Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 0 2014, Mike Brown
Mike Brown The Brainzooming Group
Brainzooming.com
To get your FREE complete copy of the
“Outside‐In Innovation” edition of
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book of Strategic Thinking Tools
with all sixteen strategic thinking exercises
Visit
http://brainzooming.com/innovationfakebook
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 1 2014, Mike Brown
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book of Strategic Thinking Tools
The Outside‐In Innovation Workshop
A Book from The Brainzooming™ Group
Mike Brown is founder of The Brainzooming™ Group and a frequent keynote presenter and facilitator in marketing best practices, innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
The Brainzooming™ Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement.
Mike has been at the forefront of leading Fortune 500 culture change, contributing new approaches in research, developing simplified tools for innovation, strategy planning, and aligning sales, marketing, and communications strategies for maximum business results.
He’s won multiple awards for his strategic brand‐building approach to customer experiences in NASCAR and conference event marketing efforts.
Mike Brown is the author of the eBook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation,” a guide to breaking through personal challenges to living a more creative and innovation‐oriented life. Additionally, he authors the daily Brainzooming blog (www.brainzooming.com) on strategy, creativity, and innovation, and has been recognized as one of the top innovation bloggers on the web.
His personal branding approach has been highlighted in “Fast Company” magazine, and through his writing and speaking, Mike has shared the Brainzooming approach with hundreds of thousands of business people, helping them adapt it to strategic planning, branding, marketing, and social media opportunities and challenges.
Mike Brown's Email: [email protected] Phone: 816‐509‐5320 Blog: www.Brainzooming.com Twitter: @Brainzooming
2014, Mike Brown
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
by Mike Brown
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 2 2014, Mike Brown
TABLE OF CONTENTS What’s a Fake Book? 3
Strategic Thinking Frameworks for Outside‐In Innovation 4
Strategic Thinking Exercises for Outside‐In Innovation 4
Types of Organizational Innovators 4
Outside Input Opportunities for Innovation 5
Strategic Thinking Exercises for Outside‐In Innovation 6
1. Mining Benefits as an Innovation Platform 7
2. Enhancing Benefit Delivery 8
3. Messaging Benefits in New Ways 9
4. Who Else Needs These Benefits? 10
5. Basics and Extremes for Service Innovation Ideas 11
6. Innovating Brand Experience Proof Points 12
7. Learning from Competitor Innovation 13
8. Identifying Potential Substitutes 14
9. Knowing When to Innovate (and Who’s Your Canary in the Coal Mine?) 15
10. Checking on Innovating Previous Innovations 16
11. Signaling the Need to Invest More in Innovation 17
12. Glimpsing the Future 18
13. Employing a Massive Focus Group 19
14. Exploring Change and Disruptive Innovation 20
15. Identifying Strategic Analogs 21
16. What’s It Like? 22
Additional Brainzooming Resources 23
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 3 2014, Mike Brown
What’s a Fake Book?
In the music world, a fake book is comprised of sheet music for various songs. Each
song is represented with its lyrics, chords, and melody line. Having this structure,
musicians, especially those adept at playing live, can readily perform previously
unfamiliar songs. The fake book is especially beneficial because it facilitates rapid and
successful collaborations between musicians who haven’t played together previously.
And because of the skeletal information for each song, fake books, which are usually
large, feature a wide range of songs audiences might request musicians play live.
While developing the Brainzooming methodology and sharing it with increasingly large
numbers of people, the fake book construct has been important and helpful in shaping
the workbooks we use. Transporting the fake book concept into the Brainzooming
world implies a workbook with basic information on a wide variety of strategic and
creative thinking exercises we use. The information for each exercise features the
basics for using the exercise in typical business situations when a group wants to more
efficiently and effectively address important opportunities and issues. Given a
Brainzooming Fake Book’s structure and depth, it facilitates being ready to address
many business situations with a very quick turnaround.
That link between music and Brainzooming paves the way for this workbook to be your
ongoing resource for collaborating with co‐workers on a wide variety of strategic and
implementation issues your organization faces over the course of time.
Want to Learn More?
