How Collaborative Innovation Roadmaps Can Help You Sell New?Projects

During my time working closely with the New Business department, we faced the ongoing challenge of driving more innovation for our clients. From time to time, we needed to propose new projects that aligned with the client's strategy. At that point, the head of New Business, Marcos Bregantin , introduced a simple yet powerful idea that would maximize our capabilities and ignite the spark of innovation through collaboration.

The strategy is so simple that it's easy to forget! Stop trying to make people want your product. Start making the product that people want.

In our case, they weren’t traditional ‘products’ but rather projects that the clients themselves desired. Let's call this approach the "innovation roadmap". By involving the client in our brainstorming sessions, they helped us to ideate new projects to sell to them while feeling good about it, just kidding, let me rephrase that "We co-created ideas for new projects they would be eager to embrace". It was a seamless, effective way to innovate while keeping the client deeply invested in the process.

Of course, there's much more to it, I'm simplifying for the sake of storytelling. That's why in this article, I’ll walk you through the steps We’ve used to craft these roadmaps with a creative approach. Drawing from my experience and successful case studies, I’ll show you how to align your internal capabilities with client needs while fostering collaboration and innovation. Whether you’re a product designer, a product owner, or part of a strategic team, this process will help you deliver meaningful innovations and open the door to future projects.

Step 1: Looking Inside?—?Understanding Your?Company

The first step is understanding your internal technical strengths. Knowing what you can deliver is as important as understanding what the client needs. This will allow you to focus on projects where you could make the most impact. You can map your company's capability using different tools, but here are two options that, in my opinion, can provide you with the necessary knowledge to advance to the next step:

Skill Matrix

A skill matrix helps you map out all the capabilities of your team members. Identify key skills for innovation, categorize them by proficiency level, and visualize any skill gaps. This will give you a clear picture of where your team excels and where training or hiring might be necessary.

How to Build It:

List all team members on one axis and key skills on the other. Rank each member’s proficiency level (basic, advanced, and needs training) across relevant technical, soft, and leadership skills.

Tech Radar

I love this tool! It's visual, intelligent, and functional (and free). I came to know this via ThoughtWorks, and I much appreciate it. A tech radar helps you understand the maturity of your company’s technology stack. It categorizes techniques, tools, platforms, and languages into four quadrants: Adopt, Trial, Assess, and Hold, helping you visualize which technologies are mature and can be used immediately and which need more exploration or investment.

How to Build It:

Divide your radar into quadrants. Place mature technologies that can be scaled immediately in the “Adopt” quadrant and emerging or experimental technologies in the “Trial” and “Assess” quadrants. “Hold” is for tools that need reassessment or phasing out.

Use this awesome open-source tool, "Tech Radar" from Thoughtworks: https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/byor.

With these tools, you can gain a detailed understanding of your company’s current technical capabilities, enabling better decision-making for future projects. Of course, this is not written in stone; you can use whatever tools you feel more comfortable with.

Step 2: Looking Outside —Understanding Your Client

Aligning your innovation roadmap with the client’s strategic goals requires a thorough understanding of their business objectives and market context. This step is essential to ensure your solutions fit within their broader business framework, positioning them for success in their industry. To achieve this, you’ll need to conduct thorough research, gathering insights from key stakeholders, market trends, and user behaviors.

2.1. Stakeholders Research

To understand the client’s strategic vision, it’s critical to gather insights directly from the stakeholders. Engaging with decision-makers such as executives, product managers, and department heads will give you the clearest picture of the company’s direction. Additionally, requesting internal documents, such as company reports, market predictions, and strategic planning materials, can provide valuable context for the client’s ambitions.

How to Do It:

• Interviews and Discussions: Arrange interviews or focus groups with key stakeholders to understand their market positioning, future objectives, and potential challenges.
• Documents and Reports: Request access to strategic reports, financial predictions, and any market analysis the company has conducted to deepen your understanding of its goals.
• Semi-Structured Format: Use a semi-structured interview approach that balances guiding questions with open discussion, allowing stakeholders to freely express their ideas and priorities.
• Document Insights: Capture the information using tools like mind maps or affinity diagrams, helping you spot recurring themes and insights that will shape the innovation roadmap.

Here is an extensive article on how to do a user interview.

