Tag Archives: ideas

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of March 2025

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of March 2025Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are March’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Turning Bold Ideas into Tangible Results — by Robyn Bolton
  2. Leading Through Complexity and Uncertainty — by Greg Satell
  3. Empathy is a Vital Tool for Stronger Teams — by Stefan Lindegaard
  4. The Role Platforms Play in Business Networks — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  5. Inspiring Innovation — by John Bessant
  6. Six Keys to Effective Teamwork — by David Burkus
  7. Product-Lifecycle Management 2.0 — by Dr. Matthew Heim
  8. 5 Business Myths You Cannot Afford to Believe — by Shep Hyken
  9. What Great Ideas Feel Like — by Mike Shipulski
  10. Better Decision Making at Speed — by Mike Shipulski

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

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

SPECIAL BONUS: While supplies last, you can get the hardcover version of my first bestselling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire for 44% OFF until Amazon runs out of stock or changes the price. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while it lasts!

Build a Common Language of Innovation on your team

Have something to contribute?

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

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

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

What Great Ideas Feel Like

What Great Ideas Feel Like

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you have a reasonably good idea, someone will steal it, make it their own and take credit. No worries, this is what happens with reasonably good ideas.

If you have a really good idea, you’ll have to explain it several times before anyone understands it. Then, once they understand, you’ll have to help them figure out how to realize value from the idea. And after several failed attempts at implementation, you’ll have to help them adjust their approach so they can implement successfully. Then, after the success, someone will make it their own and take credit. No worries, this is what happens with really good ideas.

When you have an idea so good that it threatens the Status Quo, you’ll get ridiculed. You’ll have to present the idea once every three months for two years. The negativity will decrease slowly, and at the end of two years the threatening idea will get downgraded to a really good idea. Then it will follow the wandering path to success described above. Don’t feel special. This is how it goes with ideas good enough to threaten.

And then there’s the rarified category that few know about. This is the idea that’s so orthogonal it scares even you. This idea takes a year or two of festering before you can scratch the outer shell of it. Then it takes another year before you can describe it to yourself. And then it takes another year before you can bring yourself to speak of it. And then it takes another six months before you share it outside your trust network. And where the very best ideas get ridiculed, with this type of idea people don’t talk about the idea at all, they just think you’ve gone off the deep end and become unhinged. This class of idea is so heretical it makes people uncomfortable just to be near you. Needless to say, this class of idea makes for a wild ride.

Good ideas make people uncomfortable. That’s just the way it is. But don’t let this get in the way. More than that, I urge you to see the push-back and discomfort as measures of the idea’s goodness.

If there’s no discomfort, ridicule or fear, the idea simply isn’t good enough.

Image credits: misterinnovation.com (1 of 850+ free quote slides for download)

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Stop Doubling Down on Bad Ideas

Stop Doubling Down On Bad Ideas

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Over the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to lead a number of organizations and each one involved a series of steep learning curves. Even the most successful operations do some things poorly, so managing an enterprise involves constant improvement. You always want to figure out where you can do things better.

One way to do that is to identify other organizations that do something well and adopt best practices. Copying what others do won’t make you world class, but it will get you started on the right road. Over time, you can learn which practices are a good fit for your organization and which are not. As you progress, you can begin to develop your own capabilities.

What you don’t want to do is to take bad ideas that have failed try and force them through, yet it happens all the time. Business pundits and consultants don’t stop selling zombie ideas just because they don’t work and people don’t stop getting taken in by slick sales jobs. We need to be much more discerning about the ideas we adopt. Here are some to watch out for.

The War On Talent

When some McKinsey consultants came up with the idea of a war for talent in 1998, it made a lot of sense. In a knowledge economy, your people are your greatest resource. Creating a culture of excellence, rewarding top employees and pruning out the laggards just seemed like such an obvious formula for success that few questioned it.

However, even early on some began to see flaws. Just a few years after McKinsey launched the concept, Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer explained how study after study refuted the “War for Talent” hypothesis. He found that firms who followed the “talent war mind set” ended up actually undermining their people and overemphasizing recruiting from outside.

