innovation consulting Archives

“FFS Tristan, how can that work? If I make 1% changes every day I’ll have a different business in three months.”

Trump – Brexit – Covid-19 – War in Ukraine…

It’s trite to suggest that these mega-events are on the same scale as decisions you and I make in our everyday lives. What they have in common, though, is the fact that they were readable. Yes, there was a degree of uncertainty before they actually happened and the timing was a bit vague, but the likelihood of these things happening became slowly more certain.

The lie of £350 million a week going to the NHS and 100,000 troops standing on a border probably signalled the thing happening even if you didn’t want it to.

I don’t know of anyone who had a contingency plan in place for any of them.

One or two companies had a scenario map, but not a plan.

So, with the benefit of hindsight, what happens next?

The signals of change are visible for those who choose to look. room44 looks all the time and what we do is connect less obvious trends that are signalled ahead of time.

Let’s have a look at a few UK-specific signals:

Some EU countries are dependent on Russia for their supply of gas. Russia is at war: it will take a long time to recover and while it does it will increase its export prices for energy supply.
The economic sanctions against Russia will have wider ramifications that to prevent Russians from buying western goods.
Ukraine’s output of wheat is devastated for 2022 and for an indeterminate period into the future.
The cost of diesel fuel in the UK has jumped from something close to £1.20 a litre to £1.90 over the last few months and fuel prices are on the rise anyway. £3/litre won’t be a surprise.
All UK local authorities have targets to hit that will see an improvement in air quality.
Charging per mile is on the legislative agenda for motor vehicle journeys.
UK new building planning permissions now come with environmental improvement requirements. For commercial properties, it is often necessary for occupiers to commit to an ongoing programme of carbon reductions.
Urban domestic planning permissions do not automatically stipulate residences need car parking spaces as part of the deal.
Food prices have risen since COVID. Some foods aren’t always available. 15% thgis year is forecasted.
Bank interest rates are rising.

I could go on.

Everyone reading this can probably see ways in which these factors will affect the cost base in their business and the options to mitigate the effect aren’t so many now. It’s going to be very difficult to hold your overheads steady through cost management, which gives you two choices: sell more or sell for more.

The benefits of incremental marginal gains

One of the roles I play when working with clients is to bring insight to the conversation on a regular basis. The benefit from seeing trends laid bare is to see them in the context of your business.

Viewing shifts regularly gives you the opportunity to aggregate the information and to adjust your working assumptions in small ways, rather than waiting for the big market change to hit and force you to react.

We apply the benefit of marginal incremental change. The idea that you can step forward by making little adjustments to the way you do business is proven to work time after time.

It’s an odd conflict of opinion that we’ll buy into Toyota Business System, Eric Ries or ‘Lean’ principles but the idea of making 1% improvements we can see for ourselves doesn’t get the same traction.

Hence the client who said, “FFS Tristan, how can that work? If I make 1% changes every day I’ll have a different business in three months.”

Future thinking. Future proofing. It’s what we do.

If you want to talk about this, here’s my diary. Pick a time that suits you.

When nothing in the data indicates what your future holds, you must work out what will keep your product relevant to its market. This is what innovation consulting takes care of.

Clients can be contrary. What they say they want and what they actually want aren’t always the same. Here’s an example:

Expressed goal: Can you research markets to show us what works in other segments, that we could do in ours?

Answer: Yes.

Actual goal: Can you tell us what we should do next?

Answer: Probably – but if we do, why does your company need you?

Innovation Managers have one thing in common. You all got where you are by being the most creative of people. As soon as you got this job, though, you were asked to operate in a manner that your company could recognise as new product development, but not always as innovation.

In the past, you would have filled your diary with trips to trade shows and exhibitions – essentially shopping trips with like-minded people. You may have defined this as innovation. None of us now knows when, or even if, the next trade show will happen, and this uncertainty gives you a huge opportunity to change your approach.

Research is only useful if you use it.

Here’s a scenario: a client asks us to research across markets and countries. We plan to work with the client to develop a ‘relevance’ rating for new ideas, so we can create a decisioning method for them – and, in the process, instil a system that makes innovation possible.

Then the client realises they have to read what we send them. What they actually want is for us to tell them what is relevant and break the insight down to a level that doesn’t require much input from them.

What’s wrong with this scenario isn’t that we are making judgements about the client’s future direction – it’s that, when they have to discuss a concept with their senior management, they won’t know enough about it to present the case effectively. Sure, they’ll understand that this idea could work, but they won’t be aware of who else is working in the space (it’s not just the usual suspects who are the most vigorous disruptors), or if the nominated concept is a good strategic fit.

