WHAT are you really building?

Today we dive into addressing a massive blind spot that affects innovation exercises.

An innovation exercise is a journey that has you playing with important questions that start with Why, What, How, Who, When, Where, and so on.

The most important of these is Why

Why is the customer behaving in a weird manner, Why is it a pain point for them, or Why is a problem limited to a specific demographic. This customer discovery process uncovers that golden problem worth solving. It is my favorite phase of innovation programs because of the learning involved.

At this stage, it is tempting to dive straight into How you will solve it.

This is a fun stage involving brainstorming, whiteboarding, and other ideation sessions. People run inspired. You feel like just getting the resources - time, money, tools - and cannot wait to deliver. However, you are carrying a big blind spot that has derailed many wonderful programs.

You must have a super clear vision of what your solution will look like.

What is it going to take to make it work for your entire customer base? What is the plan to make it ready for scale? What is the cost you are going to undertake to deliver?

What are you going to exactly deliver?

Teams that have not addressed these questions spend cycles on building something that doesn’t make it to the market.

Here is Robyn Bolton, Founder and CEO of MileZero, who shares an example from one of her clients.

That line of questioning from Robyn was a great pause in the innovation program. Putting it in a term like “You will need to build TWO Facebooks” showed the enormity of the challenge.

As an innovation leader, you have to play the tough role of guiding the team through the phases. Getting ideas is, arguably, the easier part of the equation. Making them work at scale is where the magic happens.

Successful innovation programs combine ideation with execution.

Give your execution plans as much thought as ideation. That is where the strategy comes to life.

That’s it for today.

Happy Ideating….and Executing! :)

Hemang.