Even worse, McKinsey’s approach often creates a corrosive culture. By valuing individual accomplishment over teamwork, leaders set up a competitive dynamic that discourages collaboration while sabotaging the knowledge transfer that promotes learning new skills and improves performance. In a New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell explained how that kind of competitive dynamic contributed to Enron’s downfall.

The truth is that you don’t need the best people, you need the best teams and that requires a very different approach. Fostering collaboration requires an environment of psychological safety, not a series of performance review cage matches. Talent isn’t something you attract and bid for, it is something you build.

The Cult Of Disruption

It’s become fashionable to say that we live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). The term first arose in the aftermath of the Cold War, when a relatively stable conflict between two global superpowers fragmented into a multipolar multiethnic clash of civilizations. Today, however, it has become so firmly entrenched in the business lexicon that nobody even thinks to question it. Change has become gospel.

If you see the world in turmoil, the only sensible strategy is to constantly change and adapt. Perhaps just as importantly, in a corporate setting you need to be seen as changing and adapting. In this environment, managers have significant incentives to launch multiple initiatives aimed at transforming every aspect of the enterprise.

Yet do businesses really face a VUCA environment? The evidence seems to point in the opposite direction. A Brookings report showed that business has become less dynamic, with less churn among industry leaders and fewer new entrants. Research from the National Bureau of Economic Research found decreased competitive environments. A report from the IMF also suggests that these trends have worsened during the pandemic.

Make no mistake, all of the happy talk about change has a real cost. A study undertaken by PwC found that 65% of executives surveyed complained about change fatigue, and only about half felt their organization could deliver change successfully. 44% said that they don’t understand the change they’re being asked to make, and 38% say they don’t agree with it.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it found that most people have come to view new transformation initiatives suspiciously, taking a “wait and see” attitude undermining the momentum and leading to a”boomerang effect” in which early progress is reversed when leadership moves on to focus other priorities. In other words, we’re basically talking change to death.

Marching On Washington

The March on Washington remains one of the most iconic moments in American history. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech continues to inspire people around the world. The events of that day surely contributed to the successful passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and made the world a better place.

So it’s no wonder that it seems like every time someone has an idea for change they plan a march. Yet the most salient aspect of over 100 years of marches on Washington is that none, except that one in 1963, have really accomplished much. In fact the very first one, in support of women’s suffrage in 1913, was a full blown disaster.

It’s not just social revolutionaries that make this mistake. Corporate change advocates have their own version of marching on Washington. They set up a big kickoff event to “create a sense of urgency” around change and use stark language like “innovate or die” and “burning platform” to make change seem inevitable.

The problem is that if a change is important and has real potential to impact what people believe and what they do, there will always be those who will hate it and they will work to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. Creating a lot of noise at the beginning of an initiative, before any real progress has been made, just gives your opposition a head start in their efforts to kill it off.

Closing The Knowing-Doing Gap

Business today moves fast. So we like simple statements that speak to larger truths. It always seems that if we can find a simple rule of thumb—or maybe 3 to 5 bullet points for the really big picture stuff—managing a business would be much easier. Whenever a decision needs to be made, we could simply refer to the rule and go on with our day.

Unfortunately, that often leads to cartoonish slogans rather than genuine managerial wisdom. Catchy ideas like “the war for talent,” “a VUCA world” and “creating a sense of urgency around change” end up taking the place of thorough analysis and good sense. When that happens, we’re in big trouble.

The problem is, as Ludwig Wittgenstein pointed out, “no course of action can be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule.” Rules often appear to make sense on the surface, but when we try to apply them in the real world we run into trouble. We live in a complex universe and oversimplifying it leads us astray.

We need to stop worshiping the cult of ideas and start focusing on the problems we need to solve. The truth is that the real world is a confusing place. We have little choice but to walk the earth, pick things up along the way and make the best judgments we can. The decisions we make are highly situational and defy hard and fast rules. There is no algorithm for life. You have to actually live it, see what happens and learn from your mistakes.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to join 17,000+ leaders getting Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to their inbox every week.

