If your metric of ‘ideation’ success is to fill a wall with coloured squares, you will probably never miss your target at an innovation workshop. Sticky notes are the friend of the unskilled moderator.

Of course, sticky notes are a great thing, functionally. The problem is, after the meeting, most of them get thrown away, and the few that are kept as The Next Big Ideas are also thrown away, eventually. Here’s why:

1 What goes on tour stays on tour

In ideation terms, this translates to ‘what’s said in the room doesn’t work in the real world.’

Take your top three ideas from your last innovation session to the CSuite and they will probably bomb. Without context to support them, most often the argument is ‘so, where does this sit in the budget?’

Easy not to hug. Easy to discount. Easy to kill.

2 Show me the data, then show me the money

There is no data. This is future opportunity. The only data available is for what happened in the past and the problem with that is, it’s in the past.

The internal innovation process MUST be led by new information, new insight, new attitudes and a willingness to explore your company’s survival. There are many businesses here today who won’t be around for ever (or for long, in some cases) and the reason is that their markets are changing, and they aren’t.

Innovation is about survival as much as growth, but current budgets are measured in profitability. The mis-match is clear to see.

3 Not all ideas are equal

You only need to look under the right stone to find the winning idea. On that wall of sticky notes, there probably is one idea that will underpin your business into the next era. The trick is to recognise it.

Designing a process that specifies how concepts should be assessed must happen before you ideate. The process has to be informed by somebody determining what good looks like.

If you haven’t got these ducks lined up, leave the stickies in the drawer.

4 Perfection isn’t the objective. Good enough is

I’m not saying, launch crap. I’m saying, launch fast. Iterate fast. Develop fast. And importantly, start fast.

Pick the idea that meets your need and get on with it. Consumers will tell you if your Minimal Viable Product (MVP) works or not. The only thing they need is access to it.

What you launch is inevitably not what you will end up selling in time. Look at every design icon out there for examples. The VW Golf is a good one. The Wright Brothers’ plane is another. Great things do evolve, but they start quickly and develop as uses and attitudes are reflected in design.

5 Close the process off

Innovation is talked about as being one of those nebulous, unspecific functions that might deliver great things but most often doesn’t.

The money pumped into ‘innovation’ is probably matched by the frustration everybody else in the company feels towards its lack of impact. Why? Because the timeline is vague. Give a target a date to hit and the pressure is on.

Allow innovation to wander off and you’ve lost already. An innovation process needs to be more than S.M.A.R.T.

An innovation process should have:

1. A start date – on this date, that thing will happen.
2. A finish date – by this date, we will have done that thing.
3. Metrics – this is how we will decide what to do, this is how we will decide which candidate wins, and this is how we will measure success.
4. A team – collaboration is the most powerful tool you have and it won’t cost you any more than you’re paying already.

Think of it like this: put ten of your people in a room for half a day and you’ve just amassed five days’ work in four hours. See if your CFO can argue with that.

Finally, to avoid any doubt about your intention to ‘innovate’, announce when this work starts, describe how it will be done and what it will achieve – in advance. Give people notice. Get them clamouring to be involved. Give them time to train for the event – they will.

When you start them off, watch them fly. Your innovation process can be the most pivotal moment in your company’s history, if you get it right.

Guess what?

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do. Call now. 020 7193 8838

You can download an infographic of this checklist here.

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Practically, the room44 innovation audit provides a view of your world that your customers see. Strategically, if you are beginning to think about divestment, investment, or retirement and succession, this will show you how your plans might be helped along.[/box]

Say ‘audit’ in any situation and watch the third eye drop and the other person focus in the middle distance. It takes a really buzzed up accountant to make ‘audit’ sound interesting. But we’re never put off by a challenge, and now ‘Innovation Audits’ are here to introduce some intrigue into the mix.

Here’s how room44 innovation audits work

Invite us to review your product plans and innovation strategy, and one of two things will happen:

1. We’ll validate everything you plan to do as both appropriate and relevant.
2. We won’t – but we will identify where things can improve and what needs work. In real terms, this is where we help you to train your weaknesses.

Innovation audits aren’t common. Traditionally-minded agencies, like those rooted in financial management and Lean processes, come at innovation from a fairly predictable starting point: where’s the money?

room44’s starting point is consumer-centric, on the one hand, and commercial on the other. Our testing covers four key metrics that start with, ‘who wants this?’ and end with, ‘are we allowed to do it?’ Combined, these metrics give you a comprehensive view of the probability of your plans succeeding.

We have a uniquely objective perspective to apply. The common ground we’ll stand on with you shows how relevant your product or service is, now and in the short term. Our use of Design Thinking and knowledge of developing markets will open up a landscape of opportunities. A new view comes from talking to each other and working it out.

Innovation audits take about a week to deliver. Working internally and collaboratively shows off your good points to maximum effect, and reveals the vulnerabilities that aren’t so obvious. We’ll see your dark corners and we’ll see through the personal agendas.

