This is a broad set of thinking and tools to help entrepreneurs and innovators. I've taken the best practices of companies like Amazon, Apple and Google and decoded their approach.
You'll find frameworks and tools across the four areas (4P's) of innovation;
People
Product
Profit
Promotion
20. Apple vs Microsoft Net Profits
($billion)
0
75
150
225
300
1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
Apple Microsoft
Profit & Creating Value
22. People
Profit Product
Promotion
The Big Picture
STORY, ADVOCACY, MEDIA
BUSINESS MODEL, CANVAS, MARKET FIT
CULTURE, LEADERSHIP AND VALUES
EXPERIENCE, PRODUCT, SYSTEMS
23. Great products are built by great
companies
Did the last hire or fire meet our values and standards?
Are you upholding the rules of accountability and authority?
Are you listening first before speaking and responding?
What could you change to reduce employee friction?
Growth is a result of solving big
customer problems
Do you have a healthy profit per employee and customer?
Does your P&L have a balance of fixed and variable costs?
Can we collect cash faster and pay slower?
Are we exceeding the call of customer pains with gains?
Testing and learning with
customers inspires innovation
Have you achieved a sustained advantage in both customer
experience and network effects?
Is your product equally loveable, viable, and profitable?
Do you conduct regular sprints with customer prototypes?
Tell a story worth sharing
Do your employees and customers know the What, How, Why?
Have you recently tested the personality of your message?
When was the last time an influencer shared your story?
Do you have equal results between paid, earned and own media?
PEOPLE PRODUCT
PROFIT PROMOTION
26. HORIZON 1
Defend the core
How do we improve our current business
strengths?
• LAUNCH NEW PRODUCT VARIANTS
• SELL PRODUCT TO NEW CHANNELS
• EXPAND GEOGRAPHIES
• OPEN NEW CUSTOMER SEGMENTS
• OPTIMIZE EXISTING TECHNOLOGIES
HORIZON 2
Expand the core
How do we grow new business strengths?
• LAUNCH A NEW PRODUCT
• EXPANDING INTO A NEW CATEGORY
• ADDRESSING UNMET CONSUMER NEEDS
• APPLY EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
HORIZON 3
Transformative Growth
How do we grow with radical new innovations?
• DEVELOP A NEW ADDITIVE BUSINESS
MODEL
• DISRUPT OWN CORE BUSINESS
• INVESTIGATE EXPONENTIAL TECH,
ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL TRENDS
Looking to the Future
31. Innovation Spectrum
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PRODUCT SYSTEM
Store of the future
Customer Service
Community of this or that
Uber for this or that
Xbox & Playstation
Uniqlo
Currency
Collaborative economy
Hyperloop
32. Amazon Innovation Spectrum
1-Click
Prime Membership
Dash Buttons
The Everything Store
Kindle
Amazon Studios
AWS
40 Jumbo Jets
Alexa
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PRODUCT SYSTEM
33. Apple Innovation Spectrum
Retail Stores
Packaging
Genius Bar
Siri
iTunes
Hardware Devices
OSX & iOS
Supply Chain
Swift Language
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PRODUCT SYSTEM
38. Longevity by cannibalization
The CEO, Tim Cook, stated on a public earnings
call the company's"base philosophy is to never
fear cannibalization.”
When a Kodak engineer created the digital
camera he paraphrased management's response
as ‘that’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it.’
41. Your turn
How could you make the way
your customers purchase
radically better?
What’s one new breakthrough
product that you could
introduce?
What system could you design
that would set the standard for
your industry?
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PRODUCT SYSTEM
43. How do we create viable and profitable
products that users love?
45. Does the customer desire the product?
It needs to be 10x better if the user is to change behavior.
Do they miss it when it’s gone?
It needs to be so good it’s like going back to SD after seeing HD TV.
Do they want to tell someone about it?
Is it such a breakthrough that they want to be your advocate.
Don’t be Segway!
47. Do we have the materials and tools we need?
Sometimes the technology does not exist.
How much will it cost to get a MVP live?
Be rigorous in understanding the true in/direct costs.
How long will it take?
Make a plan to be quick and efficient in releasing an MVP.
Don’t be the Apple Newton!
49. How much are customers willing to pay?
Understand the delicate balance between price and function.
Have we removed all possible friction from purchase experience?
Do it like Uber. Remove the need to get out the wallet.
Is our product competitor-proof?
Create an offering of one. Be hard to compare with.
Don’t be Encarta!
$
52. Discovery
1
2 WEEKS
User Insights
2
4 WEEKS
Prototype Sprint
3
3 WEEKS
MVP
4
12 WEEKS
Production
5
3-6 MONTHS
PEOPLE & BUSINESS DATA BEHAVIOURAL DATA INTERNAL ALIGNMENT PRODUCT OWNERSHIPTEAM PARTICIPATION
BUILD A TEAM OF
FEARLESS
COLLABORATORS
DEFINE THE PROBLEM
DEFINE CLEAR STAKES
AND OPPORTUNITY
UNDERSTAND USER
SEGMENTS
DEFINE USER PROFILES
MAP USER JOURNEYS
DISCOVER USER
FRICTIONS
BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER
PROTOTYPE WITH
CUSTOMERS
DIRECT EXPERIENCE
CREATE URGENCY
HAVE A VALIDATED IDEA
DEFINE THE WORK
STREAMS
BUILD THE ESSENTIAL
FEATURE
TEST UP TO 20 USERS
ADD BRAND, FRONT END &
DESIGN
CONDUCT IN THE FIELD
ALIGN TO THE ORGANIZATION
TEST AT LEAST 100 USERS
53. EXPERTISE FOCUS AREA STAGE TOOLS USER TYPES MENTAL APPROACH
User Experience User Pains and Gains Problem Solution Fit Lean Value Proposition Canvas Recruits Discovery
Product Management Viability Product Market Fit Minimum Viable Product and Lean Canvas Early Adopters Validation
Marketing Traction and Profitability Distribution Conversion Fit Advertising Mass Audience Growth
55. Innovation Challenges
#How to Find Inspiration for Product Innovation
By using research and creative thinking techniques you
can unlock powerful starting points for your next
remarkable product creation.