Beyond the workshop, if you have questions on applying these tools or would like help
on how to extend and apply them in even more situations, contact us. You can
subscribe to our blog featuring new exercises and ideas at Brainzooming.com/today.
And of course, we would love to work with you directly to improve your organization’s
success!
Mike Brown The Brainzooming Group [email protected] 816‐509‐5320
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 4 2014, Mike Brown
Strategic Thinking Frameworks for Outside‐In Innovation
Strategic Thinking Exercises for Outside‐In Innovation
The Fake Book contains sixteen Brainzooming strategic thinking exercises tailored to bring outside‐in perspectives into innovation. Each exercise includes a brief overview, listing:
Objective – What the strategic thinking exercise should accomplish
Beneficial For – The types of organizational innovation perspectives (see below) for which the exercise is most appropriate
Use – Situations in which to use the strategic thinking exercise
Next Step – What you will want to do next after using the particular exercise Beyond these four items, each exercise contains a brief overview for how to apply it. Most exercises also contain a link to an underlying Brainzooming online page with more background on the exercise and its application. We’re also using two external frameworks to categorize the strategic thinking exercises in the Fake Book. One focuses on three types of innovation perspectives used to classify organizations. The other provides a means to think about the stages in designing customer experience. Types of Organizational Innovators
“Global Innovation 1000: Navigating the Digital Future,” the annual study of R&D spending from Booz & Company (http://ow.ly/DHPnh), identifies three types of organizational innovation profiles:
Needs Seekers – Look to customers and prospects to identify innovation opportunities to address their needs and challenges
Market Readers – Look to competitors to identify innovations in the marketplace in order to follow those innovation developments
Technology‐Drivers (Capabilities Drivers) – These companies look toward their internal capabilities (particularly technological ones) to identify new innovation opportunities employing those capabilities
We’ve used these three categories to identify where each strategic thinking exercise could be most applicable to an organization.
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 5 2014, Mike Brown
Outside Input Opportunities for Innovation
In the article “Bringing Open Innovation to Services,” Henry Chesbrough shares a “Services Value Web” model for creating customer experiences (http://ow.ly/DHQmj). He offers five iterative stages for service experience design and delivery. We’ve used the stages to indicate where each strategic thinking exercise could be most fruitful for moving innovation efforts forward.
1. Customer Engagement – Inquire or extend an offer to a potential customer 2. Service Co‐creation – Service development 3. Elicit Tacit Knowledge – Mutual learning between the service organization and
the customer 4. Design Experience Points – Customer experience design 5. Service Offering – Delivering the service to customers
Organizational Innovation Customer Experience Stages
Pre: Done prior to this stage ideally Refine: Initial scoping modified based on input Explore: Mutual discovery Primary: Significant Element
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 6 2014, Mike Brown
Strategic Thinking Exercises for
Outside‐In Innovation
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 7 2014, Mike Brown
1. Mining Benefits as an Innovation Platform (http://ow.ly/njwd0) Objective: Identifying a broader list of benefits your brand delivers Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Capabilities DriversUse: Creating a platform from which to fuel other innovation exercisesNext Step: Identify innovation opportunities and gaps in how your brand is
delivering current benefits First identify the challenges your customers would face if your brand weren’t in the marketplace. Then identify one or more benefits you deliver related to each challenge.
If our brand didn’t exist, what would our audiences miss? OR
What unpleasant things would customers contend with if our brand
weren’t here?
What are benefits our brand delivers related to each challenge?
1. _____________________________ ________________________________
2. _____________________________ ________________________________
3. _____________________________ ________________________________
4. _____________________________ ________________________________
5. _____________________________ ________________________________
6. _____________________________ ________________________________
7. _____________________________ ________________________________
8. _____________________________ ________________________________
9. _____________________________ ________________________________
10. _____________________________ ________________________________
11. _____________________________ ________________________________
12. _____________________________ ________________________________
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 8 2014, Mike Brown
2. Enhancing Benefit Delivery Objective: Identifying innovative ways to deliver customer benefits based
on their most important needs Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Capabilities DriversUse: Directly linking benefits and customer needs to generate
innovation possibilities Next Step: Assess and prioritize innovation possibilities emerging from the
exercise Working from your brand benefits, identify ways you could enhance delivering those benefits to address three important customer needs.
