The Road to Innovation? Let's Call It the I-86...

We're all busy, so I'll cut to the proverbial chase...

After 25 years obsessing over "innovation," and 7 years of working on basically nothing but innovation, I think I have observed/codified/developed a useful heuristic for real innovation, aka, "Innovation: the art of establishing something new of different out in the real world that has a significant impact."

Some background: over the past seven years, as Innovation Strategist for Autodesk and the Founder of the Autodesk Innovation Genome Project, I have conducted about 500 innovation engagements (not just talking about innovation, but actually doing it whenever possible) with about 200 organizations (everybody from Facebook/AirBNB/Google/Tesla/Twitter to Starbucks/IKEA/Bechtel/Boeing to the U.S. Naval Academy/U.S. Department of Defense/World Bank) --from about 40 countries (everywhere from Norway to China to Kazakhstan).

Of course, innovation is different for every organization, and what the "I word" means varies greatly in terms of company type, company industry, company size, etc., etc.

With that caveat firmly in place, however, I'd like to propose a relatively simply way to look at -- and please, God, at least at times actually do! -- innovation.

Here we go (and I would love any feedback on this, because this specific version of a set of metrics/stats for innovation just crystallized in my head this morning, as I was walking my dog):

• Let's say you're a $2 billion global company (kind of the median for the corporates I've worked with over the past 7 years): what kind of statistics/metrics should you pay attention to/instantiate in your organization to actually make innovation happen?
• First, let's do a Stephen Covey, and begin with the end in mind: if you're a $2B company, the very least you should be shooting for re: innovation (again...this is the very least) is to establish at least one bona fide innovation our in the real world within 2 years of whatever date you're starting from.
• So that's 1 innovation, within two years.
• Okay, now let's go backwards, one step: to establish 1 innovation out in the real world, how many new products/services/experiences (offerings) are we going to have to launch, and by when?
• IMHO, the top-level answer to that question is, you have to launch at least 4 potential innovations within 1 year, to have even a chance of having one of them "stick"/become established in the real world.
• Backwards again: Okay, to successfully develop 4 potential innovations worthy of at least launching out into the real world, how many Innovation Projects do we need to create? (And by "create," I mean dedicating money, people, tech talent, resources, political capital, and internal evangelism to try to make the project actually worthy of launch...) I think the short answer to that question is: "10 Innovation Projects."
• Let's keep going, and here I'm going to draw upon the Autodesk Innovation Genome Project for the rest of this logical argument...
• In fact, let's start at the beginning of the Genome process, and see how it leads forward to those 10 Innovation Projects...
• Genome Technique #1: Create an Innovation Map -- an consistently evolving "landscape" of everything, literally everything, related to innovation for you and your organization...
• Genome Technique #2: Create a list of Innovation Targets (10 is a good number to start with) that you want to focus on; these could be related to AI, AR/VR, Millennials, Internet of Things, China, Brand Expansion, Blockchain/Bitcoin, Acquisitions, etc. -- whatever makes a good Innovation Target for you and your organization.
• Genome Technique #3: Then, for each Innovation Target, you do a working session where you apply the Seven Essential Innovation Questions; doing this for an hour will usually generate ~40-50 ideas, 50% of which will be new.
• Genome Technique #4: Next, we take that cornucopia of ideas and use the "Wild/World" prioritization technique to identify the most promising of all those ideas.
• Genome Technique #5: And finally -- and here's where we reconnect, Pulp Fiction-style, with the backwards progression from earlier -- we take the most powerful, promising idea from each Innovation Target and convert it into an Innovation Project.
• And then, continuing forward, out of those 10 Innovation Targets, we work on them up to our year deadline, and, through much engagement with customers/prospects/partners/experts/critics/etc., we winnow those ten down to 4 "experiences launched."
• And from there -- and at this point we're entering quasi-quantum territory where we (and I mean everyone) can't really predict what's going to fail and what's going to succeed -- we work hard to evolve our four offerings (products/services/experiences) until one of them...just one of them...maybe becomes established in the world (a la the bow and arrow, the printing press, the electric lightbulb, the iPhone, etc.).
• Then, and only then, can we crown our journey with the exalted title of...drum roll...innovation.
• If you've stuck with me thus far, you're probably saying, "Hey Bill, interesting idea, but why are you calling it, this road, the 'I-86?" Good question; here's why...
• It's a kind of semi-useful mnemonic, to remember all of the steps/stats along the way; meaning..
• We start with (1) Innovation Map (TOTAL of 1);
• We develop (10) Innovation Targets (TOTAL of 11);
• For each Innovation Target, we generate (50) Innovation Ideas (TOTAL of 61);
• For each Innovation Target, we prioritize all of those ideas and select (1) amazing Innovation Idea with great potential, which means 10 Innovation Ideas/Prioritized (TOTAL of 71);
• We convert those 10 Innovation Ideas/Prioritized into 10 Innovation Projects (TOTAL of 81);
• From there, we work on those ideas until a year is up (the timing is flexible, but that's my recommendation), and eventually winnow them down to 4 experiences (products/services/experiences) that we actually launch into the marketplace/real world (TOTAL of 85);
• And finally, if we work really hard and get really lucky, hopefully we will have, at the end of a total of 2 years, at least (1) bona fide innovation that we can be proud of, and build upon (TOTAL of 86).
• So...1 + 10 + 50 + 10 + 10 + 4 + 1 = 86...and we add an "I" for "Innovation..." and that's how we end up with "I-86."
• Anyway, I think that all of these steps, as well as most of the timings I'm recommended here, are absolutely essential to large organizations doing real innovation.
• And of course, if you can improve this thinking, or completely disagree, I'd love to hear from you.
• "I-86"...it's a crazy idea, but it just might work.
• Cheers, Bill O'Connor