Learning how to deliver Fast Track Innovation

Happy New Year!??

I’m always curious to start the year with a look at the product launches on show at the Consumer Electronics Show. The future of innovation: where high tech fuses with elegant design. All afforded, no doubt, by eye-watering R&D budgets.??

But how do you innovate on a tight budget?? As we kick off 2023, budgets are under pressure as most businesses shift resources to tried and tested activities, sacrificing innovation - a proven driver of competitive differentiation and strong corporate performance.? Of course, this is assuming things don’t change, that 2023 will have the same challenges as 2010. In reality you will have to innovate even just to stand still.

Innovation is a process of trial and error, where positive outcomes are not guaranteed. If you work in a product development team, you’ll know that demands from management are usually unrealistic, and understanding how to innovate remains a mystery to most people you work with.

We’ve been asking our clients how they are handling this challenge.? Here’s a flavour of what we heard:

• “There’s a disconnect between those funding innovation and the needs of the business”
• “We have an Innovation Lab, but it takes too long to get urgent projects in the door”
• “Our Innovation focus should be process enhancements, not just big ticket product launches”
• “Getting management buy-in is more difficult than ever - how can we estimate ROI on a prototype idea?”

Learning Journey??

Building on learnings from our other Accelerator programmes, we’ve designed the Fast Track Innovation Accelerator - a 6 week online programme which will demystify innovation - to shine the light on the need for experimentation, and make it easier for your teams to collaborate.

Meet the Innovation Dream Team??

We’ve assembled a global team of experts who live and breathe Innovation. I’ve been lucky to work with them all over the past 5 years.?

Alfred Biehler, London-based Head of Innovation at Google will share tips on creating a Culture where? innovation can flourish?

AJ Boelens, Dubai-based MD at Innovation Connected will show how to align your innovation to the company vision, and deploy design thinking to conceive the best ideas?

Pilar Barrio, Barcelona-based Co-Founder of Beyond Good will unlock the power of Rapid Iterative Prototyping to bring your idea to life, and get feedback from both customers and staff

Francis Goh, Digital Innovation Leader at Amazon Web Services, will share how and why some innovation fails and highlight potential pitfalls to avoid

Meeting Customer Needs, Harnessing AI, Aligning Teams

If you want to read the concepts, head online - this course isn’t for you. If you have a particular business challenge, or seek a fresh approach to innovation - this is a safe place to learn. You will define your customers’ pain points, create the ideas which meet their needs, deploy the best technology, and align your teams. We’ll be using case studies and industry templates along the way.

Leaving with Implementation-Ready Solutions

Think of the other learners as an independent user testing group for your innovation solutions. In the last stage of our journey, you’ll be pitching v1.0 of your innovation idea to them, and getting their feedback before bringing your solution back to the business for implementation.??

Successful innovation is all about experimentation. Here’s a reminder from Jeff Bezos: “Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day. Being wrong might hurt you a bit. But being slow will kill you.”

Please click here to?

• Tell us about your innovation projects for 2023
• Give us your questions for our guest speakers

To register for the Fast Track Innovation Accelerator, click here

We hope to see you on the Innovation Accelerator!?

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For feedback from other learners on our Accelerators, please click here

''Pay the money, do the course, open your eyes, learn, read and execute where possible. This course gives you great examples and opportunities to listen and interact with some excellent speakers to help you on your way. I would explain this will not work, unless you are all on board and willing to change and survive."

Rob Haycox, CEO, Plannatech

''Burn the Sky put together a comprehensive program with erudite and brilliant guests from academia and real-world brands to give deep insights into what makes platforms successful. The course provided clear, practical insights into strategising and keeping to first principles in the new release of our platform."

Brett Best, CEO, Global Fan Network