Weekly Newsletters
Using the “Job-To-Be-Done” Framework to Guide Business Innovation Decisions
This edition of the 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ Newsletter is for Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Business Leaders who want faster, more reliable, innovating outcomes. Innovating can seem like a complicated and complex endeavor made even more difficult by the uncertainty of outcomes and the consequent risk of project failure. By clearly identifying what you are trying…
The Innovation Paradox and the Missing Element
This edition of the Agile Innovating TM Newsletteris for Business Leaders who want more innovation but are reluctant to invest in innovating. The Boston Consulting Group, in studies conducted from 2005 to 2021, reported that 70% of the companies surveyed identified “Innovation” as a top 3 strategic priority, and that 90% of executives…
Building Your Innovation Launch Pad
This edition of the 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ Newsletter is for Innovators and Entrepreneurs who want to create an innovation but don’t know where to start. Innovators and Entrepreneurs realize the need for innovating and the value of innovation. But too often innovating is a difficult endeavor. One of the hurdles that can frustrate Innovators and Entrepreneurs is…
Making Sense of Status Quo
This edition of the 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ Newsletter is for 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 who want to substantially increase the chance that an idea they have for a new solution will become an innovation. Everyone is interested in more innovation. But it is only the true innovators that are motivated to work with the uncertainties and…
The Competitive Advantage of Speed Plus Innovation
This edition of the 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™Newsletter is for Innovators and Business Leaders who want to create and sustain competitive advantage for long term viability. Competitive advantage is a property of a business capability that is distinct to your business and difficult for other businesses to replicate. A competitively advantaged capability needs to…
The Search for Business Growth and Long Term Business Viability
This edition of the Agile Innovating TM Newsletter is for Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders who recognize growth must be a business priority. Growth, like innovation, is another ambiguous concept that everyone wants more of but have difficulty realizing. What kind of growth, in what context, where, when, how fast, and how much are often poorly…
A Better User, Business, and Market Experience Defines Your Innovation
This edition of the Agile Innovating TM Newsletter is for Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Business Leaders who are depending upon innovations to achieve their business growth goals. A new solution becomes an innovation when it has more perceived value to the user than an existing solution, leading to adoption. More value, in its simplest conception,…
Inventing New Solutions – Using the Job-Being-Done to Discover the Job-To-Be-Done
This edition of the Agile Innovating TMNewsletter is for Innovators who want to improve their ability to generate high impact solutions. In previous editions of the Newsletter, we have written about how looking for trouble in the user experience can help you identify problems worth solving. We have also written about what a good innovative…
Using Life Cycle Dynamics to Guide Innovation Decision-making
This edition of the Agile Innovating TM Newsletter is for Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders who want to improve their Innovation development decisions. Every solution experiences 4 correlated life cycles related to market growth, applied technology and solution architecture, technology adoption, and customer adoption dynamics. Tension in innovation decision making comes about when trying to decide…
Closing the Innovation Readiness Gap through a Systemic Innovating Practice
This edition of the Agile Innovating ™️ Newsletter is for Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders who want to improve their innovation outcomes. The Boston Consulting Group, in studies conducted from 2005 to 2021, reported that 70% of the companies surveyed identified “Innovation” as a top 3 strategic priority, and that 90%…
The Persistence of Low Hit Rate Innovating, and How to Change It
This newsletter is for Business Leaders who struggle with deciding when to start an innovation project, what kind of innovation to target, and how to achieve high hit rate outcomes. Delivering an innovation is difficult for many organizations to accomplish. Innovation research data indicates that innovation projects achieve their goals only about 40%…
Innovating does not have to be Complex or Complicated
This newsletter is for Business Leaders who find innovating a frustrating and intimidating experience. A common perception is that innovating is both complex and complicated. Complexity arises because of the many factors and decisions that emerge while innovating. Complications arise because the relationships between the many factors is unclear or…
11 Dual Factor Decisions Ensure High Hit-Rate Innovation
This article is for Innovators, Entrepreneurs, and Business Leaders who are reluctant to engage in continuous innovation activities due to persistently low innovation hit rates. Innovating can feel complex, complicated, and ambiguous due to the numerous decision factors that you must deal with in an innovation project. We have identified…
Looking for Trouble Exposes Problems Worth Solving
This article is for Innovators who want to improve their problem finding capability. Trouble, the user experience that something isn’t right and they don’t like it, is an indicator that there is a problem worth solving within an existing solution. Trouble is observable and quantifiable if you know what to…
Resolving Four Paradoxes Will Improve Innovation Results
This article is for 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬 who want more innovation but struggle with low innovation hit rate. It is concerned with the tradeoffs made due to two-factor variables that are actually unrecognized paradoxes.Recognizing the paradoxical relationship between some key two-factor variables, and resolving the paradox, creates a more successful innovating environment. The…
