Strategy

How to Choose an Innovation Consulting Firm

Published date: July 3, 2018 в 7:46 am

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Strategy

innovation consulting firm

The Innovation Consulting Firm Landscape

The innovation consultancy landscape has become immensely complex, dynamic, and varied in the last several years, especially when discussing quantity. There are a variety of methodologies, approaches, as well as consultancies of all sizes. McKinsey and large accounting firms have made acquisitions of innovation consulting firms, which means the distinction between the mega-consultancies and the more boutique consultancies has become blurred.

Since the innovation consulting firm atmosphere is so dense, there are some common sense rules of thumb one must use when choosing an innovation consulting 

dynamic innovation consulting firm

firm. Luckily, our good friend, Drew Boyd, created a list of criteria that you can utilize when choosing an innovation consulting firm.  However, due to the richness of the current marketplace and the dynamic approach, some of this list is no longer relevant. While this may be the case, it still includes a lot of useful advice. The below advice and tools will help you make an informed and educated decision when choosing an innovation consulting firm.

Choosing Innovation Consultants

By: Drew Boyd
Choosing an innovation consulting firm is challenging for two reasons: the client is not always clear what type of innovation they want, or they are not sure what type of innovation a consultant offers.
Here are three factors to consider when choosing an innovation consultant:

1.  TYPE of consultant

2.  METHOD used

3.  ROLE of the consultant.

The innovation space has become so crowded that I group them into four types (I-D-E-A):

INVENTION:  These are consultants that help you create new-to-the-world ideas.  They have particular expertise in creativity methods or idea generation tools.  Their main focus is the generation of many new product or service ideas.

DESIGN:  These are consultants that take an existing product, service, or idea and put some new, innovative form to it.  They have particular expertise in industrial design or human factors design.  Their main focus is transforming the way a product is used or experienced.

ENGINEERING:  These are consultants that help you make the new idea work in practice.  They have particular expertise in technology, science, research, and problem-solving.  Their main focus is building it.

ACTUALIZATION:  These are consultants that help you get the innovation into the marketplace.  They have particular expertise in marketing processes, brand, or commercial launch of a product or service.  Their main focus is selling it.

Step One: The challenge is many consultants claim to be all of these.  While true for some, my sense is that all firms started off as one type and then expanded to cover the others.  The question to ask yourself is: would you be better off matching your need to their original core expertise, or would you be better off going to a one-stop shop…a firm that can do it all even though their core expertise is, say, design.  How do you know what type the firm really is?  Study the biography of their founder.  What was the founder’s education, experience, work background, interests, etc?  The founder is where the core orientation of the firm begins.  The other practice types get bolted on later.

Step Two: Understanding their method.  The first question I ask consultants is, “Do you know how to innovate?”  The second question is, “How?”  I want to understand their method of innovation, and I want to be able to explain it to other people.  I want to know the efficacy.  Has it worked in the past and will it work on my project?  Show me the data.

Step Three: Understanding the role of the innovation consultant.  Is this a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach, where you are given some software or other resources to create innovation on your own?  Is this a DIWY (do-it-with-you) approach where the consultant leads and facilitates groups of your employees to innovate together?  Is this a DIFY (do-it-for-you) approach, where the consultant takes your problem specification and comes back with their recommended solutions?  Or, is this training?  All of these roles are valid depending on your need.

I am impressed with the talent and variety of consultants in the innovation space today.  It becomes even more impressive when you select the right one for the job.

I hope the above will help you in finding the right innovation consultancy. Since we are always on the look-out for the right clients to work with, here is a short questionnaire. Please fill in and, if relevant, we can have a short 20-minute chat to see if we can fit each other’s needs. We look forward to hearing from you.

Old-Traditioned Early Adopters : The Diary of an Expat in Shanghai

Published date: January 31, 2018 в 11:21 am

Written by:

Category: Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Tags: ,,,

Did you know that Fried Tomatoes and Eggs is the most popular dish in China? You can determine how well you know China according to how well you know Chinese food. So, if you associate Chinese food mainly with Sweet and Sour Pork with Rice… well, then your knowledge of China is very basic. If you already know that rice is more popular in the South of China while noodles are more popular in the North, then you are at the next level. If you know that Shenzen and Hong Kong are the right places for Cantonese Dim Sum; Shanghai’s cuisine is heavier and sweet; Sichuan’s is

the spicy choice and that in Beijing you should go for the Peking Duck, then you really know your way around!

But this week, I discovered a deeper layer in the Chinese food culture. At home, at every home, the most common dish is Fried Tomatoes and Eggs. People love to argue about the best way to make them; salty or sweet -with sugar (yes!), spicy or not, frying the eggs or the tomatoes first, etc. ICBC bank used this insight to target Chinese students studying abroad. They launched a campaign based on their love of this dish, which most of them associate with missing home, and it created a great buzz in Chinese social media.

