Everyone wants to innovate, but how do you do it? This simple presentation tells you how to deliver breakthrough innovations in just 10 slides. Also contains links to recommended books and websites on innovation.

1. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe
Est.
objectives &
target
audience
Identify
audience
insights –
unmet needs
Offer unique,
valuable
propositions
Launch tests
with goal of
learning
Measure &
adapt
Scale-up
what works
How to Innovate in 10 Slides

2. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Why Do You Exist?
Establish Strategic Goals First
• What does your organisation exist
to do?
• What do you want to achieve
long-term?
• This is the bit that needs to be
ambitious!
e.g. Apple exists to enable people
who think differently to change the
world
Resource: Simon Sinek: How Great
Leaders Inspire Action, TED.com Photo: aoimedia, Flickr

3. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Don’t Try to Appeal to Everyone!
• Products designed to
appeal to everyone
don’t inspire passion
in anyone
• Target an audience
that will buy into your
strategic vision
• Understand their
needs, joys and pains
better than anyone
else
Photo: Gomolka, Flickr

4. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Generate Ideas with Benefits
• Don’t focus on your competitors and what already exists, focus on your
audience. Come up with as many ways as possible to meet their three needs.
For consumer-targeted businesses, a good starting point is the benefits model:
– Emotional benefits (e.g. enable them to feel good or to have fun)
– Social benefits (e.g. help them make friends or enjoy quality family time)
– Functional benefits (e.g. help them save time or money)
• Select your best ideas (not just one) for testing. These should be the ones you
consider the most likely to solve an important problem for your audience, or the
ones that will get them most excited.
• Focus on opportunities in which your organisation can create something unique
and valuable – these ideas not only have more standout, they’re harder for your
competitors to copy!
Resources: Michael E Porter on unique value and differentiation;
Harvard Business Review: On Strategy

5. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Prioritise Generating Knowledge
• Build your product pilot with the goal of learning, not instant success
– Establish a hypothesis to test
e.g. This proposition is designed to attract new customers who are retired
empty-nesters. We believe x% will click on paid search links, and x% will
convert into new customers
• New products should be judged on how well they inform your strategy to
develop or expand your business. They should not be judged on RoI and
their performance compared to established products.
You may have no benchmark data for your first test, so set your
hypothesis based on your best guess looking at different but related
sectors. The more tests you do, the more accurately you’ll be able to
predict the next test.

6. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe
Best
Guess
Educated
Guess
Accurate
Forecast
Apply data from
other sectors
Apply data from
strategic tests
Apply data from
established
products
Deploying Strategic Tests
Resource: 10 Rules for Strategic Innovators by
Vijay Govindarajan & Chris Trimble

7. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Analyse and Adapt
• The objective of any innovation pilot is to create knowledge. If the product
or service was not successful you have not failed; you have found one way
that didn’t work! Analyse performance to identify barriers to success and
strengths that can be better exploited.
• Only a pilot that doesn’t provide data to determine if a hypothesis was
correct or not should be considered a failure.
• Revisit your strategy in light of this knowledge and decide whether to
persist (slightly modify the product) or pivot (significantly redevelop the
product), or generate new product ideas.
Resources: The Lean Start-Up by Eric Ries;
Do it Wrong Quickly by Mike Moran

8. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Share Your Knowledge!
• The purpose of innovation should
always be to generate knowledge
to enable an organisation to grow
– so make sure that knowledge is
shared not filed!
• Share results openly and honestly.
Celebrate failure! Only by doing
this can an organisation genuinely
learn, create breakthroughs and
instil a culture of strategic learning. Photo: Brainseizer2, Flickr

9. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Redesign & Retest
• Develop new hypothesis
and new pilots
• The more tests you can
perform the more you
will learn
• Fail fast, fail cheap!
• Be ready to invest and
scale-up when an idea is
proving success
Photo: jurvetson, Flickr

10. Fruit Fly Innovation.com@wordofjoe@wordofjoe
Play the Long-Game
Never stop learning, never stop pushing the boundaries. Even the most
innovative organisations eventually succumb to competition, so never stop at
success.
– Eric Ries: “Constant innovation leads to radically successful businesses”
– Steve Jobs: “Stay hungry, stay foolish”
Resource: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M Christensen
For more ideas and resources on innovation:
• Visit Fruitflyinnovation.com
• Follow: @wordofjoe