Aren’t the answers in the data?

Sometimes but, in innovation, not always.

Data is historical. It tells you what has happened. It won’t tell you what will happen, or what might happen, or what could happen with some help. Data can be extrapolated to provide a forecast that assumes circumstances don’t change.

This is the part of the equation that we insist clients take responsibility for – because things do change, and today they change more quickly and in more unexpected ways.

Avoid the allure of easy.

It’s not always easy. Showing your business some nicely visualised data about market movements will be attractive for a while. Sooner or later though, you’ll need to work out what will keep your product relevant to its market when nothing in the data matters anymore. That’s what an innovation process takes care of.

Question:

Can we research markets to show you what works in other segments that you could do in yours?

Answer: Yes.

Actual goal: Can we tell you what you should do next?

Answer: Probably – but we’d rather work together. Together, we make a fantastic team- but you must commit to a process that has a start, a middle and an end.

If your management has a history of losing patience with new initiatives, please don’t start an innovation process. It’ll end in disappointment.

The purpose of a process is to get to the end. The end of a process is where the magic happens. It’s where we pull together all the insight gathered and create innovative opportunities. It’s where we design a rationale that your management can see potential in. It’s where all the work culminates, leading to a final strategic output with practical actions described..

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

New normal

Inevitably, the events of the last three months have disrupted business and personal planning. Unprecedented circumstances have that effect.

Just before the world went into COVID-19-enforced lockdown, the UK was fixated on Brexit and guess what? It hasn’t gone away.

Other major global challenges (climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, air pollution (it’s returning)) are still out there too, but let’s, just for the sake of planning our short-term futures, have another look at Brexit.

Debt, grants and furlough

Since March, the UK has generated vast amounts of debt. Businesses are drawing on government support in the form of grants, loans and/or furlough funding, and also delaying paying rent and VAT. Hold that thought.

Brexit

In June, the UK enters a critical period of negotiation over its future relationship with the EU.

If, by the end of June, we don’t reach an accord over matters such as fishing and an agreement over trade borders with Ireland, there may not be an agricultural policy deal, or any deal. Despite the UK government talking up its prospects of success, EU member states aren’t likely to agree a set of terms for the UK that are better than they can get themselves. This is part of the problem.

With no outline deal in place, we are heading for a no-deal exit that will come into effect on 1^st January 2021: about the time when personal tax bills will be imminent; three months before business rents could be a full year overdue; and a couple of months before delayed VAT payments must be settled. That’s a lot of cash due to flow from businesses into the Government’s coffers within the space of a few weeks.

Future thinking

To an innovation agency that tells business to plan for the long-term, it’s clear that planning for even the next nine months, without the benefit of a certain trading relationship with our closest overseas markets and supply chains, will be problematic.

The signs are that 2021 also has the potential for new lockdowns, if COVID mutates into COVID-21. Restricted access to the workplace through enforced social distancing, app-led movement controls, face-recognition surveillance and zero return from banked cash will all still feature large.

We’re anticipating at least another year of disruption, uncertainty and risk of infection, and so, at room44, we’ll maintain a pragmatic approach of seeking new opportunities through the application of consumer-facing innovative practices.

Normal has moved on

If your business had a problem maintaining its supply chain when COVID first hit, or if you had to shut down your branch of a national chain, you probably understand the trust that previously brought customers to your door has now been diluted. Those small operators you didn’t worry much about before have been working away to fill the vacuum while you were away, and they’ve made gains in market share. It may only be local in your eyes, but it’s enough to keep them going.

Local is the new trusted brand equity

Lots of companies have pivoted into service models where their product can be delivered to consumers through new distribution methods. Even more, though, are waiting for the ‘new normal’ to float back into view, hoping that it looks a lot like the ‘old normal’.

As disrupted businesses cut back or close, there are people new to the jobs market and they too are trying to generate income by starting up a micro-business locally. Local is becoming the new trusted brand equity, further disrupting established business in a virtuous circle

Normal has moved on. Don’t wait for a return to business as it was – start working on a new plan. Tomorrow has always been different from today. Your tomorrow may be unrecognisable.

Future thinking. Future proofing. It’s what we do.

At the risk of repeating myself to regular readers, the secret to being a successful innovator is as simple as climbing a 50ft rope and ringing a bell.