What we feed back at the end of the process is highly valuable insight and includes a discussion about what to do next, what to do after that, and what to plan for the future.

We stand your plans up to a mirror and show you how you look from the outside in. Effectively, this is a view of your world that your customers see. Strategically, if you are beginning to think about divestment, investment, or retirement and succession, the room44 innovation audit gives you a chance to see how your plans might be helped along.

Seeing it differently. Future-proofing. It’s what we do. Click here to learn more about innovation audits.

History tells us that the likelihood of most companies surviving much beyond the founder’s involvement is slim. Many businesses get bought, absorbed into other companies or simply fail. In fact, according to John Elkann at Fiat, only 49 companies per million last beyond 100 years.

If you were able to audit your own probability of remaining innovative would you?

Unicorns, like Amazon, are big news today, but even they could fail to thrive once the founder is no longer involved. While Jeff Bezos runs Amazon. Larry Page and Sergei Brin guide Google, Howard Shultz is at Starbucks, Mark Zuckerberg sits at the top of Facebook and Yvon Chouinard runs Patagonia the new ‘normal’ looks OK. If they move on, then what?

Put into context, what’s your gut feeling about Uber and AirBnB lasting longer than their unicorn status? Recent market reports about saturation and financial results already suggest that Tim Cook needs to change something in The Valley if Apple is to maintain its unique consumer appeal.

As growth starts to get harder established companies need to consider their consumers more actively: i.e. to put innovation at their core. Often, they do the opposite. The tendency, after the visionary entrepreneur leaves and the money-men take control, is to respond to anticipated competitive threat.

Seeing competition developing and moving to defend a market position with a similar proposition is the sales target-driven, fast-follower route to product development.

Here’s a blog about that ‘Product trends trending. Competitor confirmation bias.‘

Established companies can’t bring themselves to put decision-making responsibility into the hands of one person and so creativity suffers. Whereas owner-operators won’t shy away from the big decision. If something needs doing to protect and grow a business, an owner will step up.

This particular skill is really hard to replace. If the culture that sits around Jeff, Larry and Mark has got the company to where it is, who’s going to do that when they’re gone?

An answer is for the founder to help the team to treat innovation as the driver of strategic decisions: make strategy about consumer experience more than ROI. Get this right and ROI is the net result. Make ROI the driver and consumers will fall away.

Tools are available for this process to be successful. Sometime external moderation helps. We offer to start by running an innovation audit.

Auditing the way your company regards innovation and how it pushes initiatives into the market can be a key indicator of business sustainability.

“Creativity is having new ideas. Innovation is doing new things.” – Theodore Levitt.

Book some time here and I’ll personally talk you though it.

Seeing it differently. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

[box]

Practically, the room44 innovation audit provides a view of your world that your customers see. Strategically, if you are beginning to think about divestment, investment, or retirement and succession, this will show you how your plans might be helped along.[/box]

Say ‘audit’ in any situation and watch the third eye drop and the other person focus in the middle distance. It takes a really buzzed up accountant to make ‘audit’ sound interesting. But we’re never put off by a challenge, and now ‘Innovation Audits’ are here to introduce some intrigue into the mix.

room44 offers you innovation audits. Not only are they interesting, they’re also valuable. Here’s how – invite us to review your product plans and innovation strategy, and one of two things will happen:

1. We’ll validate everything you plan to do as both appropriate and relevant.
2. We won’t – but we will identify where things can improve and what needs work. In real terms, this is where we help you to train your weaknesses.

Innovation audits aren’t common. Traditionally-minded agencies, like those rooted in financial management and Lean processes, come at innovation from a fairly predictable starting point: where’s the money?

room44’s starting point is consumer-centric, on the one hand, and commercial on the other. Our testing covers four key metrics that start with, ‘who wants this?’ and end with, ‘are we allowed to do it?’ Combined, these metrics give you a comprehensive view of the probability of your plans succeeding.

We have a uniquely objective perspective to apply. The common ground we’ll stand on with you shows how relevant your product or service is, now and in the short term. Our use of Design Thinking and knowledge of developing markets will open up a landscape of opportunities. A new view comes from talking to each other and working it out.

Innovation audits take about a week to deliver. Working internally and collaboratively shows off your good points to maximum effect, and reveals the vulnerabilities that aren’t so obvious. We’ll see your dark corners and we’ll see through the personal agendas.

What we feed back at the end of the process is highly valuable insight and includes a discussion about what to do next, what to do after that, and what to plan for the future.

We stand your plans up to a mirror and show you how you look from the outside in. Effectively, this is a view of your world that your customers see. Strategically, if you are beginning to think about divestment, investment, or retirement and succession, the room44 innovation audit gives you a chance to see how your plans might be helped along.

Seeing it differently. Future-proofing. It’s what we do. Get in touch here.