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2024

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of September 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are September’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Three Reasons Nobody Cares About Your Ideas — by Greg Satell
  2. Six Key Habits of Great Leaders — by David Burkus
  3. Are You Leading in the Wrong Zone? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  4. Projects Don’t Go All Right or All Wrong — by Howard Tiersky
  5. How to Cultivate Respect as a Leader — by David Burkus
  6. What is Your Mindset? Fixed, Growth or Hybrid? — by Stefan Lindegaard
  7. Embracing Failure is a Catalyst for Learning and Innovation — by Stefan Lindegaard
  8. ISO Innovation Standards — by Robyn Bolton
  9. The Hidden Cost of Waiting — by Mike Shipulski
  10. AI Requires Conversational Intelligence — by Greg Satell

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

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

SPECIAL BONUS – THREE DAYS ONLY: From now until 11:59PM ET you can get either the eBook or the hardcover version of the SECOND EDITION of my latest bestselling book Charting Change for 50% OFF using code FLSH50. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while supplies last!

Accelerate your change and transformation success

Have something to contribute?

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

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

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Why Organizations Struggle with Innovation

Why Organizations Struggle with Innovation

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

We all know the world is changing rapidly. It’s clear that in order for organizations to remain relevant to the next generation of customers, and even in the next generation of technology, we must adapt, evolve and transform. The field is littered with once-great companies who failed to do this: Blackberry, Nokia, Kodak, Borders, Western Union, Blockbuster, Polaroid.

But accepting major change, or even in some cases small changes, isn’t easy for large companies. At Innovation Loft we’ve worked with scores of major brands on their efforts to conceive, create and launch new products, enter new markets, redefine their value propositions and distribution strategies, and address various types of transformations. We’ve seen some spectacular successes and some tragic near misses. In watching these innovation stories unfold, we’ve concluded that there are three key reasons why innovations fail.

Three Key Reasons Innovations Fail:

  1. The Wrong Idea
  2. Failure to Execute
  3. Sabotage!

It’s important to keep these three domains of risk in mind when approaching any innovation project, and a lot of our work at Innovation Loft is focused on how to manage and mitigate risks in each of these three categories. Let’s look at these one at a time:

1. The Wrong Idea

Change is not always good. New is not always popular. How can you tell the right ideas from the wrong ones? Here are a few practices that can make a big difference.

Focus on Customer Needs

It may seem like Apple has made its success on delivering customers new capabilities they “didn’t know they needed.” And that may be true in the sense that if you had asked customers, they might not have articulated a desire for an iPod or an iPad. However, if you focused on observing consumers in their day-to-day interactions back then, the challenge of dealing with dozens or more CDs, and the decision about which ones to bring clearly created a “pain point.” Fast forward a few years. People trying to curl up with their laptop in bed to watch a movie was clearly awkward, and watching a movie on a small iPhone was also sub-optimal. Apple identified gaps they could fill. Many unsuccessful ideas lack a clear customer value proposition and are based on the assumptions of a benefit consumers will eventually realize.

Test and Iterate

Think of product development as a spiral. Test the simplest, lowest-cost version of your product (even if it’s a paper mockup) to get early feedback from users. Continue that process each step of the way, through launch and beyond, to really understand how consumers are using your product and where it may need improvement.

Pivot

Ultimately, don’t fall in love with your idea. Focus on the value you can create for your customers. Even with the first two points in this list, you can still find yourself launching the wrong idea. That’s the risk of innovation. In a large corporate environment, it’s important to set the expectation up front that there will be flexibility on redefining the product, even substantially, as the project goes on. While this approach may not be consistent with typical enterprise “capital budgeting” processes, it’s critical to the success of innovative projects.

2. Failure to Execute

Even if you have the right idea, you can fail to execute. Effective execution is measured by quality, speed, and communication.

Quality: Does the product fulfill the vision? An initial version of a product may not be as feature-rich as future releases (the original iPhone did not allow copy and paste, let alone the downloading of apps!) The key test is not comprehensive features but doing a few things very well.

