Agile Innovation: The Ultimate Oxymoron?
Innovation teams are under immense pressure to generate new revenue and profit, quickly. A common criticism of front-end-of-innovation (FEI) assignments is that they are time-consuming and lack agility. Indeed, there are many ways that these assignments can “go off the rails.” The worst possible outcome is when the cross-functional team is not aligned on the insights and opportunities. Critical momentum is lost, launch deadlines delayed,...
Read more
Thanksgiving: Many Lessons in Innovation
I recently completed a fascinating article about the history of Thanksgiving in the U.S. Despite what you might think, the “first feast” was meager consisting of seafood, wild game, and raw pumpkin and cranberries. (Note the exclusion of fried turkey, pumpkin pie and cranberry relish.) Another fun fact: forks didn’t exist. Historians have confirmed that our first Thanksgiving was eaten using the hands, a knife,...
Read more
Survive The FEI!
One of our clients recently referred to the front-end-of-innovation (FEI) as a “simmering pot of ideas, opportunities, opinions, politics, and fear.” In response, I quipped, “remind me not to ask you for a testimonial for our next brochure.” Seriously though, these feelings were founded as this client had recently completed its first ever investment in a formal FEI assignment. Not to mention, this client also...
Read more
Strategies for Better Customer Journey Maps
Tell me about the last time you bought a new mattress. Tell me everything that went into that purchase—the time spent researching, mattress stores visited, even the nights spent tossing and turning while deciding you really did need a new mattress. Before you start emailing me about your mattress-buying experiences, know that I’m only trying to make a point. It’s a pretty daunting task to...
Read more
The Irony of the “Creative”
Creativity is a uniquely human trait and is essential to innovation. In product and service development, creativity is the evolution of something new or approaching a problem in a manner not considered before. All of us have creative capacity and approach generative thinking differently, but there is an innovation archetype, the Creative, that is hard-wired for the task. The skills of this archetype are needed...
Read more