Learn The 3 Step System To Drive Innovation
18 November 2022
Innovating Excellence
Insights from 'What Customers Crave' by Nicholas Webb
The most successful companies are those that are born out of an innovative disruption in their industry.
These are companies that reinvent how to deliver the product or create a superior product that eliminates their competition.
In order to create a similarly disruptive innovation, it’s important to develop an innovation infrastructure within your company.
In the pursuit of What Customers Crave, there is a three-step system for driving innovation.
The first step is to do an assessment and diagnosis of the problems you are looking to solve.
Think of this part of the process as a doctor’s examination.
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If your doctor prescribed a new heart medication without examining you first, you probably wouldn’t follow that doctor’s advice.
The same is true for setting up an innovation infrastructure.
It’s best to have an outside consultant that specializes in innovation practices, do this assessment because they are unbiased and impartial.
Most companies have some sort of innovation structure in place.
However, if it’s not working completely in sync with all parts of the organization, it’s not reaching its potential.
Take the example of a watch that has a slight mechanical issue, but not one large enough to cause the watch to stop.
In this case, the owner would think the watch was working well until they missed an important appointment.
Every part of the watch must work in complete harmony with every other part of the watch for it to work properly.
Your innovation infrastructure needs to have the same type of harmony with the rest of your organization.
The second step relies on the results of your assessment from step one.
With these results, you can determine if you have the right resources, systems, and talent to achieve your goals.
Next, you can create your innovation roadmap.
We know that innovation plans fail when they’re not connected to specific parts of the company’s structure.
In this way, you must ensure that your innovation goals align with your company’s goals.
Last, there’s execution and measurement.
Once you’ve created your innovation, you must determine how you’ll measure its success.
You must also fill any gaps that were found in your resource assessment and launch your product in a sustainable way.
Only when you are able to truly look inward from the outside can you create an exceptional innovation infrastructure.
If you follow these three steps, you will be well on your way to creating a sustainable innovation machine.
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