How could we enhance how we deliver these benefits providing greater _________?
Benefits Our Brand Currently Delivers
Customer Need 1 Customer Need 2 Customer Need 3
1. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
2. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
3. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
4. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
5. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
6. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
7. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
8. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
9. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
10. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
11. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
12. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 9 2014, Mike Brown
3. Messaging Benefits in New Ways (http://ow.ly/DGJwx) Objective: Developing new ways to message service benefits Beneficial for: Market Readers, Needs SeekersUse: Examining how comparable benefits are messaged by brands in
other industries Next Step: Adapt language describing benefits that’s appropriate yet
different from what your industry uses Working from your brand benefits, identify other companies or markets that deliver comparable benefits. Look at those examples to identify how they describe these benefits in different ways that could work in your market.
Benefits Our Brand Currently Delivers
Other Markets / Companies Delivering Comparable Benefits
Language They Use
1. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
2. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
3. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
4. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
5. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
6. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
7. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
8. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
9. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
10. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
11. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
12. ________________________ ______________ ____________________
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 10 2014, Mike Brown
4. Who Else Needs These Benefits? Objective: Identifying new markets for opportunities to extend the brand
and deliver similar benefits Beneficial for: Customer Needs, Capabilities DriversUse: Exploring potential opportunities in both adjacent and more
removed markets Next Step: Prioritize possible opportunities based on attractiveness and
strategic fit Working from your brand benefits, identify your first thoughts about other segments or markets that would value your brand delivering these benefits. Then push your thinking to adjacent and more far‐reaching potential markets valuing these benefits.
What new customer segments or markets would find value in our brand delivering
these benefits? (Can only use each 1 time)
Benefits Our Brand Currently Delivers
1st Thought Adjacent Surprising
1. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
2. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
3. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
4. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
5. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
6. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
7. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
8. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
9. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
10. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
11. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
12. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 11 2014, Mike Brown
5. Basics and Extremes for Service Innovation Ideas (http://ow.ly/DJnIG) Objective: Brainstorming targeted innovations that are both traditional
and extreme Beneficial for: Capabilities Drivers, Needs SeekersUse: Identifying broad service innovation enhancements quicklyNext Step: Assess and prioritize possible innovations emerging from the
exercise Invest 15 minutes brainstorming responses to the “Innovation Basics” to enhance a new or current offering. Then invest 15 minutes addressing the “Innovation Extremes” questions to generate bigger, bolder ideas.
Innovation Basics
Ideas
Innovation Extremes
Ideas
What features would be part of the best‐in‐class service?
What would be the wildest things we could do with this new service?
What would constitute incredible service delivery?
If our customers were designing this new service, what would it be like?
What would be the most attractive price structure for customers?
How could this new service generate 10x impact compared to what we do now?
How could we create the most dynamic marketing effort to reach customers?
What would be completely opposite of what’s expected from us when we release this new service?
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 12 2014, Mike Brown
6. Innovating Brand Experience Proof Points Objective: Identifying customer experience innovations to reinforce the
brand promise and related benefits Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Capabilities DriversUse: Exploring current customer experience delivery processes with
a view toward making enhancements to support the brand Next Step: Assess and prioritize ideas to innovate the customer experience Select a brand promise element and list how it is supported in the current customer experience. Then shift the focus to identify new ways to better deliver a consistent brand and customer experience.
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 13 2014, Mike Brown
7. Learning from Competitor Innovation (http://ow.ly/DJoaj) Objective: Identifying innovation lessons from competitive strategy movesBeneficial for: Market Readers, Capabilities DriversUse: Examining competitors’ innovation track records and current
activities for beneficial learnings Next Step: Apply the lessons to improve your innovation performance,
especially when pursuing a “fast follower” strategy Use these questions to develop a more strategic, documented, and actionable view of competitor innovation moves within your industry.
Question to Explore Developing the Answer Which innovations have come from traditional competitors versus newer players?
Generate a list of significant recent innovations. Ask various people in your business (or even your industry) for their recollections. Consolidate the lists in a timeline. Review the results to see which players are pursuing a competitive strategy based on innovation to drive change in your industry.