Speed: In a world of innovation, we are always in competition. At the initial launch of Android, it was clearly behind the curve compared to iOS. Over time, Android was able to catch up and eventually exceed iOS sales. The two remain locked in an arms race for higher standards and better capabilities, and the timing of improvements clearly has a substantial impact. Nevertheless, Android’s story demonstrates that even with a late start, one can catch up. Kyocera and Nokia were in the market with smartphones several years before Apple.

Communication: Peter Drucker said, “Business has just two functions: innovation and marketing.” The two must go hand-in-hand. Apple’s genius has been the marriage of a great product with great communication.

3. Sabotage

Companies are designed to resist change. Classic business books define how organizations must specify roles and clear processes for how to operate. But this resistance to change is misplaced when it comes to innovation. We’ve seen many great projects killed in infancy, or even after launch and initial success, due to areas of an organization whose interests would be threatened by the success of that transformation.

If a new product or project is truly going to be transformational for your company, expect it to have enemies. These enemies’ very survival (or their perception of it) may be at stake. Many innovative products that were on the path to “saving the company” are killed through internal sabotage. As soon as there is any misstep in an innovation initiative — as there always is — forces are ready to pounce and convince the powers-that-be that it’s time to “put it out of its misery.” Can you imagine Apple killing the iPhone over Antennaegate or the Apple Maps debacle?

How can you avoid sabotage? One tactic is trying to gain as much organizational alignment as possible during each step of the innovation process. Don’t assume that because a solution seems “obvious” to your team that others will automatically support it. Involving key executives, in addition to as many parts of the organization as possible, will garner more support. Give team members the chance to participate and feel ownership of the initiative. In the words of Harry Truman:

“It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

So how do you figure out the right answer, get everyone on the same page, and focus on a common innovation goal? At FROM, we use a specific model to approach the process of identifying the most relevant opportunity areas for innovation, and to build group consensus around the best approach. You’ll have to adapt it to your situation, but the model should provide a good starting framework.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog
Image Credits: Unsplash

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

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

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

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are July’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. 95% of Work is Noise — by Mike Shipulski
  2. Four Characteristics of High Performing Teams — by David Burkus
  3. 39 Digital Transformation Hacks — by Stefan Lindegaard
  4. How to Create Personas That Matter — by Braden Kelley
  5. The Real Problem with Problems — by Mike Shipulski
  6. A Triumph of Artificial Intelligence Rhetoric — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  7. Ideas Have Limited Value — by Greg Satell
  8. Three Cognitive Biases That Can Kill Innovation — by Greg Satell
  9. Navigating the AI Revolution — by Teresa Spangler
  10. How to Make Navigating Ambiguity a Super Power — by Robyn Bolton

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

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

Have something to contribute?

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

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

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Five Keys to Leading Creative Teams Successfully

Five Keys to Leading Creative Teams Successfully

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Creativity is a team sport.

It’s been that way for a long time. But the level of teamwork required to solve problems and find innovation has increased over the last decade and even century. Most of the simple problems of the world have been solved, and the ones that remain are too often too complex to be solved by any lone, individual genius.

But not all teams fair equally when it comes to creative tasks, because many team leaders are better prepared to lead teams where the work is simple and easy to define. When reaching team goals is ambiguous and requires more creative thinking it also requires a different type of leadership.

In this article, we’ll outline those differences. We’ll cover five ways to lead creative teams.

1. Show Them the Constraints

The first way to lead creative teams is to show them the constraints. It may sound a little counterintuitive—after all aren’t we supposed to “think outside the box”? But one of the first things creative teams need is an understanding of the constraints of the problem—of the box their answer needs to fit inside. Research suggests creativity is more activated when people understand the constraints of the problem. Constraints aide in the convergent thinking of sifting through ideas that needs to accompany the divergent thinking of generating lots of ideas. You need both. But you need constraints first so that people know ahead of time how to judge the ideas they generate.

2. Support Their Ideas

The second way to lead creative teams is to support their ideas. Nothing stops the creative flow of ideas on a team more than hearing “That’ll never work” or “That’s not how we do things around here.” Leaders need to champion the ideas their team puts forward, at least until the idea generation phase is complete. When people think their leadership isn’t going to consider their ideas, they stop sharing them. Leaders need to not only support ideas when the team is discussing them, but also support ideas when it comes to selling them up the chain of approval needed to implement the idea. Without that support, people just stop trying.

