How can you give and receive feedback on innovation projects?

1 Define your feedback goals

Before you ask for or offer feedback, you need to have a clear purpose and scope for it. What are you trying to achieve with your innovation project? What are the specific questions or challenges that you want feedback on? How will you use the feedback to improve your project? By defining your feedback goals, you can communicate them clearly to your feedback providers and focus on the most relevant and useful information.

2 Choose your feedback sources

Not all feedback is equally valuable for innovation projects. You need to select your feedback sources carefully, based on their relevance, credibility, and diversity. Relevance means that they have some knowledge or experience of your problem, solution, or market. Credibility means that they have the expertise, authority, or reputation to give you trustworthy feedback. Diversity means that they can offer you different perspectives, opinions, or insights that challenge your assumptions and broaden your thinking.

3 Ask open-ended questions

One of the best ways to elicit feedback is to ask open-ended questions that invite your feedback sources to share their thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Open-ended questions start with words like what, how, why, when, where, and who, and avoid yes or no answers. For example, instead of asking "Do you like this feature?", you could ask "How would you use this feature in your daily life?" or "What problem does this feature solve for you?". By asking open-ended questions, you can encourage your feedback sources to give you more detailed, specific, and honest feedback.

4 Listen actively and empathically

Listening is a key skill for receiving feedback, as it allows you to understand your feedback sources' points of view, needs, and emotions. To listen actively and empathically, you need to pay attention to what they are saying, how they are saying it, and what they are not saying. You also need to show interest, respect, and curiosity by nodding, smiling, paraphrasing, and asking follow-up questions. Avoid interrupting, judging, defending, or arguing with your feedback sources, as this can make them feel defensive or offended.

5 Give constructive and respectful feedback

Giving feedback is also a skill that requires critical thinking, as you need to balance honesty and kindness, criticism and praise, and facts and opinions. To give constructive and respectful feedback, you need to follow some basic principles. First, be specific and concrete, not vague and general. Second, focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the idea or project, not the person or team. Third, provide reasons and evidence for your feedback, not personal preferences or biases. Fourth, suggest ways to improve or solve the problems, not just point out the flaws. Fifth, use positive and polite language, not negative or rude words.

6 Act on the feedback

The final step in the feedback process is to act on the feedback that you have received. This does not mean that you have to accept or implement all the feedback that you get, but that you have to evaluate it critically and decide what to do with it. To evaluate feedback, you need to consider its source, relevance, validity, and impact. To decide what to do with feedback, you need to prioritize the most important and urgent feedback, and plan how to incorporate it into your innovation project. By acting on the feedback, you can show your appreciation, demonstrate your learning, and improve your innovation outcomes.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?