Where have competitors traditionally beat us to market with innovative ideas?
Look for reasons why competitors are beating you to market. Is your brand ruling out certain strategic moves, missing innovation opportunities, or is implementation lagging? What do the answers suggest about innovating differently in the future?
What signals did competitors make before introducing recent innovations?
Use the innovation timeline you created (above) to look back to recent innovations. What were competitors doing and saying before introducing innovations? While you won’t find them in every case, identify whether competitors have corporate “tells” that signal their innovation moves before they reach the marketplace.
How would our competitors develop and our brand’s newest innovation differently?
If competitors are pursuing dramatically different innovation strategies, that could be VERY good. Alternatively, differences could signal your brand is missing strategic opportunities. Determine what the situation is.
How long do competitors stick with an innovation that’s not working?
Can you identify a pattern for how much time competitors allow newly‐introduced innovations to thrive, survive, or die? Look for relationships (cost, visibility, etc.) that explain any pattern that might exist.
Are competitors introducing innovations we couldn’t profitably produce and sell at comparable prices?
It’s vital to assess whether your brand’s inability to match the price of a competitor’s recently‐introduced innovation is because of its cost advantages, a difference in cost structure or allocations, a deliberately aggressive / share‐gaining price, strategic brilliance, or stupidity. Any one or a combination of these suggests competitive strategy problems.
Have competitors introduced successful innovations with inferior features to ours?
If a competitor can introduce a successful innovation with seemingly fewer features than your offerings and still be successful, the competitor may have figured out customers are looking for something different. That difference may be a preference for simpler, cheaper, or easier to use innovations.
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 14 2014, Mike Brown
8. Identifying Potential Substitutes (http://ow.ly/DJos3) Objective: Expanding your organization’s view on non‐traditional
competitive threats that pose disruptive innovation forces Beneficial for: Market Readers, Needs SeekersUse: Anticipating potential competitive threats and heading them off
through innovation Next Step: Use the exploration to expand competitive tracking and shape
your innovation strategy Not all competitors look like your organization. Working from your brand benefits, identify other expected, surprising, and “out of left field” organizations that could deliver the benefit, irrespective of whether they are viewed as current competitors.
What are 3 other entities that could deliver this benefit to customers?
(Can only use each 1 time) Benefits Our Brand Currently Delivers
Expected Surprising Left Field
1. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
2. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
3. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
4. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
5. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
6. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
7. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
8. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
9. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
10. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
11. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
12. ________________________ ___________ ___________ ___________
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 15 2014, Mike Brown
9. Knowing When to Innovate (Who’s a Canary in the Coal Mine?) (http://ow.ly/DJoO3) Objective: Identifying who can provide early insight about your brand
nearing a peak and needing to explore new innovations Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Capabilities DriversUse: Better anticipating time windows for best launching innovation
development Next Step: Regularly convene your strategic thinking group to monitor
indicators and shape innovation strategy Answers to the first questions identify a strategic thinking team to focus on monitoring external and internal signals for innovation efforts. Use the second set of questions to start the strategic discussion with your team.
Questions to Identify Strategic Guides Potential Strategic Guides
Who tracks and/or understands leading performance indicators in our business?
Who in the organization isn’t so enamored with the current strategic direction that they are most willing and best able to start thinking about the NEXT strategic direction early?
Who among our salespeople or finance people will first know things aren’t as good as they have been? Or who among our market research people (or others) might know?
Whose fatigue with our current strategy will best indicate that it’s “enough” – whether it’s enough in the view of customers, our organization, or someone else?
Questions to Ask Strategic Guides Next Step
How long do customers in our market typically stick with something before moving to the next new thing?
Cut the estimates by 1/3 or by 1/2 – or maybe 3/4 to get a sense of when to look for a peak.
How long do we need our current strategic direction to work before we’d be okay with it falling apart since we’ll be doing something better already?
Use perspectives on this question as an additional gauge to adjust estimates of timing for exploring innovation.