And just like climbing the rope, innovation is really simple to understand and really hard to do.

The answer? Figure out where they’re going and get there first.

First off

Trying to ‘know’ anything about the future is a fool’s errand. If we haven’t learnt that recently, we probably never will.

Secondly

Working out what you must do to meet a need that hasn’t yet been identified is tough. The best we can do maybe to make an educated guess.

Anyone’s best guess may be the ideas that look like they have the highest probability of succeeding.

That may be 100% more than the competition is doing and, if you don’t stop doing it, some of the time you’ll be right.

How do you start to figure out where your customers are probably going – so you can get there first?

Get some help
Look for clues
Record trends
Do it every day/week/month and…
get used to thinking about your future

How do we work?

We future think
We work with you to develop a future-proofing strategy
We’re here to help you start to innovate

You can see our VP here and book time to talk here.

It’s that easy.

For many businesses, Q4 may be the next best time to launch an innovation, internally or externally. But now is the best time to focus on what comes next.

For millions of people sent home from the workplace, the COVID-19 crisis might be providing their first experience of working in a physically isolated space. For others, it’s business as usual. While media threads suggest that working from home lifts some of the pressure and makes life easier, many of us are working flat out – not only coping with the uncertainty around business contracts and trying to ensure we deliver on promise, but also managing around those business enablers we took for granted – like the post office and stationery suppliers.

Opportunities

Despite all this, it’s more critical than ever, in this unusual time, that we don’t miss the opportunity to plan ahead. If now is all about keeping things going, Q4 may be the next best time to make a significant leap and to plan what comes next.

On current signals, it looks like mass gatherings may be part of the landscape again around October. It may have been speculative, but the London Marathon and several festivals have plumped for this revised timing.

We’re probably all looking at a long summer of working, and playing, from home. At room44, we’re continuing to watch how trends are developing, and where the land lies on the things that were important before everything changed. Here are a few random readings:

Bush fires et al

Remember the Australian bush fires? They’re still burning, despite COVID-19. Recent swings in weather patterns have slackened their spread, but they’re still blazing across the country. Environmentally, the reduction in travel has begun to benefit our environment but mega trends are still hurting. The Amazon is still being deforested and plastic waste hasn’t gone away. Popular media may have taken its eye off the environmental ball – you shouldn’t, as you plan ahead. The part your business plays in that context will come back to the top of the agenda.

Brexit

Remember that? It’s still a job to get done and, according to the UK Prime Minister in one of his early COVID-19 press conferences, it will still be done by the end of the year. Will it be a ‘hard’ exit? Is anyone watching?

Consumer goods

Amid the crush of the national craving for toilet rolls, Britons did not cover themselves in glory by adopting an ‘everyone for themselves’ attitude, stripping shelves before key workers could even finish their shifts. Department stores are reported to have had a run on sales of fridge-freezers so, logically, many people should be able to feed themselves for weeks if restriction on movement freezes. But what does this lead to? Huge spikes in demand during periods of shortage result in the supply chain becoming bloated. Later, as demand levels out and over-capacity leads to a glut, will prices fall? If petrol and diesel are a measure of this the answer is, yes. If you haven’t filled your car for a week or so, the price of a litre may surprise you.

Digital tech

Predicting demand patterns and behavioural trends has been an important skill as health experts model the spread of COVID-19. Traffic monitors and street cameras tell the authorities where and when people are moving. From China, there have been reports of facial recognition being used to identify persistent curfew breakers.

Combine this data with algorithm development and it becomes possible to predict where outbreaks will occur, supporting the call, from some quarters, to increase surveillance across countries.

Watch this trend. Some countries are using mobile phone tracking of its citizens to anticipate outbreaks of COVID-19 and enforce ‘stay at home’ Hefty fines (@$7,000) have been reported for non-compliance of social distancing rules and with second spikes and re-infection being discussed, these measures look set to stick around.

…and VR?

The use of digital technology to help communities stay in touch has become a part of normal life across all age groups. While gaming and eSports may take a step forward if we are isolated for long periods, the signs are that most people still see everyday personal contact as more important than virtual environments. That’s not to say that VR doesn’t have its place, but here’s an extract from Ray Bradbury’s 1957 novel Dandelion Wine that paints a picture.

And then, inside the Happiness Machine, Lena Hoffman began to weep.

The inventor’s smile faded…

There his wife sat, tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Oh, it’s the saddest thing in the world”, she wailed. “I feel awful, terrible.”

She climbed out through the door.