Innovation depends on solving problems worth solving
High hit rate Innovating depends upon creating new solutions for problems worth solving that change the User and Supplier experience. A problem worth solving creates momentum for change. The characteristics of problems worth solving are: The problem is important, urgent, and frequent, affecting both the User and Supplier. The problem…
Disruption is the “Holy Grail” of innovation
Disruption is commonly considered to be the “holy grail” of innovation. Many innovators claim to seek “disruption”. But disruption, what it is and how to achieve it, is often poorly understood. Like most factors involved in innovating, disruption has a dual nature. Type 1 is Market Disruption. This is a sustainable…
Innovating Myth and Reality
The desire for innovation is universal. But there is, as yet, no universal common practice. To make matters worse, many business leaders believe that innovating is complex, complicated, and ambiguous. One approach to simplifying a complex, complicated situation is to look for correlations between activities and outcomes. The problem with correlations is that they…
Innovation by Focusing on Change
The need for change is the driving force of innovation. Successful Innovators focus on the change they intend to cause before they consider the novelty of a new solution. The novelty of a new solution may grab everyone’s attention, but it’s the change in the user experience that leads to…
What does a good innovative idea look like?
What does a good innovative idea look like? Business leaders are often wary of innovating, which can make them become reluctant innovators for a number of very good reasons. They are wary because of high innovating failure rates, the large expense to develop a new solution that may not have…
Innovation Hit Rate – Fiction and Reality
Innovation Hit Rate – Fiction and Reality There are a large number of reports, journal articles, and books that reference information concerning the effectiveness of innovation projects. The conclusion of these references is that innovation is a difficult endeavor, with failure rates on the order of 80% being reported. I…
Innovation Success Requires Both Individual Skills and Organizational Processes
Innovation Success Requires Both Individual Skills and Organizational Processes Innovation is one of the hottest, yet most elusive, topics in business. Nearly everyone is interested in it. Business leaders want more of it. But it remains one of the most frustratingly difficult outcomes to achieve in any business. Innovation shares…
Innovating’s Top 10 Governing Conditions
Innovating’s Top 10 Governing Conditions These top 10 conditions are always true in practice. 1. There is an existing solution for everything a person wants to do or accomplish. There are always existing solutions and competitors in every market space. 2. You have to definitively position your new solution relative to the…
Innovating in Real Time
Innovating in Real Time When asked, nearly every business leader will acknowledge that they would like to have more innovation. They instinctively know that more innovation has the potential for improving their business. But business leaders are also wary of innovating. Not only wary of the distraction innovating could cause,…
Design Before Develop – Walk Before Your Run
𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 and 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽 are two different steps in the 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ D8 Infinity Process. 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 is the step where new solution requirements and specifications are defined. 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽 is the step where new products and the supporting processes are developed to match the requirements and specifications. Because of this difference, 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 and 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽 are distinct and…
Innovating is Complicated, not Complex
There is no question that innovating can be a frustratingly difficult business activity. Despite this fact, innovating is essential to the health of the business. Businesses are born as a result of innovating. The long term health of a business is dependent upon its ability to innovate. Even though innovating…
Innovating is Changing the Status Quo
An existing solution, the situation, and the circumstances of use defines the status quo. Innovating, the acts involved in inventing and introducing a new solution, seeks to change the status quo. Defining the existing status quo can be a confusing task. It is a complex combination of the User, Business, and Market…
Too slow, too long, too late! – The Frustration with NPD
The most visible innovating activity in most organizations is New Product Development. NPD encompasses both the Invention Loop and the Introduction Loop in an NPD Process. New Product Development can be frustratingly complex work as it goes through repeating cycles of divergent and convergent activities. ↪ The divergent activities of Idea and…
Innovating’s Pivotal Factors
The factors associated with high performance innovating are surprisingly few in number, but even more surprisingly hard to master. 1. High performance innovating starts with overcoming a limiting belief.The belief that “We have plenty of time to innovate, when we need to, because our business performance is stable.” is probably not…
The Innovating Imperative
The Innovating Imperative The future of your business is in your hands. If you aren’t preparing to either create or participate in an anticipated future state, your business is at risk. Innovating means purposefully seeking to change the status quo of the User Experience, Business Experience, and Market Experience with…
Innovating and the Status Quo
𝘐𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘴 𝘘𝘶𝘰 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯? Every business leader knows that, sooner or later, his organization is going to need to innovate. “To innovate” means that the organization will need to introduce a new solution into some aspect of the business that will cause the status quo to change. The…
Deciding your Innovating “Why?”
