Innovation is a methodology for solving problems

See: The Missing Pieces of Innovation – a blog post

This is a summary of the innovation methodology. © Ved Sen

Award winning ambulance design questioned the

purpose of the ambulance and changed it from

transporting patients to initiating care, as an

extension of the hospital. (Link)

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children

adopted techniques used by F1 pit stop teams to improve the handovers between surgery and intensive care. (Link)

Paul Simon travelled to South Africa and immersed

himself in free form sessions with musicians there for Graceland. He travelled to Memphis to construct the lyrics (link)

A number of business such as Aviva, John Lewis

and others have set up ‘lab’ environments, to

drive innovation projects, and act as start up accelerators. (Link)

GE based it’s new software business for IOT in Silicon Valley,

rather than at it’s headquarters. Predix is an early success. (Link)

Define clearly the problem to be solved

Define the desired outcome and what success

looks likeAsk the question in a few different ways to arrive at

appropriate framing

Define the context for comparison. Establish the

baseline for current best of breed solutions. Explore

adjacent & other domains for how the problem is

solved.

Create conditions for creative thinking.

Challenge comfort zone. Use people with varied backgrounds. Combine

creative thinkers with deep experts. Encourage non predictable outcomes

Create physical space for collocating ‘start up’

team. Use Google Sprints to rapidly get to

prototypes. Iterate to MVP. Use design thinking

over expert opinion.

Allow MVP / prototype to grow within an

innovation network. Provide support for scaling, morphing,

merging with other ideas or pivoting.

Problem Framing Baseline Research Creative Spark Prototyping Lab Scaling Network

SOFT support: Culture, rewards, environment, purpose

HARD support: R&D budget, scientific community, competence, funding, structure,

Innovation in the Enterprise: A Methodology for Problem Solving

Typical maturity

Stage

Key Steps

Examples

Organization Support

© Ved Sen

If you're not prepared to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original – Sir Ken Robinson

Image source: https://www.eurodiaconia.org/