5 New Years resolutionsTo turbocharge your innovation capability in 2014

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Happy new Year

Now that the dust has settled…

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… its time to look forward

What can you do to improve the success rate of your innovation

efforts?

What can you do develop solutions which your customers love?

Here are 5 resolutions which will make a significant difference in the

coming year

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Resolution 1:Assume your customers are using your offerings incorrectlyAnd figure out how to continuously improve them

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You mean assume my customers are wrong?No, instead:

Assume your customers use your offerings in a way which is different from what you advise, expect or what they tell you they do

In most cases, your customers will use your offering differently from what you expect:

• They may not use or know about its features, or unconsciously ignore them

• The way it is set up and used in its environment may reduce its reliability

• The functionality may work better if it were tailored more to them

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So find out what is happening implicitlyIf you want your offering to delight your customers this year, you need to get their implicit feedback on it

• Explicit feedback: Answers to your questions on what they like & do

• Implicit feedback: How they actually use the product

This is much more important than finding out if they say they “like” the product

Action: To get implicit feedback, you need to observe what happens when your customers interact with your offering. This way you can find areas which need improvement

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Resolution 2:Mix up your teamsFresh blood has been proven to produce the most creative results

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Keeping fresh blood in teams

• Teams which have long-term success in developing new offerings need regular mixing of people

• Teams which move from project to project together end up losing their creative edge

• Most effective teams have a mix of some people who have worked together before with influx of completely new talent

• Studies from success of Broadway casts shows the ideal ratio is just over 50% new blood

Source: Brian Uzzi, Northwestern

50 : 50 ratio

Resolution 3:Stop brainstormingAnd start building creativity as a value into your corporate culture

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Allow your people to generate ideas

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• ‘Brainstorming’ as a method has been proven to be ineffective at generating ideas which are then executed

• This year, trust your people to develop ideas continuously. Everyone on your staff is more creative than you think.

• Studies with fraternal and identical twins show that:

• 80% of IQ is determined by genetics

• Only 30% of creative ability is from genetics

• 70% of creative ability is determined by nurture and environment

Source: Merton Reznikoff, George Domino, Carolyn Bridges, and Merton Honeymon

How can you help them generate ideas?• A couple of small experiments you can try:

• Agree a process by which anyone can submit ideas

• Bring in a speaker from an unrelated industry to talk about trends

• Bring in a creativity coach to teach them about how to generate ideas

• Provide different menu items in the cafeteria each day

• Have a communal ideation space with whiteboards and post-it notes and have high-energy discussions

• Ensure there are “quiet” zones in the office where people can work free from interruptions

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• But remember: executing on ideas is more important than generating them

Resolution 4:Lead by exampleInnovation strategy needs to be driven by people at the top

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Leadership needs to live innovation

• If you lead a company, then you need to lead your people in the value of being innovative. The buck stops with you!

• This means you will have to:

• Define what your goals are and what gaps currently exist

• Look at your list of projects and kill those that are not aligned with the direction of the company

• Allocate budget, resources and time to innovation projects, understanding that only some will return on the investment

• Hire people with different and complementary skills and characters

• Visibly endorse innovation as a value and celebrate successes

• Give your teams the authority to experiment and execute

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Resolution 5:Try out three new types of innovationThere are 10 in total, and you’re probably currently doing only a couple

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Variety of innovations results in growthGraph to the right shows how stock prices for companies correlated with the variety of innovations they drove internally.

Studies of innovative companies have found there are Ten Types of Innovation

Copyright: Doblin

5+ Types

3-4 Types

1-2 Types

S&P 500

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The Ten Types of InnovationThe Ten Types of Innovation

Company Configuration:1. Profit Model2. Network3. Structure4. Process

Offering5. Product Performance6. Product System

Experience7. Service8. Channel9. Brand10.Customer Engagement

• Research by Doblin suggests that 84% of average companies are only trying 2 or fewer types of innovation

• Majority of them only try to innovate in Product Performance (features, power etc) and ignore the others

• This year, try to find new ways to innovate in three types of innovation you’re currently not working on

Most companies focus here

Good luck this yearLet us know how your efforts went

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Want some help?

If you want to implement any of the suggestions you saw here but are unsure how best to do it, then let Improvides help you.

I’m an expert Innovation consultant and coach. I help companies get more value from their innovation efforts, help people and teams generate more ideas and execute them more effectively.

To find out more, visit www.improvides.com

and email us at enquiries@improvides.com

Nick Skillicorn

CEO & Founder