#How to Know if Your Product Idea is any Good
Validating your idea with real customers can help you
understand when and how an idea can be successful.
#How to Get from a Good Idea to a Great Product
An agile process and alignment with modelling,
operations and marketing will make the journey of
product design possible.
#How to Avoid a Product that Nobody Wants
By increasing the rate of learning and moving at speed,
you’ll maximize ability to create an innovation, not an
invention.
56. Questions for generating creative ideas
What's the opposite way to how everyone currently
does it?
What if we could not include instructions?
What can we make invisible to the user?
What if users could only use the product for 60
seconds a day?
How can we make the most boring part of the product
delightful?
How could the product get better the more that people
use it?
How to Find Inspiration for Product Innovation
Mantras for generating innovation insights
Discover what keeps people up at night
Discover what brings a smile to people’s faces
Discover what people are missing in their life
Make a product with one feature
Make something ten times better than today's best
option
Make your product like AirBnB would
57. • Do a quick survey to our existing customers and send
out via Facebook or newsletter
• Do an in-depth home interview with customers
• Read a industry and customer trends report
• Review your competition
• Invite customers to co create with you
• Review customer feedback and complaints
• Run smart reports on your data
• Be a mystery shopper
Mike’s Emergency Inspiration List
58. #Things to Watch
Positive response to prototypes; nodding, energetic
hand movements,
Negative response to prototypes: Sighs, reluctance,
hesitant
How to Know if Your Product Idea is any Good
#Things to Ask
How much would they pay?
How would you tell a friend?
#Basic Sprint Exercises
Role play a scenario
Card sorting and prioritization
Show a user journey
Make a a paper/cardboard prototype
59. A closed card sort — participants sort items into categories you give them
60. Materials
Every workshop will have some custom
materials, here are the essentials for
each trolley per team;
• Black /White XL foam boards
• Post it notes: 4-6 colours
• Tape
• White board markers
• Pens
• Pencils
• Scissors
• Ruler
• String
• A5 Card
• A4 Paper
• Transparent plastic sheets A4
• String
• Paper clips
• Rubber bands
• Name stickers for guest customers
• Small coloured dot stickers
63. Types and Scenarios
DIAGNOSTIC
Interview
What was the most stressful part of
getting a mortgage?
Role Play
Let’s re-create the painful call to the
call the centre
Card Sorting
Take these 20 cards and rank them
from pleasant to stressful
experiences and tell us why
JOURNEY
Poster
Let’s test 5 different propositions for
the mortgage and discover which one
is the most appealing
Transaction
Let’s test the two very different ways
of asking for the loan information
Customer support
Let’s try customer calls with three
different scripts for the agent
EXPERIENCE
Onboarding
Let’s try a visual progress bar in the
app to make the experience more
transparent
Feature
Let’s try giving expert advice in the
chat interface
Product
Let’s try integrating the loan calculator
and chat in one experience
69. Start with the important stuff
Most development teams traditionally start with the
login and all the on boarding experience. This often
leads to a situation where the development team are a
half way through the timeline and haven’t really build the
core functionality.
Align your business with your product
Finances and cash, Marketing, legal & finance, Process
and standardizations, Vendors and partners
Make Sure Your Idea is Validated
A good idea is a concept that has been validated. That
means you’ve done some objective verification of the
idea.
Create a small team and go fast
Minimum weekly sprints
Mon: design and dev brief
Thu/Wed: build
Thu: test and learn
Fri: refine and test
How to Get from a Good Idea to a Great Product
70. Waterfall Approach Prioritization Approach
PRIMARY
FEATURE
(always under
estimated)
UTILITIES
(common practice)
A Z
(follows user journey)
71. Endowment Effect and Avoiding Failure
Customers value what they have. And they don’t like
change.
When thinking about new products the “switching costs”
weigh heavier than the potential benefits. This means a
new product must be remarkable in order to succeed.
Ten times better than today.
Companies also value what they have. They fall in love
with their creations.
They become blind to the customer truth: the customer
see’s more loses than gains. And thats why most new
products fail.
72. LOW
HIGH
How to Avoid a Product that Nobody Wants
AMOUNT OF BEHAVIOUR
CHANGE REQUIRED
FAIL
QUICK-FIX
HARD WORK
INNOVATION
iPHONEXIAOMI
IRIDIUM, FIRE, KIN BLACKBERRY
LOW HIGH
USER BENEFITS
73. More Benefits, Less Change
Amount of Behaviour Change Required
Time
Money
Effort
Brain Cycles
Social Deviance
My Routine
User Benefits
Simplicity
Mobility
Affordability
More personal time
Wellness
Freedom
Higher performance
Fulfilment
Impact
74. Innovation is hard. It's a journey into the
unknown. It's equal parts art and science.
Leading innovation projects demands
buckets of courage and endless rigor. If
you stay the course and cross the finish
line, the rewards are worth it.