Challenge

Like many businesses today, my organization can no longer rely on the historical ideation

cycle. We were founded at the horizon of innovative analytical solutions that for years carried  us to substantial profits and helped push the boundaries of what was possible. However, new  solutions, new technologies, and new ways of working have helped competition catch up and,  in some cases, pass us by. The model we have been using in which, we look for major products  and markets to solve our growth concerns is no longer sustainable. We began as a scientific  company, and in order to make our way back to the front of the pack, we must get back to our  experimental roots. The tool that I have chosen is the Learning Launch tool.

Selection

The Learning Launch tool is a methodology that organizations can use to apply a scientific

approach to the ideation and development of new products, solutions, and value chains. Often  times though, when you put a group of the smartest people in a room together, they can get in  their own way. In the recent past our growth engines were piloted based on assumptions –  assumptions on what customers may want, what the market will be five years from now, and  even the assumption that the assumptions we are making were correct. In the Learning Launch  tool, you are rigorously and scientifically testing the assumptions, theories, and hypotheses you  are making to validate, and just as importantly, invalidate your decisions. This is iterative, fast,  and inexpensive compared to the full development and deployment process. As Volker Eichhorn  describes, it allows you peel back the layers like an onion until you get to the heart of the  problem or need that we are wanting to address.

Application

The way this tool was applied was through the redevelopment of the New Revenue Board

and addition of divisional gatekeeping for hypothesis testing and validation before any revenue  projections or market predictions get pitched. We want to add structure and rigor around  taking an idea and letting individuals run with it. When originally implementing the learning  launch, we had to have conversations around encouragement of innovative thinking, and  standardization around methodologies. As a multibillion-dollar company with several operating  organizations, when we are making decisions around resource allocation, we need to have a  standardized approach around judgement of proposals.

We addressed this issue in two ways. First, we created a standard process companywide

that any individual can follow that will take them through the hypothesis generation, testing,  and adjustment cycle. Once an idea has been iterated through and we have learned and  learned and learned and the idea has been polished enough that there is something substantial  there it can be taken to the New Revenue Board for review. The second change we have made  is to standardize a ‘rubric’ that board members use to evaluate proposals. By score carding in  key areas we can easily compare proposals that come from banking and finance to IoT, to  cloud, to supply chain. As part of the scorecard as well, we want to avoid looking for necessarily

big wins, and instead focus on potential. If something comes across our desk that is a big win  great, if something else has the potential, we build out an exploratory party to operate  independently to pursue the idea further and keep them from getting bogged down by politics,  company culture, resource drain, etc.

Insight

By applying this tool, it was easy to see how often the assumptions we were making were

incorrect. As a data driven company at the forefront of analytics, too often we were relying on  gut feeling and intuition to make decisions. This has helped drive the rigorous approach to  innovation that we were founded on. When doing more research into this area, I have also  realized how companies can fall into what Clayton Christensen coined, The Innovator’s  Dilemma. We have seen great ideas come out of many of our divisions that don’t fit their  customer base. So, they simply get shelved. However, we need to be thinking more broadly and  avoid falling into the trap of innovation. Not every product is going to help us hit our growth  target in the next six months. Some need time and that is okay. By demonstrating opportunities  and iteratively testing the markets we can better identify early on whether or not a new  product / feature / functionality makes sense for the ‘projected’ market and if not, start looking  to identify where it might fit instead of just shelving the innovation until someone else comes  along and beats us to the punch. We can’t ignore long-term progress because it doesn’t fit our  12 month revenue growth requirements that are arbitrarily set to make stakeholders happy.

Approach

For this specific situation, Learning Launch makes sense. I think going forward what I

would like to see however, is a focus on cross organizational ideation and opportunities to  apply some of the other tools to the process. As discussed, when your organization is siloed it  allows each division to operate in a way that makes sense for their sector. You wouldn’t sell  retail solutions the same way you would regulatory compliance. However, one issue is  knowledge management and diversity in your thinking. Regulatory Compliance folks think like  regulatory compliance people, not retailer solutions folks. What may be a good policy to adopt  is to develop rotational innovation programs and hackathons in which developers and  marketers and operations people get paired up with individuals from other divisions to work  through interesting solutions and conduct research on addressing meaningful problems. In this  process, using storytelling, mind mapping and visualization would really add an extra layer to  the work being conducted.