“First it was Paris.”

“What’s wrong with Paris?”

“I never thought about being in Paris in my life. But now you got me thinking, Paris! So, suddenly I wanted to be in Paris and I know I’m not.”

“It’s almost as good, this machine.”

“…Leo, the mistake you made is you forgot that some hour, some day we all got to climb out of that thing and go back to dirty dishes and the beds not made.

While you’re in that thing, sure, a sunset lasts for ever, the air smells good, the temperature is fine. All the things you want to last, last.

But outside the children wait on lunch, the clothes need buttons and let’s be frank Leo, how long can you look at a sunset?”

After COVID-19, the new ‘normal’ we adjust to will likely be quite different from how things were before. All the more reason to start planning for what comes next, don’t you think? Now is the best time to focus on what comes next.

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

Unsure about how to plan to succeed in the 2020-2030 decade? Checkout our 10, 20-30 programme here.

10, 20-30 is a framework for delivering a future-proofed mindset to your team, business and lifecycle.

Why?

Every day, there’s a new disruptive business story, a new tech start-up raising millions to change something, someday.

On the flip side, and at the same time, there is regular reporting of start-ups and established firms going under. Uber loses a founder, WeWork takes a tumble and other unicorns report a year of negative returns and lose their shine. Sometimes, some things are too good to be true.

The reasons for missed ROI targets and, even closures, are many and various and all start with an assumption: you’re alright, because somebody will always need your paper, water, chocolate, steel work, cosmetics, legal services, financial advice, cars, office space…or will they?

But…

With a properly critical look at your future, at your consumer behaviours and your market, it’s possible to see what’s coming down the line to compete with you. And there will be something on your horizon that will cause some of your older revenue streams to dry up.

There it is. An uncomfortable truth maybe but one to watch none-the-less. With insight comes the opportunity to future-proof yourself.

So what?

Working with teams to create roadmaps to a profitable future, we can find that everything looks different.

You will define what your business is going to be. You’ll plot your path of baby steps so everyone knows what they must do from the minute they hear the plan.

We always make it clear that the output we create together isn’t a plan for someday: the output we generate by working with you is a plan you can use now.

Forecasts are guesses

As a process, ours is an easy one to understand. Pick a point in the future, use radical insight to inform what’s needed for that strategic end point to be viable and plot the product developments that will get you there. As far as ROI is concerned, you’ll have a general impression of size and shape.

However strong your forecasting function is, and we’ll probably disagree on that, they are guessing just as much as you are. Of course they have models and spreadsheets to justify their view of the world, but you have one thing they don’t – and that’s insight driven intuition.

This is the magic sauce that could bring your CSuite to the party.

Maybe you’ve heard of the ‘fuzzy front end’ or ‘future forecasting’. What they point to is a future sales figure that amounts to the same thing really: guesswork.

Intuition

Your senior management has been around long enough to get into the CSuite. They’ve worked through cycles of business to achieve the sort of insight that can only come with time served and they know, more often than not, what good looks like.

So, if you can’t get them involved in the actual process of innovation, it’s worth bouncing the odd ball down the board table to see where their interest lies, what sparks their excitement, and where their intuition makes them look.

Awareness vs trust

In the digital marketing rule book, we are told there are three phases to online marketing: awareness, trust and conversion. It’s the same across your business structure and vertically from bottom to top.

Being noticed isn’t the same as being trusted, but getting an innovation concept through the stage gates means tapping into what becomes a reason to believe.

This may sound a bit too much like pragmatism to be true innovation, but innovation ultimately is a matter of commercial survival.

Today, you need a plan. If you don’t know where to start, or how to sell it in to your CSuite, get in touch. We do.

In the meantime, you can download our free guide to ‘Selling innovation into your own company’ here and get detail of our 10, 20-30 programme here.

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

Every day, there’s a new disruptive business story, a new tech start-up raising millions to change something, someday.

But…

There it is. An uncomfortable truth maybe but one to watch none-the-less. With insight comes the opportunity to future-proof yourself.

So what?

Working with teams to create roadmaps to a profitable future, we can find that everything looks different.

You will define what your business is going to be. You’ll plot your path of baby steps so everyone knows what they must do from the minute they hear the plan.

We always make it clear that the output we create together isn’t a plan for someday: the output we generate by working with you is a plan you can use now.

Forecasts are guesses

This is the magic sauce that could bring your CSuite to the party.

