Consultants often complicate things.
Perhaps if a new concept is presented in complicated terms they might look smarter.
I’m not sure.
But innovation in particular has become a seemingly complicated business.
The end result is that less people are being less innovative, less often!
We ned to change this.
When I run workshops with leaders and managers I outline the following 6 step innovation process.
1. Define the challenge
This is the first step. What is the problem, opportunity, issue or gap that needs to be addressed?
2. Create
In this step you need to create a potentially new and more valuable idea or solution. Easier said than done i admit but on this site there are numerous ways to unlock original ideas.
3. Test
Now you need to test your new approach — quickly, cheaply and simply.
4. Measure
This is easy — measure the results. What actually happens and why?
5. Learn
Now that you know what happens and hopefully why, with the new approach you can learn from this.
6. Share
You can then share the learnings with others so they can benefit from your experience and stop others from repeating your mistakes.
Innovation is that simple. It consists of 6 simple steps and the connections between these.
But when I ask leaders what are they good at in this cycle they always say:
Measure.
It seems we measure everything yet know nothing.
Leaders often talk to me about how poor they are setting the challenge, they are not creative, are slow to test, wonderful at measuring but rarely learn and never share their results.
No wonder everyone struggles with innovation.
My suggestion therefore is to forget the complicated stage-gate innovation process approach which seems so daunting and get back to basics.
An innovation process only works when it is easily understood and used everyday, by everyone.
Try this 6 steps approach and see what happens.