Building a Team of Customer Problem Solvers
Jack and Kim walked down the hall away from their CEO’s office. They were buzzing with excitement. “Wow, I can’t believe he gave us full reign to build our innovation team!” said Kim. When their CEO had asked if their process of cycling through pain points and potential solutions with customers could accelerate innovation, their […]
Four Design Thinking Tips to Achieve Strategy Change
Employees in large organizations in both the public and private sector have “Strategy du Jour” fatigue. Every year, they’re hit with new strategic directions that involve changes in the way they work without any clear impact on the things they care about, like the work they do and the customers they serve. This starts to breed […]
Design Thinking is not “One and Done”
Jack ran into Kim in the hallway outside the CEO’s office. “You too?” he asked. The CEO had requested a meeting to discuss their proposal for investment in the winning team’s innovation challenge. “He said he wanted to do a test, see if we could celebrate a quick win,” said Jack. Kim frowned. “That’s what he […]
Embed your Brand in your Innovation Sandbox
Do you ever get the feeling that brand is something that is tacked on at the end of innovation efforts? Like the wrapping on a present, brand is perceived as just the way things are presented and sold. In my experience, this undermines your innovation. It keeps a business’s relationship with its customers transactional, and […]
Aligning Innovation Investment with Your Brand
Jack returned to his office after the leadership meeting. He felt exhilarated – he and Kim had actually pitched a new approach to innovation that started with the customer instead of the idea. And while they only got a lukewarm response … and a lot of skepticism … from the rest of the team, they […]
Why Long Term Strategy Beats Quick Fix Innovation
Kim and Jack went into the leadership meeting, ready to present their strategy for the winner of the innovation contest. They were excited and nervous. Focusing the winning team on measuring the value of their service to the customer was different from what they had done in the past. Typically, their innovation efforts were about […]
Want to Innovate? Solve a Customer’s Problem
Let’s face it, businesses are tired of the mantra to innovate. My clients often tell me that their efforts focused on innovation have produced mediocre results at best. That their people are disillusioned because innovation is disruptive, an extra they have to fit into their “spare” time. They lament that the things other businesses label […]
From Ideas to Pain Points to Innovation
It was the end of a long day and Kim was still in her office. She needed to make a decision on which of the innovation ideas their organization had collected in their “Road to Innovation” contest to recommend for investment. Unfortunately, there was no clear winner. As the senior strategist in the leadership […]