Table of Contents

• Pull to Eject

  • Innovation Platforms

  • Create Inexpensive Disruption

• Modern Tools

• Old School Wisdom

• Free Knowledge

• Visual Crapshoot

Pull to Eject

95 percent of innovation efforts fail to meet stakeholder expectations (Deloitte).

And its not just that the wrong people get hired to lead the Innovation lab.

Corporate innovation has slandered itself by thinking a little brainstorming and random creative genius can be ginned up at will.

Problems are too siloed in corporate America.

And no amount of white boards, yellow sticky notes and design thinking can magically create innovation.

Years ago I stumbled on one solution to the silos by having designers, coders and project mangers all sit together. They hated the bullpens.

But daily interactions and water cooler discussions yielded better projects.

Silo cross-communication made it easier for my small business to deliver creative solutions on time and budget. And the results were good enough to get repeat business.

I read a lot of books trying to improve innovation in that service business.

• Design thinking

• Financial management

• Brand differentiation

• Application development

• Product Design

We iterated and grew by improving the process of designing online applications - but in hindsight I’m not sure how much we really ‘innovated.’

Guy Kawasaki was an early Apple evangelist who became an author, venture capitalist and speaker.

I borrowed a lot of my innovation thinking from Guy. Extra credit if you’ve read his Art of the Start.

His TED talk on Innovation is 20 minutes well spent.

Innovation Platforms

I first heard Larry Keeley speak on Innovation at a construction conference a decade ago.

• He taught MBA classes

• His research was extensive

• And his client list was growing

His team had looked at thousands of innovative companies from Henry Ford to the modern internet. And they found similarities they did not hypothesize:

Innovation could be categorized into 10 distinct types

Importantly, the most innovative companies of the past 100+ years had engaged 5 or more of these types and had used all 3 colors to create differentiated winning products.

These types of unique innovations created enormous corporate value.

I had spent most of my early career on the right side of this scale making online applications better via user interface design and web site branding.

I added 10 Types thinking to my digital product development toolbox for a data product redesign.

Instead of just improving the interface (brand) and adding features (product performance) we worked to add new payment options, 3rd party data sets and useful channels requested by customers.

The relaunched product enjoyed a 25% sales increase. And another 20% increase the second year.

Innovation can be systematically created leveraging this platform.

Doblin was bought by Deloitte but Keeley is still worth listening to.

Create Inexpensive Disruption

Innovation does not need a corporate lab or a million dollar budget.

It doesn’t require a room full of Bozos sitting in Steelcase Gesture or Herman Miller Aeron chairs.

There are many other platforms similar to the 10 Types.

These are the opposite of ‘brainstorming.’

SaaS tools available today allow inexpensive software solutions to be crafted into a technology stack that scales as needed.

Uber and AirBnB didn’t write millions of lines of proprietary code.

They used readily available SaaS tools - and a little of their own special sauce - to totally disrupt the travel and hotel businesses.

As Guy Kawasaki says, we all need to be exposed to Bozosity. Exposure helps build your immune system against Bozos.

Your ideas are the differentiator.

You can borrow the platform concepts.

You can adapt the lightweight tech stack.

You can innovate from your screen porch. Or anywhere else you choose.

Don’t listen to the Bozos.

Now go launch something 🚀 

Modern Tools

Viima board based design allows you to flexibly adapt to your innovation needs without IT support. Adjustable appearance, fine-grained control over features, SSO & flexible user management and easy integrations.

Collect ideas from your employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders.

Viima helps you build a systematic process for picking the rights ones to focus on and turn into products.

Old School Wisdom

Innovation isn't optional, it's imperative.

Customers demand it. Competitors will outflank you if you don't achieve it. Talented employees won't join your firm if you don't deliver it.

And yet most people still believe in primitive myths about innovation: "It's only about new products and new technology"; "It's about rare strokes of inspired genius"; "There's no disciplined, consistent method"; etc.

These common assumptions are not true.

This book can help you build a framework to create innovative products.

Free Knowledge

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Visual Crapshoot