Innovating is difficult work. It is done in an open, complex, dynamic, networked environment. It involves challenges, situational dynamics, paradoxes, and two-factor variables. Most significantly, it involves dealing with the human social and behavioral psychology associated with changing the status quo. To successfully innovate, the status quo must change; not…
What’s in your Business’s “Stability Moat” ? ( Part Three )
The stable platforms on which good performing businesses are built (e.g. budgets, plans, standard procedures, products, services, and processes) must be protected from two sources of trouble; unplanned change and execution variance. Both unplanned change and execution variance introduce uncertainty into the business which can have a negative impact on…
What’s in your Business’s “Stability Moat” ? ( Part Two )
The decision management process related to “fail fast, fail early, fail often” is Stage-Gate Development. The idea of Stage-Gate is that innovating work can be decomposed into “stages” of work which are evaluated at defined “gates” to decide whether to continue to the next stage or not. Stage-Gate formalizes the…
What’s in your Business’s “Stability Moat” ? ( Part One )
Good performing businesses are built upon stable platforms; budgets, plans, standard procedures, products, services, and processes. Stable platforms, with business results driven by execution, must be protected from unplanned disruptive change. To protect these stable platforms, business leaders often build “stability moats” around the platforms. These stability moats are maintained…
A “Stability Moat” Protects Business Performance from Uncertainty
A metaphor that has become common in business planning is the need to create an “economic moat” to protect your competitive advantage. The economic moat is any method the company uses to maintain its competitive edge. There are numerous moats that exist in businesses. There are “process moats” surrounding functional…
Agile Innovating’s Eight Vital Steps
𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ Eight Vital Steps does for Innovation what Lean Manufacturing did for Operations. A–I is an innovating system that increases the velocity and hit rate of innovating, making innovation the norm rather than the exception. Go to https://agileinnovating.com for details. Innovation success always come down to how well you execute and deliver results…
𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ is the Lean Manufacturing System for Innovation
𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ is the Lean Manufacturing System for Innovation The state of innovating today has some interesting parallels to the state of Industrial Engineering in the early 1990’s. Between 1990 and 1996, the term Lean Manufacturing was gradually adopted to describe a business system that combined a fragmented range of techniques and…
The Enginnova Project Rebrands as 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™
The Enginnova Project Rebrands as 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™ The Enginnova Project (TEP), a professional services provider offering a practice that increases the innovating hit rate, making innovation the norm rather than the exception, has rebranded as 𝘼𝙜𝙞𝙡𝙚 𝙄𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 ™.“The Enginnova Project created a novel and pioneering approach to innovating that delivers…
Innovating is solving problems worth solving
High hit rate Innovating depends upon creating new solutions for problems worth solving that change the User and Supplier experience. A problem worth solving creates momentum for change. The characteristics of problems worth solving are: The problem is important, urgent, and frequent, affecting both the User and Supplier. The problem…
Carousel – Disruption Dilemma
Disruption caused by innovating is an elusive, but desirable, goal. The trouble is that disruption has a dual nature. Type 1 Disruption, the permanent change in Market Position based upon changes in the Basis of Competition, results in business growth. Type 2 Disruption, the transient change within a business deploying a…
Innovating is causing change
To achieve short-term success and long-term stability, a business must, paradoxically, master the processes of stability and the practice of change. The individual elements of the processes of stability are well known. The elements can be described by most people working in a business: promoting – selling – taking orders…
Carousel – Organizing an Innovating Practice
Many businesses manage innovating as strictly a new product development process. These NPD process solutions are typically limited to: Customer wants description Brainstorming Ideas for Development Stage-Gate Management Control Structure Lean Design / Manufacturing Project Methodologies Limiting the scope of innovating to these 4 areas is the core issue of…
