Innovation should start with a problem to solve — not a solution to be implemented
One surefire way to get people to attend a workshop is to put the word ‘Innovation’ in the title. We all want to innovate, or be seen to be innovative.
Yet all too often we don’t stop to think what we mean by ‘Innovation’? Rather than gain a understanding of Clayton Christensen’s concepts of Sustaining and Disruptive Innovation, or Eric Reiss’s notion of ‘Validate Learning’, we tend to espouse the dictionary definition of the term… “(the use of) a new idea or method”. But how do we define ‘new’?
A client approached my company recently asking us to assess their list* of ‘Innovation initiatives’. These included:
- Machine Learning — first coined by IBM in 1959
- Aerial Drones — early versions were used in the first and second World Wars, and
- Virtual Reality — which I remember first trying in Amusement arcades in the early 90s (Virtuality in the Trocadero anyone?)
OK, Blockchain was also on the list, but a Blockchain-like protocol was first proposed in the early 1980s.
All these technologies are passing through the Gartner Hype Cycle, with many of them now entering the ‘Plateau of Productivity’, which means they can be adopted by established organisations with relative ease — if not a great deal of competitive advantage.
However they aren’t ‘new’ concepts. If anything, they merely sound innovative, exciting, or just plain cool.
Yet as much as we might want to put ‘Innovation’ on our LinkedIn profiles, the primary objective of an initiative shouldn’t be to be seen to be innovative. The aim should be to delight our customers, reduce costs, improve profitability, etc.
Starting with a (technical) solution is fraught with danger. We are putting ourselves in a position where our aim is to… find a problem to which our solution can be applied.
Last year I was approached by a client who was attempting to find a use for Machine Learning within their retail stores. The problem they had decided to inflict their solution upon was… stock (which was available in the store-room) not being available on shelves.
They were tying themselves in knots to try to use cameras to detect gaps on shelves, which Machine Learning algorithms could then assess. I suggested it might be easier, cheaper and more effective to either employ an additional member of staff, or just encourage/rota the existing staff to check the shelves more often — which would presumably need to happen anyway, even if the machine learning solution provided accurate assessments. Admittedly, not an especially ‘innovative’ solution — by any definition — but an effective, realistic and perhaps more affordable solution. This potential opportunity to solve a user problem was of course immediately rejected because it wasn’t ‘innovative’. Thus demonstrating that the primary aim of this initiative wasn’t to solve a problem, but to appear to be innovative.
Successful disruptive innovation rarely starts with a new Technology. Christensen states that… “Historically, disruptive technologies involve no new technology; rather they consist of components built around proven technologies and put together in a novel product architecture that offers customers a set of attributes never before available”.
So if innovation is not about finding problems which conveniently make use of some new technical solutions, how do we innovate?
Well rather than starting with a solution, we should instead start by identifying genuine problems. We can do this by initially spending time with customers to understand their needs and frustrations. Setting aside our personal assumptions and remaining agnostic about any potential technical solution, allows us to empathise with the customers/users and gain insight into their lives.
These insights can be framed as Problem Statements, which are subjected to an ideation process where we aim to establish potential ways to solve these problems. If we then establish through — for example — user testing that one or more of our concepts is desirable, we can then begin prototyping and testing them to determine their commercial viability and, yes, feasible technical solutions.
Uber is often held up as a example of an innovative organisation. But they didn’t start by heavily investing in a new technical solution (flying taxis?!), before subsequently trying to find users who might desire such a solution. They instead focused on taxi customers’ problems. Presumably these included “Customers don’t know where taxis are” and “Customers don’t know if they can trust their driver”. Uber then looked to solve these problems with concepts which had already been established in other markets. Digitally these included GPS tracking, location services and user generated ratings. And physically… motor cars — there was no attempt to literally reinvent the wheel.
These concepts were then… “put together in a novel product architecture that offers customers a set of attributes never before available”.
Yes, Uber developed and customised these digital concepts and are also now well positioned to experiment with self-driving cars and suchlike. But I would argue that it was the process Uber went through (and continue to go through) in order to solve their users’ problems which made them innovative, rather than the extent to which they used ‘new’ technologies.
Of course colloquially the term innovation conjures up images of 4D Printing and Jet Packs. But to be genuinely innovative within a business context, we must recognise that innovation requires us to adopt a process and culture which enables our teams to understand customers and iteratively solve their problems — regardless of whether this involves Blockchain, the internal combustion engine or a combination of both.
Toby Dykes.
*It is worth noting that listing innovation concepts in this way is inherently restrictive and discourages us from exploring possibilities beyond the confines of the list. It also suggests these concepts might be funded in isolation, which could introduce a need to ‘justify’ this investment, by forcing the solution on a problem which it either does not solve or solves ineffectively/inefficiently