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 16 2014, Mike Brown
10. Checking on Innovating Previous Innovations (http://ow.ly/DJq3D) Objective: Determining if a certain area represents a possible innovation
priority Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Market ReadersUse: Providing a quick relative input for assessing innovation
priorities within the organization Next Step: Incorporate results with other inputs to determine innovation
priorities Apply this decision tree when multiple areas are contending for innovation resources. It’s a relatively simple and quick input that allows multiple people to share input and address differences in perceptions.
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 17 2014, Mike Brown
11. Signaling the Need to Invest More in Innovation (http://ow.ly/DJpcF) Objective: Informal tracking of indicators suggesting the need to increase
innovation investment Applies to: Capabilities Drivers, Market ReadersUse: Providing a means to gather input from a broader group on
signals that innovation may be lagging Next Step: Incorporate results with other inputs to determine the need to
prioritize innovation attention and investment Solicit input from the innovation strategic thinking team. Use the results to make a case for greater innovation investment based on market and business performance.
Not Our Situation
Not Evident
Unsure
Somewhat Evident
Very Evident
SCORE
Sales growth with current customers lags expectations.
_____
Our offerings don’t sufficiently match decision factors driving why customers select brands.
_____
Brands unlike our company are circling the industry fringes.
_____
Looking 5 year ahead, it’s difficult to explain how or why our brand will be successful.
_____
Employees are leaving the company to start (or join) businesses disrupting our core.
_____
We have only minimal revenue coming from products /services less than two years old.
_____
Management doesn’t think innovation is vital for success.
_____
Intriguing ideas are appearing but employees don’t have outlets to develop them.
_____
We say innovation is important but no senior leader is driving turning ideas into results.
_____
We aren’t investing in innovation right now.
_____
41 to 50: Increasing innovation emphasis appears critical 31 to 40: Evidence of innovation challenges and a need to understand them better 21 to 30: Keep close tabs on areas of innovation weakness to address them near‐term 20 or less: It appears that the emphasis on innovation is serving the organization well
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 18 2014, Mike Brown
12. Glimpsing the Future (http://ow.ly/DJqqY) Objective: Developing a reliable, future‐looking view for innovation
opportunities in your marketplace Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Market ReadersUse: Strengthening your outside‐in view of needs and industry
developments shaping the innovation landscape Next Step: Reach out to customers and non‐customers you identified to
understand future trends and innovation opportunities Lead user research can provide an accurate and insightful look at a market’s future trends. It involves talking with customers and prospects that are demanding and challenging BECAUSE they are ahead of others in shaping trends. These questions will help identify the right (types) of users to interview for lead user research.
Which demanding and “scary” Current Customers . . .
Which challenging Prospects or Non‐Customers . . .
Push for new products and services
Have higher expectations than anyone else
Are more complex
Have strategies that are way in front of others
Attract attention for what they are doing
Are eager to try things so they can get them first
Always have pilot programs / trials going on
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 19 2014, Mike Brown
13. Employing a Massive Focus Group (http://ow.ly/DJqRh) Objective: Going beyond traditional focus group formats to employ large
customer gatherings to gain innovation input Beneficial for: Needs Seekers, Market ReadersUse: Taking advantage of customer interaction to solicit input and
design service innovations Next Step: Design and incorporate “massive focus groups” into pre‐existing
or new customer events A large gathering of customers and/or prospects can provide an ideal venue to create a massive focus group to gain input on innovation opportunities. Answer these questions below to gauge whether a large gathering has the dynamics to create the opportunity for gathering valuable input. Yes No Maybe Do participants have knowledge or perspectives that are valuable for
spurring innovation?
Do participants have knowledge or perspectives they are willing and able to share?
Are participants sufficiently similar or different to provide a valuable
range of perspectives?
Can we bring together people who might not meet but would produce
new ideas from doing so?
Are there opportunities to design a process to engage them in multiple
ways (mentally, emotionally, socially, physically, etc.) as long as will be
needed to gather input?
Can we introduce exercises that allow participants to self‐navigate through providing input?
Do we have starting ideas or concepts the audience can work with, edit, change, or rank to inform our thinking?
Beyond having places for attendees to share their ideas, will we be able to listen, watch for, and seek out content from throughout the
gathering?