Maybe you’ve heard of the ‘fuzzy front end’ or ‘future forecasting’. What they point to is a future sales figure that amounts to the same thing really: guesswork.

Intuition

Awareness vs trust

Being noticed isn’t the same as being trusted, but getting an innovation concept through the stage gates means tapping into what becomes a reason to believe.

This may sound a bit too much like pragmatism to be true innovation, but innovation ultimately is a matter of commercial survival.

Today, you need a plan. If you don’t know where to start, or how to sell it in to your CSuite, get in touch. We do.

In the meantime, you can download our free guide to ‘Selling innovation into your own company’ here and checkout our 10, 20-30 programme here.

10, 20-30 is a framework for delivering a future-proofed mindset to your team, business and lifecycle.

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

Retail space is display space. Not selling space.

It’s three years since British Home Stores went into administration. Three years, and so many signals that UK retail is not in a happy place, yet successive retail failures quickly followed. The demise of Toys ‘R’ Us and Maplins added to the signs that all was not well, but the reassuring voices of other major high-street names told us not to worry – they were on the case.

Long-standing brands are continuing to fall away, more quietly perhaps, but the rate of attrition is now established. This week, we learnt that Mothercare’s stores will follow Thomas Cook’s by soon vacating all their premises.

At the current rate, the UK is losing 110 retail stores per week from the ‘most popular town centres’, according to PwC. Sixteen a day. If you haven’t noticed yet, you’re either in a big city, or maybe you never had them in the first place.

Retail space is display space. Not selling space.

Shoppers are spoilt for choice when it comes to getting what they want at the cheapest-on-display price. Mothercare may have done a great job at displaying brands for parents -to-be to try, but why would they buy there?

The press accused Mothercare of being ‘expensive and grotty’ this week: neither of these things happens overnight. ‘Grotty’ happens when there isn’t enough money to refurbish, and ‘expensive’ happens when the competition has undercut you for so long that you need to sweat the maximum cash out of every sale.

Thomas Cook, apparently, hadn’t noticed that people don’t buy holidays from a brochure anymore. Maybe they’d never heard of Ceefax, let alone the internet. Mothercare didn’t understand its customers’ digital tendencies – or it chose to ignore them.

So, in the company of Jack Wills, Staples and Bonmarché, we’re likely to see another gap in the UK retail landscape this year.

Who loses?

You and me. I needed to buy a printer last week and I tried to do it by going to a store. It didn’t happen.

John Lewis was, frankly, atrocious. If customer service and a two-year guarantee are now their only USPs, I don’t see them surviving. Curry’s/PCWorld couldn’t sell me what I wanted and there just weren’t any alternatives. My town (@miltonkeynes) sits at the heart of the UK’s technology ‘Growth Arc’ and it seems more than a little ironic that basic products and services for the growing ‘technology’ population aren’t on sale.

As much as I hated to do it, necessity and convenience drove me to Amazon and my new printer arrived inside 48 hours.

Will this continue?

Should we expect more of the same? Should we get used to hearing ‘not another one’ when a high-street brand vanishes? Hell, yeah.

In the last month, we’ve met around eight SME businesses that won’t be in business in three years’ time. The signals of change are loud and clear, but the need to stay loyal to a founder’s vision has over-taken the acknowledgement of the blindingly obvious.

There’s even a networking business that has suspended one of its groups through a lack of interest. If ever there was a sign that grass-roots start-ups are pulling in their horns, this is it.

What are we doing about it?

It’s all very well sitting here and bleating about how bad things are, and how Amazon is taking over the world, but what is room44 doing about it?

Two things

Firstly, we’re diversifying and investing in a new activity stream. We’ve been writing about environmental matters for a long time and we’ve decided that we should do a bit more than talk the talk. We’re about to walk the walk as well (more about this later).

Secondly, we’ve built a product that will help companies, like yours, plan to outlast your competition and thrive in a tough market. It’s called 10, 20-30. Together we will build product launches to take you through the next decade and provide you with the tools to launch at least one per year, so you stay relevant in a changing market.

Because we take seriously our capacity to deliver quality, it’s only available to a limited number of clients. Take a look at the 10, 20-30 proposition here and get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Thanks for reading and, if we don’t speak, good luck.

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

Our passive drift towards a world where sensors, monitors and machine learning pose a real challenge to innovating companies.

Trust is a testimonial

The signals from our research on future trends tell us that commerce for new brands is going to get tougher. While shopping for consumer products is easier in many ways than it was a few years ago, it’s still a complex operation. We can all research online, visit stores and compare prices across media to get the best deal. You may resist a visit to the shops if you’re buying clothes, but Apple says that 80% of people who buy online have been into store first.