3. Teach Them to Fight Right

The third way to lead creative teams is to teach them to fight right. We like to think of creative teams as fun and cohesive. But the opposite is true. There’s a lot of friction on a creative team. And research suggests that the most creative teams leverage task-focused conflict to generate more and better ideas. But those teams also know how to keep it task-focused and keep it from devolving into personality fights and hurt feelings. And often that requires leaders who can demonstrate and teach their people to fight for their ideas, but not fight their teammates.

4. Test What You Can

The fourth way to lead creative teams is to test what you can. Ideally, teams are going to generate a lot of different ideas. And it’s a bad idea to chase consensus and settle on an idea too soon. Instead, the most creative teams test out multiple different ideas to learn more from what worked and didn’t work, and then combine those lessons into a new and better idea. But too often, leaders facilitate a brainstorming session, circle the idea they like best, and that’s the end of it. Instead, the best leaders test as much as they can as often as they can.

5. Celebrate Their Failures

The final way to lead creative teams is to celebrate their failures. If you’re testing a lot of ideas, your team will fail. But if they fail small on a test, they’ll reduce the chances of failing big later. In addition, failures carry all sorts of lessons that can be learned to better understand the problem and generate even better ideas. That doesn’t happen unless the team understands that failure is part of the process, which is why the best leaders celebrate the risks that team members took and the learning moments their failures generated.

In fact, that’s why all five of these methods shouldn’t be looked at as a linear process. Creativity is an iterative process of ideation, testing, failure, learning, ideation, and more testing and failure. The best leaders know the goal isn’t to get it done, but to keep getting better. And that goes for the creative process, but also the team culture. The goal is to keep getting better until everyone can do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on May 24, 2022.

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Rapid Prototyping: Bringing Ideas to Life Quickly

Rapid Prototyping: Bringing Ideas to Life Quickly

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the fast-paced world of innovation, speed is often synonymous with success. Rapid prototyping has emerged as a crucial strategy in bringing ideas to life promptly and efficiently. This methodology not only accelerates the design process but also significantly reduces the risk of failure by fostering an iterative and flexible approach to product development.

What is Rapid Prototyping?

Rapid prototyping is a group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) data. It enables innovators to explore and visualize concepts, test ideas, and gain timely feedback from stakeholders. The resulting prototypes can range from simple sketches to 3D-printed models, each providing valuable insights that inform future iterations.

Case Study 1: Revolutionizing Healthcare with 3D Printing

XYZ Medical Corp, a leading innovator in the healthcare industry, faced the challenge of designing custom prosthetics that were both affordable and efficient. By implementing rapid prototyping, they harnessed the power of 3D printing to create prosthetic models in a fraction of the time traditional methods would take.

Through iterative testing and feedback from patients, XYZ Medical Corp was able to refine their designs rapidly. This approach not only reduced production time but also increased the customization options available to patients, ultimately enhancing user experience and trust in the company’s products. This case demonstrates how rapid prototyping can lead to revolutionary advancements in product design and patient care.

Case Study 2: Transforming Automotive Design at FastCar Inc.

FastCar Inc., a pioneering name in the automotive sector, aimed to drastically enhance their vehicle design process. By adopting rapid prototyping, they were able to shift from traditional clay modeling to digital modeling and 3D printing.

FastCar Inc. utilized virtual reality and augmented reality to create immersive prototypes that allowed designers, engineers, and customers to interact with car models before physical production commenced. This deepened understanding highlighted design flaws and areas for improvement early on, ultimately cutting down development cycles by over 30%. This case highlights how rapid prototyping can adapt businesses to new market demands quicker, staying ahead in competitive industries.

The Impact of Rapid Prototyping

Rapid prototyping democratizes the innovation process, creating a more inclusive environment where cross-functional teams can collaborate effectively. By visualizing ideas early and often, teams can align more easily on goals and priorities. Furthermore, the ability to quickly test and iterate reduces risk and fosters a culture of learning and adaptation.

