What I Learned about Successful Innovation from Snow BikeCross

I worked with an innovation team that created Snow BikeCross long before it appeared in the X-Games. We even built a prototype and tested it with professional motocross riders and snowmobile racers. But the product never launched due to an innovation management breakdown. Here is the story and why it is important in managing the ROI of innovation...

Today we have metrics that demonstrate the impact Design Thinking has on the ROI associated with innovation. This allows us to optimize innovation processes to increase ROI contribution. One factor contributing to the success of innovation is engaging leadership early on in the process to define success. Without the agreement of leadership on the definition of success, a potentially successful project may be halted without cause, or projects that are not promising may continue on with no hope of success.

Engagement of leadership and sponsors should begin when the project is conceived. Leadership, sponsors and the team should create the measurable results, and KPI’s that are to be attained when the project is complete as well as all measurable results must be attained at each gate or milestone throughout the project. These measurable results must be in the project plan and must be achieved in order for the project to advance to the next stage of the process. 

Measurable results may include the development of a functioning prototype that achieves specific specifications, sourcing a critical component, or marketing research that validates the market size and pricing. Once everyone “buys in” to these measures, the project should continue as long as it satisfies the criteria set out by sponsors, leadership and team members. This may also mean those leading the Design Thinking process go beyond the qualitative approaches typically used in the “User Centered” part of design thinking, but also embrace quantitative approaches needed to support investment required to bring new ideas to market.

I have witnessed substantial loss of ROI when innovation teams did not manage the engagement of leadership and internal stakeholders. Long before Snow BikeCross came on the scene in the X-Games, I worked on an innovation project within a company that builds motorcycles, snowmobiles and other recreational vehicles. Together with the team, we created the idea of Snow BikeCross, and even built and tested the first ever prototype. We anticipated leadership in the organization would be eager to manufacture and market this new idea, and we even had quantitative data that substantiated the customer demand and pricing. We were shocked when the client stopped the project. Leadership that manages the production of snowmobiles put a halt on the project due to concern about cannibalization of existing products. Our team had failed to involve the leadership of the snowmobile division, who would eventually need to devote manufacturing capacity to the new product, in the innovation process. Had we foreseen the concern regarding cannibalization, we could have satisfied these concerns, and our client would have brought the first production Snow BikeCross vehicle to market.