We read seller recommendations and take notice of peer testimonials. This might be the single thing that influences our final buying decision. Without buyer endorsements, we have learnt not to trust brand promises and to be wary of positioning statements that promise too much.

Trust is what everyone else does

So, we don’t trust things until someone else validates our decision. As James Clear says in his book, Atomic Habits, “we’d rather be wrong with others than right by ourselves” and this describes the problem facing innovators today.

Unless shoppers make independent judgements, we will all end up making the same decision and the biggest promoter will win out.

The industry that has evolved around these issues makes our lives harder still. We’ve all received advertising from brands who don’t mind where their address list came from. Scraped data is big business. Similarly, our passive drift towards a world where sensors, monitors, facial recognition, sat nav and machine learning push us into actions, is a real issue for innovating companies.

Trust in technology

Wearable technology is a relatively easy thing to spot. Phones, watches and tablets are part of the fabric of everyday life. As we use them, our behaviours are captured by some of the biggest data harvesters the world has ever seen: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple to name only the big few. These data-centric platforms have one objective: to advertise to you. Every feed you access is sending you adverts that respond to your search activity. You are being inexorably nudged towards a buying decision. You are sensing little acts of influence every minute of every day that you spend on a device.

Trust is a nudge in the right direction

If you are a brand and aren’t nudging your customer towards you, you are being nudged out of the market. If you’re a new brand, you have choices: stay local and grow organically, trade local and get ‘found’, or secure investment and dilute. It’s a tough one.

But all is not lost. Consumer inbuilt scepticism allows for some push-back. Why is your most frequently seen advert in your feed? Where does that email come from that reminds you it’s your friend’s birthday? Who knows that your car lease is due for renewal?

Our filters for advertising are as highly tuned today as they were when all we had to worry about were leaflets through the door and posters on the bus. But the volume of media we consume (estimated at @300,000 words per day, the same length as an average novel) makes it hard to resist buying something just to satisfy the pressure.

So, how do new brands break into a market?

There are many answers but the truth is, it’s going to take time. Tenacity, energy, creativity and bloody-mindedness will help. There are a lucky few who may gallop through this cycle and X Factor-esque quick wins may happen. Pragmatically, though, the best advice might come from the most unexpected philosopher of our time, Jack Reacher: “Hope for the best, plan for the worst.”

Target trust

Play the long game and build customer trust over awareness. Target trust over availability. In fact, target trust as your marketing collateral. It’s where ‘organic’ growth comes from and it doesn’t rely on digital endorsement, peer approval or huge media spend.

Future thinking. Future-proofing. It’s what we do.

Every day, there’s a new disruptive banking story, a new tech start-up raising millions to change something, someday and the just as regular reporting of start-ups and established firms going under.

On the flip side, and at the same time, Uber loses a founder, WeWork takes a tumble and other unicorns report a year of negative returns and lose their shine. Sometimes, some things are too good to be true.

But you’re alright, because everybody will always need your paper, drugs, water, chocolate, steel work, cosmetics, legal services, financial advice…or will they?

But…

Working with teams to create roadmaps to a profitable future, we can find that everything looks great until it’s met with a little less than enthusiasm by the CSuite.

We always make it clear that the output we create together isn’t a plan for someday: the output we generate by working with you is a plan you can use now.

You will define what your business is going to be. You’ll plot your path of baby steps so everyone knows what they must do from the minute they hear the plan.

Forecasts are guesses

As a process, this is an easy one to understand. Pick a point in the future, use radical insight to inform what’s needed for that strategic end point to be viable and plot the product developments that will get you there. As far as ROI is concerned, you’ll have a general impression of size and shape.

This is the magic sauce that could bring your CSuite to the party.

Maybe you’ve heard of the ‘fuzzy front end’ or ‘future forecasting’. What they point to is a future sales figure that amounts to the same thing really: guesswork.

Intuition

Awareness vs trust

Being noticed isn’t the same as being trusted, but getting an innovation concept through the stage gates means tapping into what becomes a reason to believe.

This may sound a bit too much like pragmatism to be true innovation, but innovation ultimately is a matter of commercial survival.

Today, you need a plan. If you don’t know where to start, or how to sell it in to your CSuite, get in touch. We do.

In the meantime, you can download our free guide to ‘Selling innovation into your own company’ here.