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 an acceptable ROI, the distraction innovating generates within the core business that could depress current performance, and the uncertain customer reaction to a new solution.  All good reasons.

There is a fifth cause which is little talked about but may have the biggest impact.  They simply don’t have enough good innovative ideas.

What does a good innovative idea look like?

(1) High hit-rate innovating is market-focused and market-driven.  80% of new solution ideas that become innovations have their genesis in the trouble users experience with an existing solution.  A good idea is one where a user has less trouble using the new solution than they are used to.

(2) A new solution idea must have duality of impact.  It must improve both the user experience and the supplier business experience.  An idea with a poorer user experience won’t be adopted.  An idea yielding reduced business performance won’t be produced.

(3) The new solution idea must make sense in the customer context, the user context, the business context, and the market context.  It must be anticipated as a potential driver for favorably changing the customer and user status quo, the business status quo, and the market status quo, concurrently.

(4) Finally, the new idea must be driven by an unambiguous purpose:  “We are going to develop this idea and introduce a new solution to deliver this particular outcome, causing these changes in the status quos.”

🌱

Are ideas good?

Solving problems, making sense

Providing purpose

-haiku, Kevin A. Fee, Dec 13, 2023