So now you know! I have been living as an expat in China for over three years now, always trying to capture the learnings and insights I discover in my journey towards understanding the local culture. But whenever I feel I have grasped a new facet, I quickly discover something new that surprises me! To top it all, everything changes rapidly. The society that I am getting to know here in the big city is full of early adopters and trendsetters. When they do something, they do it full force – they do it big and fast. As an example, let’s take Mobike. Last year, Mobike introduced a new service that allows people to pick up a red bike anywhere in the city and drop it off anywhere – a station-less shared bike service. You can track the nearest bike by using their app on your phone and open the lock by scanning a code using a mobile payment app. The service is very cheap and allows hundreds of thousands of people around the

city to make short trips, such as the last mile from the metro to their final destination, quicker and more environmentally friendly. To make it attractive for customers, an abundance of bikes were scattered in the city. Very quickly, additional companies started offering the same service; OFO with yellow bikes, and then the green bikes, the blue bikes and then the electric bike. We are talking about around 1.5 million shared bikes around Shanghai!

The early-adopter culture in Shanghai and how it works:

As the competition is fierce, some companies give their service for free, and some pay you for using the bike and moving them around the city. As you can expect, challenges have risen. Now, for example, there are piles of bikes blocking sidewalks and entrances to buildings, creating the need for new solutions. These challenges have developed thanks to the rapid adoption and extensive use of the new service. Over 20 million rides a day in 50 cities around China. Trend-setters? Now the station-less bike-sharing service is spreading to an additional 160 cities around the world. So, they are “Early Adopters with old, traditional favorite dishes.”

This was the first observation I thought to share with you regarding the Chinese culture I’m striving to get to know. Want to hear more? Be sure to check my next post. But, in the meantime, read all about teleportation!

How To Optimize Your Innovation Strategy by Making Your Idea a Sweet Idea

Published date: January 25, 2018 в 11:11 am

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

Tags:

innovation strategy

What’s the perfect New Year’s Resolution?

 

Hint: think re: innovation strategy

Well, if that wasn’t sufficient, here are two additional hints…

(1) It’s not only challenging but actually promises a significant change in your life;

(2) It’s not pie in the sky, but applicable to your daily life.

 

Let’s take a more practical approach…

If your goal is to get in shape, watching TV while standing is maybe not the most effective initiative. However, regular mountain climbing is probably a bit of a stretch if you are a fairly immobile city dweller.

This is the Near-Far-Sweet Idea Mapping Model as applied to your daily life.

Near – ideas that are pretty close to current practice. They are new, but probably not impactful enough to be worth your attention.

Far –  exciting ideas, but not viable. Either the market is not ready to accept them, or you will not be able to implement them.

When optimizing your innovation strategy you want your ideas to be neither too close to home (“Near”) nor too challenging to be implementable (“Far”). You want your ideas to be new and exciting but at the same time realistic and useful. This is your Innovation Sweet Spot.

 

Learn How To Enhance Your Innovation Strategy By Making Your Ideas Sweet:

This all sounds pretty obvious and common sense. Surprisingly, the distinction is often overlooked, or at least not given systematic treatment. Categorizing the results of an ideation session or workshop into Near, Far and Sweet – as seen in the visual on the right – will give you an important indication as to the practicality of your ideas. It can also be a useful tool to improve the outcomes of your innovation strategies, by pushing some Nears and Fars into the Sweet Spot.

But before we share a quick guide to applying NFS to NPD, here are some thoughts of how it can serve as a practical tool to support the “Dual Innovation Approach” as defined by Ralph-Christian Ohr. Ohr cites research that shows that the Dual Innovation Approach is used by 70% of the most innovative companies:

innovation strategy

[With Dual Innovation] innovation management follows a balanced portfolio approach. The entire innovation portfolio is divided into exploitation-oriented and exploration-oriented innovation initiatives, where the following characterizations hold:

 

  • Exploitation-oriented initiatives are related to running the core business by executing and enhancing existing business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is valued capturing (commercialization). Examples: Product, service or process innovation, portfolio extension, innovation of selected business model components (e.g. channel or operations), market research.
  • Exploration-oriented initiatives are related to developing future business by searching for the novel, and often disruptive, business models or technological capabilities. The primary direction of impact is value creation (configuration). Examples: Business model development, platform/ecosystem innovation, basic technology research & development, startup engagement, innovation intelligence.

