The upside of these projects is they always work — that is, we always uncover unmet needs and generate novel ideas. The downside to these projects is they always work. In short, innovation assignments can be like drinking from a firehose.

Oftentimes, the success of these projects is wrongly judged by quantity of output. Lack of content is rarely the issue; maintaining focus on the opportunities is the secret sauce.

Consider this typical outcome of an innovation assignment: 50 in-depth interviews generate 200+ need statements. Internal synthesis and a quantitative study reduce this down to 20 broad needs. In ideation, these 20 needs are then expanded to 200+ ideas.

After an innovation assignment, the organization begins the meticulous process of vetting ideas. What were once considered “great ideas” get shifted around based on feasibility, cost to develop, timelines, and the business case.

Research from the Kellogg School at Northwestern shows the creative process really does not (and should not) end after formal ideation. In fact, the process of vetting existing ideas often generates even more new and novel solutions.

This continuous cycle of divergence—convergence—and divergence is a lot to manage and can bog things down. The remedy: stay focused on the Opportunity Areas (OAs).

The key deliverable of any innovation assignment is validated OAs. In short, OAs are the focus areas of your innovation roadmap. OAs emerge from a common bundle of unmet needs (where customer intensity is high and satisfaction with current options is low). Some organizations refer to these as platforms. Regardless of what you call it, OAs are the strategic glue that holds everything together.

The secret is to make a commitment to the OAs and stay focused on them as existing ideas are vetted and new ideas emerge. Where organizations run into trouble is they lose focus of the OAs and get swallowed up by an ever-growing pool of ideas.

The post You Said Fill the Pipeline appeared first on StandPoint.

However, it all depends on who you engage.  And, as it relates to innovation work, it pays to break some rules.

One of our most successful ideation sessions involved people who were not even category users.  Our client thought we were crazy when we suggested the inclusion of single men in an ideation session to make the setup of play pens easier.  Turns out they had really good ideas. Current and expectant moms had too many learned behaviors.

Speaking of low-engagement categories:  how often do you think about the HVAC air filter in your home?  You are not alone if you said about 1-2 times a year and only when the thought pops into your head. Knowing this the norm:  is it possible to make qualitative research more fruitful? Of course.

First, don’t limit the discussion to air filters. Talk more broadly about maintaining “healthy air quality” in the home. Then only invite those who have (or who have a family member) with a chronic respiratory problem. Trust me:  you’ll spot many ideas and accepted beliefs that are relevant to the rest of us.

You ready to shake things up?  Let’s get started.

The post Qualitative Research: Shake Things Up appeared first on StandPoint.

Last week I attended a local workshop related to “fixing innovation.” A lot of energy was spent on how to tune up the engine through better people management and processes. While important, the root need of most attendees was oil in the engine they already had. In this case, the oil was a robust idea bank or a systematic way to manage and vet the ideas coming at them.

Of the 30 attendees, only one had an innovation roadmap. That is, they invested in rigorous voice-of-customer research that clearly pinpointed the areas of opportunity. Once done, they focused their ideation. They prioritized incoming ideas based on how well they fit the opportunity.

Our recommendation:  innovation processes always need tweaking. Engines will run smoother after a tune-up. But any mechanic will tell you that long-term performance of the engine really depends on how much attention you pay to the oil.

How much oil is in your engine? Check out our Get Smart Brief on Questions to Ask Yourself Before You “Innovate”.

The post A Well-Run Engine Still Needs Oil appeared first on StandPoint.

What we find more often is that businesses are drowning in ideas. That is, they have too many ideas and not enough resources to pursue them all. The more ideas, the harder it becomes to narrow which ideas are worth moving forward with, and many businesses lack a framework by which to prioritize ideas. In short, companies are good at creating ideas, but not necessarily good at recognizing valuable ones.

That said, there are several strategies that companies can use to evaluate ideas, so you don’t have to feel lost at sea. Historically, the most widely used is feasibility vs. market potential. This looks at how feasible it would be for the business to offer the product or service compared to the strength of the market need for the product or service. For example, ideas scoring high on both feasibility and market potential should be advanced. If a product has high feasibility but low market potential, don’t bother.

A recent article by the Harvard Business Review considers a different framework, cost vs. relative benefits, which they equate to efficiency. “Efficiency: how well each assessed unit converts the resources it uses (inputs) into outcomes (outputs).” Sometimes, a product’s value doesn’t always equate to sales, but there can still be value in the form of customer brand loyalty or satisfaction.

There are many ways to calculate the cost or feasibility of implementing a new product or service – usually companies are good at making these estimates. But evaluating the market potential or relative benefits can be more challenging, and it’s often helpful to bring in an objective third party to help evaluate this to avoid internal biases from getting in the way of good ideas.