Holy Grail
Disruption is commonly considered to be the “holy grail” of innovation. Many innovators claim to seek “disruption”. But disruption, what it is and how to achieve it, is often poorly understood. Like most factors involved in innovating, disruption has a dual nature. Type 1 is Market Disruption. This is a sustainable…
Carousel – Innovating is a Team Sport
Inventing and delivering new PSP solutions that become innovations requires a broad range of skills and capabilities. The personna’s necessary at each step, each with its distinguishing skills and capabilities, often requires people to wear various hats during a project. The innovating hit rate goes up when the highly skilled…
Successful Innovating is a Practice, not a Process
The Boston Consulting Group, in studies conducted from 2005 to 2021, reported that 70% of the companies surveyed identified “Innovation” as a top 3 strategic priority, 90% of executives were dissatisfied with the performance of their Innovation Programs, and that 80% of those companies did not have a systemic innovation…
What Innovation “board game” are you playing?
Businesses often use board game metaphors to describe their innovating process. Three common board game metaphors are “Chess”, “Chutes and Ladders”, and “Scrabble”. The “Chess” metaphor is used because chess is strategy driven and played tactically. The chess metaphor breaks down because innovating has many more sources of uncertainty. The…
The Trouble with Innovating
Every business wants the value it can get from innovations. Innovations grow businesses by increasing the number of customers, the volume and level of sales, and the amount of gross margin and profit. But creating an innovation is a source of great trouble for a business. Businesses are built upon…
Carousel – The Trouble with Problems
There is an existing solution for everything that a person wants to do or accomplish. But, there is no such thing as a perfect solution. Every solution has some kind of trouble that must be dealt with in the user experience. Trouble is not the same as a Problem. Trouble…
Paradox Uncertainty Stymies Innovation
Paradox Uncertainty Stymies Innovation A 2021 study by the Boston Consulting Group reported that 75% of the surveyed companies identified innovation as a top 3 strategic priority. The study also concluded that 80% of these companies had a “Readiness Gap”. This gap would prevent them from getting the impact they…
Carousel – How Innovating=Innovation
Everyone looks forward to, and wants more, innovation. This is true whether you are a user, a customer, or a supplier. An innovation is some combination of a new product, service, or process that brings an improvement to a person’s life. The test of whether something new is an innovation…
Businesses are built and organized to resist change
A long term successful business must do two things well. It must consistently deliver planned results in an orderly environment. But when the situation demands it, the business must also deliver different results in a changing environment. A business must master the processes of stability and the practices of change….
Non-standard versus Standard Innovating Work
Innovating is composed of two types of work, commonly categorized as Non-standard and Standard Work. Non-standard Work includes all the activities and skills associated with the Invention of new solutions. This work is considered non-standard because it is exploratory, non-linear, intuitive, and context specific. Even though Inventive work follows a…
“Running the Business” versus “Building the Business”
Every leadership team has to decide how to balance “running the business” versus “building the business”. “Running the business” decisions respond to the sources of trouble that threaten your existing level of Revenue and Profits. Threat analysis determines the probability a threat will be realized within a timeframe you can plan for. …
An Innovation is a new solution that replaces an existing solution
There is an existing solution for everything that a person wants to do or accomplish. That solution (a unique combination of a product, service, and process) is “sticky”. People have an affinity for an existing solution, even though they know it’s not perfect. People need a reason to change to a new solution….
Innovating Myths and Reality
The Magic Myth – Innovation is a mystical phenomenon. Business leaders often believe that innovating requires good luck, serendipity, a little bit of magic, and a hero who overcomes obstacles at all costs. Leaders that believe this decide not to organize for innovation, hoping that heroes and innovations will emerge…
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