Whether it’s revolutionizing healthcare or transforming automotive design, rapid prototyping proves to be a powerful tool in the innovator’s toolkit. As industries continue to evolve and customer demands change, the capacity to bring ideas to life swiftly will mark the difference between leaders and followers in the market.

Embracing rapid prototyping is not just about keeping up with competition—it’s about setting a new pace for innovation. This forward momentum catalyzes creativity, encourages experimentation, and ultimately leads to products that not only meet but exceed user expectations.

SPECIAL BONUS: The very best change planners use a visual, collaborative approach to create their deliverables. A methodology and tools like those in Change Planning Toolkit™ can empower anyone to become great change planners themselves.

Image credit: misterinnovation.com

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

From Idea to Execution: Best Practices for Innovating Successfully

From Idea to Execution: Best Practices for Innovating SuccessfullyGUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Innovation is at the heart of progress. It drives companies to new heights and fuels economic growth. However, transforming an idea into a successful reality requires careful planning, strategic thinking, and flawless execution. In this article, we will explore the best practices for innovating successfully by analyzing two inspiring case studies.

Case Study 1: Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. is renowned for its innovative products that have revolutionized entire industries. One of their most memorable successes was the launch of the iPhone in 2007. What made this innovation exceptional was not just the creation of a new smartphone but the integration of multiple functions in a single device. Apple not only developed a powerful touchscreen phone but also designed an intuitive operating system and an App Store ecosystem that allowed developers to create versatile applications.

The key lesson from Apple’s success is the importance of thinking holistically. Innovation should not be limited to individual features or products. Instead, organizations should strive to create an ecosystem that provides a seamless experience to customers. By considering the entire user journey and designing complementary products or services, companies can differentiate themselves and capture market share effectively.

Case Study 2: Airbnb

Another remarkable success story is Airbnb. Founded in 2008, this online marketplace disrupted the traditional accommodation sector by connecting travelers with homeowners renting out their properties. The company’s success can be attributed to its ability to understand and adapt to changing customer needs. Airbnb recognized that travelers were seeking unique and personalized experiences rather than conventional hotel stays.

To ensure successful execution, Airbnb built a platform that focused on trust and community. By establishing rigorous verification processes, providing accurate reviews, and fostering a sense of belonging among hosts and guests, the company created a strong foundation for growth. Moreover, Airbnb’s strategy of gradually expanding its offerings beyond accommodations, such as “Experiences,” further strengthened its position in the market.

The key lesson from Airbnb’s success lies in continuous adaptation and responding to evolving customer demands. Successful innovation requires companies to be agile and open to learning from feedback. By staying connected to their customers and actively seeking their input, organizations can develop offerings that cater to their changing needs.

Best Practices for Innovating Successfully

1. Foster a culture of innovation: Encourage employees to think creatively and provide them with the resources and support to explore new ideas. Innovation should be ingrained in the company’s DNA.

2. Identify customer pain points: Truly innovative solutions address real-world problems. Invest time in understanding your customers’ pain points and use them as a basis for your innovation efforts.

3. Focus on the user experience: Innovation should enhance the overall experience for customers. Design products and services that are intuitive, user-friendly, and seamlessly integrated.

4. Build cross-functional teams: Successful innovation requires collaboration across different departments and disciplines. Encourage diverse perspectives by assembling teams with varied skill sets and backgrounds.

5. Test and iterate: Embrace a mindset of continuous improvement. Test your innovations, collect feedback, and iterate based on the insights gained. Rapid prototyping and minimum viable products can help gauge market response before full-scale implementation.

6. Create a supportive ecosystem: Just as Apple and Airbnb understood the importance of building an ecosystem around their innovations, consider how your innovation fits into the broader customer experience. Develop partnerships and collaborations that reinforce the value proposition of your offering.

Conclusion

Innovation is an iterative process that requires a thorough understanding of customer needs, a holistic approach, and continuous adaptation. By drawing inspiration from successful case studies like Apple and Airbnb, organizations can enhance their innovation capabilities and bring groundbreaking ideas to life. Embrace the best practices outlined here, and unleash the potential of your organization to innovate successfully.