When we look at market potential, we’re listening for two things:

1. Can the target articulate the benefit of the product/service? If customers can clearly see how the product would benefit them, they’re more likely to try it. If they’re struggling to do so, it may mean that the benefit is weak or lacking.
2. How excited are they about it? Not all benefits are created equal. Sometimes customers will call an idea “good” even if they’re on the fence. But when there’s something that they really want, it will show in their voice and enthusiasm. We often call this the “Gotta have it,” and it can help separate ideas with low value for customers from those with higher value.

Evaluating ideas can feel overwhelming, but hopefully these strategies can buoy your innovation pipeline. If you’d like to learn more about prioritizing business ideas, read this article by the Harvard Business Review.

The post Drowning in Ideas appeared first on StandPoint.

In a recent study published in Harvard Business Review (HBR), the most successful innovators (as defined by growth rate in new-to-world products and services) were those that deliberately targeted consumers’ “higher order needs.”  As society progresses and more basic needs (physiological and safety) are met, these higher-order needs rise in importance.

Comprehending how a product idea or marketing campaign connects to these motivations is very important when gauging potential.

The healthcare ecosystem is perfect for examining these motivations at play.  Numerous studies have shown that the adoption of new products and services depends on the decisions of 6-7 different people but navigating the ecosystem and driving consensus takes 1-2 champions.  While everyone may believe in the functional benefits of your product, the champion is likely acting on higher order needs such as belongingness and achievement.  The ability to find and inspire a champion is a make-it or break-it milestone.

The good news is that these motivations and beliefs are discoverable.  These topics are more easily queried in a one-on-one encounter.  Getting there requires a high level of trust between the study participant and the interviewer.  Peeling back the onion through careful questioning takes years of practice.

Another lesson from the above-mentioned HBR study:  the most successful innovators are aiming high.  That is, they are tackling bigger problems globally.  Meeting a consumers’ needs may go beyond solving inconveniences and annoyances—it may be comprehending the things Maslow said truly motivate people to act.  A good reason to dust off that old psychology book.

The post Maslow was Right appeared first on StandPoint.

As we further discussed our shared experience, I asked what outcomes weren’t expected.  His answer was instructive because the value of these assignments extends beyond a full funnel of ideas and a slate of promising concepts.  He also shared that there were some unintended consequences that no one planned for:

• For the first time in a long time, there was clear alignment between marketing and R&D. A key deliverable for a FEI assignment is an innovation roadmap—an indispensable tool for an agile organization.
• The sheer volume of output was unexpected and frankly “overwhelming.” FEI assignments can be very productive, and an infrastructure is required to manage the flow of ideas and concepts through the innovation process.
• A clearer understanding of insight-driven innovation versus needs-based innovation and the merits of designing products around an inherent belief or motivation vs. what people literally tell you.

The story ends well.  While his first remarks about the experience were a bit frightening, they survived the FEI and are well on their way to realizing some big wins.

A lot was learned in completing this assignment, and we consider ourselves fortunate that the client shared the true impact it made.

The post Survive The FEI! appeared first on StandPoint.

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 in the more abstract areas of the front end of innovation:  generation of insights, identification of opportunity areas, and especially ideation.

The irony is that traditional ideation techniques are anathema to the Creative archetype.

For reasons unknown, the Creative archetype skews toward introversion.  This does not imply that the Creative archetype is the aloof artist—what this really means is that this person prefers to think, and problem solve, alone.  Throwing the Creative archetype into a room with 15 people for mental extraction games is not ideal.

This is not to say the Creative won’t participate in group exercises.  However, they won’t be at their best unless they see the big picture (e.g. strategy, key insights, opportunity areas), and have had some advance time to think.

In group settings, Creatives often take the back seat while the extroverts take the spotlight and the logicians criticize.  Once the Creative can get a word in edgewise and feel safe from judgement, their contribution is substantive.

Maximizing the effectiveness of team ideation (or any group session) requires an understanding of how people acquire and process information.  Increasingly, our success is dependent on creativity.  Ironically, the way we approach creative problem solving (large cross-functional team meetings) is not always optimal.

The good news is that there are simple fixes to the ideation process to make it a better experience for the Creative — and frankly, for everyone!

Read about StandPoint’s Quartet approach to ideation.

The post The Irony of the “Creative” appeared first on StandPoint.

The irony is that concept testing is a highly intuitive exercise. In short, we are asking many people to judge the merit of an idea by providing them only the big picture. For highly-sensory people, it is more difficult to process an abstraction, imagine how it will fit into their daily life, and ladder up to benefits. Every day, we see this dynamic in qualitative research, and we know it is happening in quantitative research based on the shallowness of open-ended responses. As researchers, we must understand that we are asking many people to complete a task that is unnatural to them.

For organizations that generate hundreds (if not thousands) of concepts a year, quantitative research or hybrid qualitative-quantitative approaches are (by far) the most economical way to separate the strong concepts from the weaker ones. When the volume of concepts is lower, we advocate a more sensory approach to evaluating ideas.