Do we have efficient ways to turn perspective sharing from attendees
into innovation input and design opportunities?
TOTALS ____ ____ ____
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 20 2014, Mike Brown
14. Exploring Change and Disruptive Innovation (http://ow.ly/DJrbI, http://ow.ly/DJrqk) Objective: Pushing innovation exploration to consider disruptive optionsBeneficial for: Needs Seekers, Market Readers, Capabilities Drivers Use: Moving the innovation conversation into potentially unfamiliar
and more uncomfortable territory Next Step: Review and prioritize the innovation opportunities surfaced so
the innovation portfolio includes more disruptive ideas Depending on your organization’s innovation profile, use questions from this list to push innovation possibilities more disruptive to your market. Needs Seekers
How can we go shopping with our customers on a daily basis to gain breakthrough product ideas?
If we reduced the number of product/service options, variations, and alternatives we offer
customers, what else would we do to improve the value we deliver to them?
How could we turn the most complicated processes in our customer experience into one‐step
processes that are dramatically easier for clients?
Market Readers
What has our industry known about for years to deliver incredible value to customers, but has
repeatedly ignored pursuing it?
If our brand is trying to catch the #1 in our industry, what can we do completely differently
instead of simply following the leader again?
How can we boost our speed, expertise, and strategic thinking by an order of magnitude to
disrupt our industry?
What feature can we create that’s missing in someone else’s product?
Where can we disrupt significant cost areas in physical goods through services?
If the most prominent player in our market disappeared, what opportunities would it create?
Capabilities Drivers
What do we have to do to increase our number of employee‐generated ideas by 100x?
How can we digitize a physical element, action, or experience – or digitize all three?
What steps can we take to create a service from our strongest / most prevalent support
capability?
How is it possible to smooth demand for inefficient / difficult to provide capabilities?
How can we digitize scarce resources to put them in more places simultaneously?
What would it take to turn in‐person interactions into remote interactions?
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 21 2014, Mike Brown
15. Identifying Strategic Analogs (http://ow.ly/DJrIl) Objective: Identifying analogous situations to mine for innovation ideasBeneficial for: Capabilities Drivers, Market ReadersUse: Creating an ongoing source of innovation inspiration for the
organization based on how others are innovating Next Step: Create tracking to monitor the strategic analogs for current and
future ideas Use these questions to break apart and generalize the components of your organization. This will help identify analogous organizations to track for new ideas and innovation opportunities, plus can create a better understanding of customers’ experience expectations.
What are the big revenue sources for us?
What are the big drivers/buckets of cost in our organization?
List the major activities we perform as an organization. How would we translate each of them into simple words a grandparent or parent unfamiliar with our company could easily understand?
What are the titles of employees who interact directly with customers? What words in their titles provide a more general sense of what we do?
If we were going to school about the important functions in our business, who (outside our own company) would we want teaching the course?
If we had to recreate what we do or completely outsource our operation, who would we ask to handle the most important parts?
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 22 2014, Mike Brown
16. What’s It Like? (http://ow.ly/y7IFW) Objective: Stimulating new innovation thinking through using another
organization’s strategic perspective Applies to: Capabilities Drivers, Needs SeekersUse: Pushing a company struggling with traditional thinking to look at
innovation in new ways on an ongoing basis Next Step: Prioritize the innovation ideas generated currently and track the
analogies in the future Pick an innovation opportunity or challenge and list its characteristics. Then select an organization facing a comparable situation and brainstorm how, with its different view of your organization’s situation, it would approach innovation.
Generalize Your Situation & Describe It
Who Other Situation Is Like It? How would they address it?
_______________________________
________________________________
_______________________________
________________________________
_______________________________
________________________________
_______________________________
________________________________
_______________________________
________________________________
The Creatively Insightful Brainzooming Fake Book 23 2014, Mike Brown
Additional Brainzooming Resources
The Brainzooming Strategic Thinking Manifesto
http://ow.ly/t21XK
Strategic Thinking Exercises
http://ow.ly/nGNb1
Link to sign up for free Brainzooming blog http://ow.ly/nEzkh
816‐509‐5320 [email protected]