(https://dual-innovation.net/a-model-for-dual-corporate-innovation-management/) Ralph-Christian Ohr

 

Ralph-Christian further introduces three playing fields of dual innovation:

  • Optimize the Core (Optimization of existing business models and technologies)
  • Reshape the Core (Transformation of existing business models and/or scaling up new business models/technologies)
  • Create the New (Creation of new-to-the-company business models and Technologies)

(http://integrative-innovation.net/?p=1765) Ralph-Christian Ohr

 

Integrating Ideas

He then elaborates on the true challenge of dual innovation: neither developing extensions of the product/service portfolio within the existing business model, nor coming up with completely new ideas, but integrating new ideas into your existing innovation strategy:

When it comes to integration, most companies face huge problems. This is the space where two main activities need to be conducted to achieve business impact from innovation and to future-proof the existing business model:

  • Validated breakthrough or even disruptive innovation concepts need to be scaled up for achieving business impact. If a company does not master Scaling-Up there is a high chance that all ideation will remain only innovation theatre.
  • In the light of Digital Transformation, adapting the established core business models by innovating selected elements (e.g. platform strategies, x-as-a-service business models, bypassing the middle man or automatization of service processes) is mandatory. If a company does not master adaptation it risks to lose in Digital Transformation.

(http://integrative-innovation.net/?p=1765) Ralph-Christian Ohr

Ohr presents a challenge: strategic ideas ought to be transformed to have maximum impact – to be innovative enough but not too disruptive. Through the NFS model, the SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) methodology invites you to apply two principles that, together, cover both directions:

1. Qualitative Change. Very often, “near” ideas are generated by incrementally improving on existing offerings, making them “bigger, faster, better”, i.e a quantitative change. The QC principle calls you to observe the basic logic of your product or service but change a fundamental relationship in this logical structure. Example: don’t offer your product at a discount, but offer it for free, generating revenue by a totally different business model. This is easier said than done, of course, but using the right tools, it allows you to push Near ideas into the Sweet Spot.

2. Closed World. The second basic principle of SIT is rather counterintuitive: when innovating, try as much as possible to utilize only those elements that already exist in the system.

innovation strategy

Instead of reaching out of the box, innovate inside the box. Instead of searching for new elements, find new angles and possibilities in the existing ones. By applying several tools under this principle, you will be able to pull in some Far ideas, turning wishful thinking into viable options and improve your innovation strategy

So, here’s a NY’s resolution that hopefully resides within your Sweet Spot: Map your new ideas on an NFS diagram, consider whether enough of them are in the Sweet Spot, and then push and pull those that are not to create exciting but viable options for development of your innovation strategy. Enjoy.

Want to keep learning? Check out what you can learn from an innovation facilitation session.

Innovation Metrics: How to Stay on Track

Published date: August 22, 2016 в 1:25 pm

Written by:

Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy,Uncategorized

Before you launch your innovation campaign, you want to set up key performance indicators or KPIs for short. Key performance indicators help you keep track of your overall strategy and your individual innovation programs. They alert you when it’s time to intervene and take action to get things back on track. Without KPIs, you’re flying blind, so to speak, and you run the risk of falling short of your overall goal.
To be most effective, each KPI should be quantifiable and measurable. You can have as many as you want, but don’t measure a KPI just because you have the data. If you’re not going to use it, don’t bother. It’s a waste of time.
Measure something only if you plan to take action from it. That’s why we set thresholds around each one. Each KPI should have a target of what you expect to happen plus a high and low number around that target. For those thresholds, you and your planning team should agree in advance what action you’ll take if those thresholds are exceeded.
Here’s an example. Assume you create a KPI about the number of new products created each year. You set your target at 50, and also specify a high and low threshold of 60 and 40 respectively. If your actual products per year is more than 60, you might consider taking action such as reducing R&D spending. On the low end, if you’re below 40, you could consider increasing innovation projects.
Each KPI should be linked to the key parts of your innovation plan including your goal, key targets, technologies, risk, and launch tactics. For the goal, you might have KPIs around the timing of revenues, the type of customers you’re converting, and whether you’re taking customers from the right competitor.
For technologies and risk, you want to measure changes in technology and your company’s ability to adopt it. You may also want to measure how well the technology has lived up to expectations across industry sectors. You need to carefully monitor whether you’re achieving the technology positioning that you had hoped for.
For launch tactics, you could create a KPI for each of the 4Ps if needed. For example, you might have measures around communications objectives, sales force effectiveness, distributor activity, store promotions, search engine ratios, social media activity, pricing and discounting rates, product performance, waiting times, and service complaints.
Good innovators not only reach their financial goals, but they also know whether those goals were achieved the way they expected them to be achieved. They also take immediate action when they detect something is going in the wrong direction.
KPI’s help you and your innovation team stay aligned and do what’s needed to succeed.

Get our innovation model that has worked for 1000+ companies.

    No thanks, not now.

    Systematic Inventive Thinking
    Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
    Privacy Overview

    This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.