


Accelerate your change and transformation success

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Why Your Digital Transformation May Be Doomed to Fail

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Why Your Digital Transformation May Be Doomed to Fail

Digital Transformation, like Innovation, has become an overused buzzword that is losing its meaning. Whoever created the Wikipedia page for Digital Transformation defines it this way:

“Digital Transformation (DT or DX) is the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses, through replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital processes or replacing older digital technology with newer digital technology. Digital solutions may enable – in addition to efficiency via automation – new types of innovation and creativity, rather than simply enhancing and supporting traditional methods.” — Wikipedia

This definition is too focused on technology as the source of the transformation instead of the transformation being driven by the needs of customers and employees. In my view, technology should always be seen simply as a tool to help achieve the desired human-centered transformation.

Too often the SaaS and Cloud vendors co-opt the true practice of digital transformation by trying to claim that a shifting from on-premise software to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is somehow a digital transformation or that going to the Cloud is the secret to everything that troubles your organization.

None of this of course is true in and of itself.

This definition of digital transformation from EnterprisersProject is a bit closer to the truth:

“Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.”

But, even this definition doesn’t go far enough…

Number One Reason Your Digital Transformation May Be Doomed to Fail

The primary reason your digital transformation will fail or take much longer than you expect, or possibly even than you can fund, is the failure of the organization to put the customer and the employee at the center of its data model and to be able to construct a fully-linked and coherent picture of every customer and employee’s body of interactions/transactions/experiences across the enterprise.

When you lack this ‘single source of truth’ and this ability to connect everything together, you greatly increase the chances that your well-intentioned digital transformation will fail or will be abandoned when you run out money.

Defining What Successful Digital Transformations Look and Sound Like

Successful digital transformations are human-centered transformations empowered and accelerated by the proper use of technology in support of the desired experiences and outcomes. You can’t have a human-centered transformation without a human-centered data model. You also can’t have a human-centered transformation without a holistic understand of what information customers and employees are looking for, what information you have, what they want to do using your digital infrastructure, what they can do with your digital infrastructure, and where the gaps are.

One of the many tools in the Change Planning Toolkit™ is a series of worksheets that help you explore these foundational questions for a successful human-centered digital transformation.

While you can improve the organization through a judicious use of technology in absence of a consciously designed human-centered data model, you cannot digitally transform the organization without doing this difficult work.

The disruption that many startups attempt against the incumbents is achieved because they start with a human-centered data model. Their approach leverages technology where appropriate to add value and remove friction from the human-centered design of their customer experience instead of trying to force customers to use new and often disparate technology experiences. It is a subtle but important distinction. We must be careful not to let the servant become the master.

So, what is driving your digital transformation?

Do you need help creating a human-centered design?

If so, contact me.

Change Planning Toolkit Backed By Million Dollar Investment

Image credit: Pixabay

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That’s Innovation with Two V’s

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innovvation starts here

Should innovation be spelled with two v’s instead of one?

With so many words starting with the letter v being so central to innovation and rolling up into two even more powerful v words, maybe we should spell it innovvation to help organizations remember to focus on the two keys to successful innovation:

  1. Value
  2. Veracity

The Importance of Value to Innovation

The first v in innovvation is value. Value is such an important v that you will hear me say often that Innovation is All About Value and is composed of three elements:

  1. Value Creation is pretty self-explanatory. Your innovation investment must create incremental or completely new value large enough to overcome the switching costs of moving to your new solution from the old solution (including the ‘Do Nothing Solution’). New value can be created by making something more efficient, more effective, possible that wasn’t possible before, or create new psychological or emotional benefits.

  2. Value Access could also be thought of as friction reduction. How easy do you make it for customers and consumers to access the value you’ve created. How well has the product or service been designed to allow people to access the value easily? How easy is it for the solution to be created? How easy is it for people to do business with you?

  3. Value Translation is all about helping people understand the value you’ve created and how it fits into their lives. Value translation is also about understanding where on a continuum between the need for explanation and education that your solution falls. Incremental innovations can usually just be explained to people because they anchor to something they already understand, but radical or disruptive innovations inevitably require some level of education (often far in advance of the launch).

All of the details of what each of these three keys to innovation success are reside in my previous article Innovation is All About Value. It’s well worth the investment of time to read it.

The Importance of Innovation Veracity

A few years ago I wrote about the importance of innovation veracity and how when it comes to innovation, veracity is all that matters. As a quick refresher, let’s look at the definition of the word veracity from our friends over at Merriam-Webster:

Veracity

1: devotion to the truth : truthfulness
2: power of conveying or perceiving truth

So, veracity is the second v in innovvation. There is probably no better way to spend your innovation time than to spend it identifying the right customer insight and the right way to communicate the solution with customers which you’ve created to serve the insight.

For the three components below that will help you get to veracity, I must give credit to the documentary A Good American (a must see). I will stay away from the politics of the movie so I don’t give away the punchline, and just say that it profiles the work of a group of computer scientists who designed a system to protect American citizens from terrorism at a lower cost and with greater privacy protections than the system that was eventually funded and profiled in a different movie – Snowden.

It’s probably no coincidence that Oliver Stone was involved with both films, but that fact is of course irrelevant to the discussion here. What is important is that the film A Good American contains great monologues by the protagonist that provide insight into the power of meta data.

As an innovation coach what’s important to me so I can help a wide variety of clients, is not the particular context of any particular client, so much as the meta information in a variety of applicable tools and frameworks that I collect or create to serve them. What’s important are the insights that can be applied across all industries and all innovation contexts.

What I’ve been able to extract out of this particular film and into the innovation context, so that I can share them with you, are the protagonist’s view of three components that help you identify signals and drive the transformation of DATA into INTELLIGENCE (or innovation veracity in our context), and they are:

  1. Volume – in order to derive meaningful conclusions you need a lot of data inputs, in this case, lots of idea fragments (ideas come later)

  2. Variety – multiple perspectives are necessary to avoid blind spots and increase the potential for connecting idea fragments

  3. Velocity – volume by itself is not enough, momentum is important too. You have to keep Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire

Conclusion

By focusing on value and veracity in our innovation efforts we will arrive at the most important goal of our innovation pursuits – and yet another v – Victory!

So dig deeply to understand where value comes from in your context, and then keep digging. Only when we truly understand the sources of value in any particular context can we create new sources of value for the value consumers in that context, create the proper means of accessing the value, and translate that value for people in the context and in adjacent contexts that might expand the consumption of the new value.

And strive to also understand the indisputable truths in your context that will enable you to achieve the veracity and the resonance you will need to renew the organization’s permission to exist in your context, fuel your continued success, and ensure your next victory.

Download the PDF version here:

Innovation Should be Spelled with Two V's PDF

Keep innovating!

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