Consider the following workarounds that increases the engagement and contributions of more sensory people

• For some concept testing, trust qualitative research as an alternative to quantitative methods. Don’t sweat over the numbers of people interviewed. Judge ideas based on the intensity of response and how well the end user can articulate the benefits. To what degree are you seeing the “I gotta have it” reaction?
• Incorporate 3D models and/or low-fidelity prototypes into your face-to-face discussions. Highly-sensory people will ask this question a lot: “Will your idea do this?” The moderator should respond with: what would you like for it to do? Or, what are the reasons it is important for you to know the answer to that question? The answers will isolate the value proposition.
• Give concepts more context. That is, have end users react to a concept in a storyboard format that depicts how it is used in a day-to-day setting. More context yields a deeper discussion.
• We’ve read examples of food manufacturers fast-tracking small-batch, in-store purchase experiments in lieu of quantitative research in the front-end of innovation. Not only are they gauging intent to purchase, they are also getting product design feedback, and ideas on how best to message the product. In my mind, that is a very effective and agile approach.

Here’s the paradox: most people in research, engineering and marketing are highly intuitive people. The clear majority of people we try to engage ARE NOT. To be far more effective, we must come to our senses and be willing to modify how we do things so that our study participants contribute at their highest potential.

The post Coming to Our Senses appeared first on StandPoint.

Common complaints:
“A front-end assignment is almost too productive. It generates so much information, opportunities, and ideas we get bogged down.”
“We are really good at generating ideas but struggle with concepts.”
“The process is too long, too complicated, and very expensive.”
“Our process is too unstructured. We generate but don’t produce.”

If your front-end suffers from these same issues, odds are you lack sufficient structure or your process is too divergent. In response, many organizations are implementing Stage-Gate® like processes inside the front-end. If you think about it, this is a promising idea. Here’s why:

1. It forces the innovation team to properly scope the assignment based on what the team can handle, and the resources the organization is willing to commit. Oftentimes, FEI assignments are scoped too narrowly or too broadly. If too narrow, you run the risk of learning things you already know and getting incrementality. If too broad, the results are not actionable. Flying the plane at the right altitude is critical.
2. It focuses your VOC investment. Too often, VOC is conducted among too many stakeholders preventing the team from going deep on understanding unmet needs, motivations, and behaviors among a small but important group of people.
3. It requires the team to choose early on the opportunities with the greatest prevalence or priority. As a result, the team ideates around a smaller subset of needs and delivers more focused concepts.

With a properly scoped project, a more precisely-defined stakeholder, and ideation focused on the strongest opportunities, it greatly increases the odds that high-quality concepts will emerge.

Ideally, the FEI should be a flow of divergent and convergent activities. Agility is increased when convergent activities follow the aspects of the FEI that are naturally more divergent—especially needs exploration and ideation.

One solution: following qualitative research, conduct a quantitative study among the target customer to determine which needs/problems have the greatest prevalence (or priority) among the end-user. Knowing this will keep your ideation more focused.

The post Fixing the Fuzzy Front End appeared first on StandPoint.

The goal of ideation is to form totally new ideas and concepts, often by combining seemingly disparate things. The success of ideation is dependent on using the right process and having a high-performing team.

Our ideation process, Quartet, is based on creating high-performing teams by better managing the natural behavioral archetype of each team member. These archetypes were first explored by Dr. Carl Jung and were later popularized by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®. In ideation, we see four behavioral groups emerge: Storytellers, Implementers, Problem Solvers, and Creatives.  Just as in a musical quartet, each member has unique skills to contribute.

Ideation is a purposeful flow between divergent and convergent modes of thinking, and it requires alternation between the left and right “hemispheres” of the brain. Each of the four behavioral groups has strengths (and weaknesses) in different areas that must be managed for the team to reach full potential. Truth be told, you need the full quartet for maximum results.

The Four Archetypes

Storytellers are the essential glue in ideation. They have the instincts to empathize with the end user and keep “needs and insights” in the forefront. We often assign Storytellers to the role of “needs champion” to ensure the team stays focused on what matters.

After a team has generated hundreds of ideas (and lots of Post-It® notes), members often ask “Where is all of this going?” When this happens, we call on the Implementers to organize the output and lead the team to preliminary concepts.

The Problem Solvers excel at interjecting new thinking in breakout groups. If a team gets stuck, we instruct Problem Solvers to start asking questions like “Have we thought about…?” or “Let’s consider this…” to encourage thinking from new angles.

The Creatives need the freedom to be themselves, since their skill lies in combining things and ideas into something new. They are often in short supply, so we make sure to strategically place them in the ideation team.

By leveraging the natural skills and abilities of each participant, we can create a high-performing team and maximize ideation success. With the right conductor, your ideation team can perform just like a quartet: working together in harmony.

The post 4! The Secret Number of Ideation appeared first on StandPoint.