Attention: Stakeholders at a strategic level just don't have the time for extensive interviews, so don't overcomplicate the process, keep it simple, direct, and efficient. With the approach of "people over processes".

2.2. Market Trends

Market research is vital to ensure that your innovation roadmap stays relevant to industry trends. Understanding current and future trends will allow you to suggest innovations that keep the client competitive.

How to Do It:

• Leverage Market Research Tools: Use resources like Gartner reports, Google Trends, IBISWorld, and industry-specific publications to track technological advancements, regulatory changes, and customer preference shifts.
• Competitive Analysis: Study the competition to see what’s working in the industry and identify gaps your client can capitalize on.
• Map to Strategy: Use your research findings to identify opportunities where your client’s strategy aligns with broader market trends. This allows you to suggest initiatives that are both innovative and market-relevant.

2.3. Customer Behaviors

Understanding customer behavior is a crucial element when aligning internal capabilities with client strategies. By analyzing existing data, such as customer reviews, feedback, and behavioral patterns, you can identify pain points and opportunities for improvement across various experiences.

How to Do It:

• Leverage Existing Customer Data: Instead of conducting new research, focus on data that’s already available. This can come from sources like product reviews, customer service logs, app store feedback, and public forums. Understanding how customers interact with your client’s services in both digital and physical spaces is key to painting a full picture.
• Analyze Reviews: Look at customer reviews across multiple platforms depending on the industry. For software products, AppStore, Google Reviews, ReclameAqui, Yelp, and TripAdvisor are rich sources of feedback. These platforms provide valuable insights into customer experiences with your client’s services, highlighting pain points such as poor usability, inefficiencies, or unmet expectations. Identifying recurring themes across these platforms can help identify where improvements are needed.
• Highlight Key Pain Points and Opportunities: By analyzing the gathered data, you can compile a list of recurring pain points — whether it’s in product usage, customer service experiences, or in-person interactions. Present these insights as opportunities to innovate. For example, suppose customers frequently mention a lack of personalization or cumbersome processes. In that case, these can be areas where the client can drive efficiency and innovation through targeted projects in their roadmap.

Step 3: Opening The Door And Connecting— "The Fun Part"

Connect the inside with the outside. Once you’ve mapped out internal capabilities and gathered insights on the client’s strategic objectives, it’s time to build the innovation roadmap. This visual guide aligns your company’s strengths with the client’s needs and sets a clear path for future development. While there are various ways to structure a roadmap, one approach I find particularly effective is starting with a Sketch — See the sketch below, a rough but visual representation of ideas that encourages early feedback and collaboration:

How to Do It:

• Create The Groundwork: Begin with your team or even alone, keep in mind a broad, visual outline that captures rough ideas without diving too deep. This “silent storming” method allows for a rough draft that lays the groundwork for deeper discussions. The sketch is flexible and leaves room for refinement as the collaboration evolves.

Tip: I brought examples of sketches, but you should consider bringing Miro, Mural, FigJam, or a Designer (Image 6) to the party or at least create a representation with one of these options after you do the sketch.

• Look 3 to 5 years into the future: It is important to have an idea of when we should start our efforts on each technology, product, or service. Create categories or paths that represent company initiatives, for example, education, operations, or customers (Image 4). Place your ideas on a timeline for each category (Image 3).
• Invite The Client To Collaboration: Present the sketch as an open-ended tool, encouraging your client to contribute and share their insights. This co-creation process ensures the roadmap reflects their strategic goals and fosters a stronger partnership by involving them early on.
• Prioritize Impact: During the refinement process, focus on initiatives that promise the highest business impact for both your company and the client. This ensures that the roadmap is not only strategic but also efficient, directing resources to projects with the greatest potential for success.

Conclusion

An innovation roadmap can be much more than a simple planning tool. It can be a dynamic, collaborative approach that aligns your internal capabilities with the strategic goals of your clients. By using a sketch format, you create a more open, engaging platform for discussion, allowing for brainstorming without the constraints of traditional, formal proposals.

This method not only fosters deeper client involvement but also positions you to refine ideas based on real-time feedback continuously. By engaging clients in co-creating the roadmap, you gain valuable insights, ensuring that your innovations are not only creative but strategically aligned with both their needs and business goals. Ultimately, this approach helps you pitch new projects more effectively, making it easier for clients to embrace and invest in the ideas that you collaboratively develop.