The “8 eyes” of innovation
What follows is not a process but the framework that we use to discuss and develop innovative projects at innobarista:
INITIATION. We start by openly asking ourselves how to best answer questions about the rationale behind the project we are embarking on; what is it that we are trying to achieve; and what would success look like at the end of the process.
Note that everyone in this multi-disciplinary team is aware of the fact that any initial assumptions are not necessarily the ones the project will end with. That helps us and our customers navigate through the discovery and innovation process, which can take unexpected paths.
- Deliverable: guiding vision and research requirements.
INVESTIGATION. Our scouts proceed to identify relevant TPPs, trends, paradigm shifts and paradoxes, to enable everyone in the team to envision scenarios and to create and connect dots.
The subjects of study are not just those directly or indirectly related to the project, but also any tangential as well as analog solutions from other fields.
- Deliverable: preliminary research insights and gap assessment.
IMMERSION. As our research progresses, we purposely strive to figure out how these subjects can be best experienced by our team: agile experimentation and dogfooding are two of the vehicles we use to gain “first person insights.”
We also ask ourselves what is it that we can learn from others’ experiences. To acquire “third person insights” we engage end users, prosumers as well as a variety of experts at various project stages. Lead user innovation and ethnography are examples of our approach to user centered research.
- Deliverable: use cases and quality of experience analysis
IDEATION. We believe that meaningful ideation is about identifying scenarios, concepts and ranking options. The more ideas, concepts and proposals (both constrained and unconstrained) we get to generate together the better. This involves brainstorming on:
- legacy and current vs. new concepts
- end-to-end vs. point solutions
- integrated vs. best of breed approaches
- closed vs. open systems
Anyone’s contribution can open a path to a novel proposal. We embrace the fact that good ideas can come from anywhere at anytime.
The team also addresses key indicators, the pros and cons of each concept, how they compare with one another and whether any of them can be cross-pollinated and, therefore, blended to deliver something greater than the sum of the individual parts.
- Deliverable: solutions portfolio, prioritization criteria and comparative analysis
INVENTION. We further define and spec out the set of shortlisted concepts. At this stage, we look at addressing how the underlying inventions make a positive difference. The objective is to unequivocally outline what’s new, improved and unique about them and whether open innovation plays a role.
- Deliverable: product, service, process and business model inventions
INCUBATION. Rapid proof of concept development relies on a mix of low and high fidelity prototypes feeding a decision tree analysis. We work with our customers to define the best incubation and trial models for each project, which can include partnering and sourcing activities.
- Deliverable: pilot project
INNOVATION. We believe that inventions become innovations only when the inventor is first to market and end users adopt the product or service.
Note that while an inventor is someone who first created something that is new, an innovator is someone who gets to first apply it successfully. So, enabling our customers to leverage "first mover’s advantages” is the reason why our scope of work involves design strategy, technology and product roadmapping, marketing and business case development.
- Deliverable: end-to-end go to market plan
ITERATION. Last but not least, we work under a continuous improvement mindset which permeates what we do from beginning to end. This helps us mitigate the risk of incurring fatal errors and logical fallacies, which would otherwise undermine a project’s success.
- Conducting iterative and incremental experimentation is not only a source of innovation, but also helps prevent the kind of mission creep and backend loaded processes that leave very little or no room to maneuver when the project might need it the most.
Our model relies on handling parallel project flows configured to meet the needs of each project as no one size fits all when it comes to innovating.
copyright 2009 innobarista inc
Why do we call this the “8 eyes” of innovation?
- This is just a mnemonic to help us structure, better communicate and easily remember the above concepts. By now, you have already noticed that the above 8 paragraphs start with words that begin with the letter “I.” We have taken advantage of the phonetic resemblance between “I” and “eye” in the English language, which we use to position “innovation as an eye opening experience” in discussions with customers.
- We also leverage obvious similarities between the calligraphy of number 8 and the infinite symbol, which we use to emphasize “iteration, adaptive processes, continuous improvement and incremental project development” in the innovation lifecycle.
J. de Francisco blogging from Cambridge, MA, on July 10
Reviewed by Satish Iyer and last updated on August 8.
copyright 2009 innobarista.inc