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

Image credit: Misterinnovation.com

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Get Social with Your Innovation

Get Social with Your InnovationIf your organization is struggling to sustain its innovation efforts, then I hope you will do the following things.

  • Find the purpose and passion that everyone can rally around.
  • Create the flexibility necessary to deal with the constant change that a focus on innovation requires for both customers and the organization.
  • Make innovation the social activity it truly must be for you to become successful.

If your organization has lost the courage to move innovation to its center and has gotten stuck in a project – focused, reactive innovation approach, then now is your chance to regain the higher ground and to refocus, not on having an innovation success but on building an innovation capability. Are you up to the challenge?

There is a great article “ Passion versus Obsession ” by John Hagel that explores the differences between passion and obsession. This is an important distinction to understand in order to make sure you are hiring people to power your innovation efforts who are passionate and not obsessive. Here are a few key quotes from the article:

“The first significant difference between passion and obsession is the role free will plays in each disposition: passionate people fight their way willingly to the edge to find places where they can pursue their passions more freely, while obsessive people (at best) passively drift there or (at worst) are exiled there.”

“It’s not an accident that we speak of an “object of obsession,” but the “subject of passion.” That’s because obsession tends towards highly specific focal points or goals, whereas passion is oriented toward networked, diversified spaces.”

More quotes from the John Hagel article:

“The subjects of passion invite and even demand connections with others who share the passion.”

“Because passionate people are driven to create as a way to grow and achieve their potential, they are constantly seeking out others who share their passion in a quest for collaboration, friction and inspiration . . . . The key difference between passion and obsession is fundamentally social: passion helps build relationships and obsession inhibits them.”

“It has been a long journey and it is far from over, but it has taught me that obsession confines while passion liberates.”

These quotes from John Hagel’s article are important because they reinforce the notion that innovation is a social activity. While many people give Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and the modern-day equivalent, Dean Kamen, credit for being lone inventors, the fact is that the lone inventor myth is just that — a myth, one which caused me to create The Nine Innovation Roles.

The fact is that all of these gentlemen had labs full of people who shared their passion for creative pursuits. Innovation requires collaboration, either publicly or privately, and is realized as an outcome of three social activities.

1. Social Inputs

From the very beginning when an organization is seeking to identify key insights to base an innovation strategy or project on, organizations often use ethnographic research, focus groups, or other very social methods to get at the insights. Great innovators also make connections to other industries and other disciplines to help create the great in sights that inspire great solutions.

2. Social Evolution

We usually have innovation teams in organizations, not sole inventors, and so the activity of transforming the seeds of useful invention into a solution valued above every existing alternative is very social. It takes a village of passionate villagers to transform an idea into an innovation in the marketplace. Great innovators make connections inside the organization to the people who can ask the right questions, uncover the most important weaknesses, help solve the most difficult challenges, and help break down internal barriers within the organization — all in support of creating a better solution.

3. Social Execution

The same customer group that you may have spent time with, seeking to understand, now requires education to show them that they really need the solution that all of their actions and behaviors indicated they needed at the beginning of the process. This social execution includes social outputs like trials, beta programs, trade show booths, and more. Great innovators have the patience to allow a new market space to mature, and they know how to grow the demand while also identifying the key shortcomings with customers who are holding the solution back from mass acceptance.

Conclusion

When it comes to insights, these three activities are not completely discrete. Insights do not expose themselves only in the social inputs phase, but can also expose themselves in other phases — if you’re paying attention.

Flickr famously started out as a company producing a video game in the social inputs phase, but was astute enough during the social execution phase to recognize that the most used feature was one that allowed people to share photos. Recognizing that there was an unmet market need amongst customers for easy sharing of photos, Flickr reoriented its market solution from video game to photo sharing site and reaped millions of dollars in the process when they ultimately sold their site to Yahoo!.

Ultimately, action is more important than intent, and so as an innovator you must always be listening and watching to see what people do and not just what they say. Build your solution on the wrong insight and nobody will be beating a path to your door.

NOTE: This article is an adaptation of some of the great content in my five-star book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire (available in many local libraries and fine booksellers everywhere).

Build a Common Language of Innovation

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.