13: Step 1 - Imagine
Imagination has been called "the beginning of creation" - and rightly so: there are very few accomplishments that are accidental. The vast majority of innovations were conceived in imagination, and took a great deal of work to bring into reality.
There are many people who misidentify innovation as good luck: as if someone merely stumbled upon an idea that turned out to be successful. In reality, innovators have creative vision that sometimes takes years to achieve, and the progress toward the goal over the long haul is unknown or pointedly ignored. A sudden and unexpected success makes the story of invention more dramatic, but is entirely inaccurate.
The innovators knew what they were trying to achieve, and worked long and hard at doing so - but no-one took notice of the dozen or so failed attempts they made along the way before the one "lucky" attempt finally achieved the goal. There are exceptions, certainly, but for the most part innovation is hard work over a long time to arrive at a destination that was envisioned far in advance.
Envision the Future
The author goes back to the example of Rosetta Stone, whose language instruction software is highly innovative, and many users attest that it is a far more effective experience than classroom instruction.
The inspiration for the software was the immersive experience of learning a language in a foreign culture: move to Italy, and within a few months you will be speaking Italian because your learning is constant. You are not in a classroom, conjugating verbs, imagining how language might be used in a fabricated scenario- you are using it every day to accomplish practical tasks.
Other companies attempted to improve their existing learning systems as well, but they made slow and marginal improvements on a basic teaching model - by doing so, they made incremental progress, but discovered nothing revolutionary.
The inventors of the Rosetta Stone technique imagined a way to use software to deliver an immersive learning experience so that the user could learn the language naturally. This was their vision of the future of language learning. No one else had imagined such a thing was possible, because they were all trying to incrementally improve their existing methods of teaching - they tinkered with the present without imagining the future.
The ability to perform "mental time travel" and see the future is a critical tool for the innovator. To do something truly different, you must depart from the present and abandon the practice of projecting trends by seeking to draw lines from the past. You must start over from a blank slate with a new vision.
A Four-Step Process for Innovation
The author mentions he has conducted "some 500 workshops" to assist companies with innovative and strategic thinking, and has distilled his process to four basic steps:
1. Define the mess
The first step is to consider the firm's as-is situation, and recognize problems. For some, that will be easy because they know what the problems are and have been frustrated for a long time as they have been ignored. For others, it will be more difficult because they are happy with the way things are, or at least insist on pretending to be happy because they don't want to be seen as troublemakers.
In other instances, the team might be planning for a problem that doesn't exist, but might arise. This could be a natural disaster, or merely the entrance of a competitor that will endanger their market share.
At this point, project what the future will be like if the problem is not fixed (or the imaginary problem actually arises). Keep the discussion in the realm of reasonable probabilities, as there's little point dealing with exaggerated or unlikely disasters. Even small problems, if left to fester, grow rather large over time: a 2% loss in sales over the course of ten years can be significant.
This exercise will stir people up and get them to realize that they cannot merely continue with business as usual, and it may also provide fodder for idea generation.
(EN: My sense is that automatically considering any objective to be "a mess" stifles innovation - to explore opportunities rather than problems is a more likely path, though one might argue that the failure to capitalize on an opportunity becomes a problem.)
2. Define the long-term ideal
First, determine what you consider to be "long term." For some it may be a year, or five, or a decade. It's necessary to be specific. Then, consider your ideal state: what you wish to achieve in the time frame you have defined.
He cautions about projecting from trends, or considering competitors and the market, as these often lead to reactive and simple visions. Instead, consider what you want to achieve "regardless of what is going on in the world."
After that, you can create "what if" scenarios, projecting possible market and regulatory changes and competitive maneuvers to determine whether your strategy has sufficient flexibility to adjust and counter if needed. That's "if" needed and not "as" needed.
Finally, define key metrics - ideally three or fewer - that can be used to measure progress and assess whether you have been successful in accomplishing your goal. These will vary by the goal: it could be units sold, employee retention, cost savings, etc.
The end of this phase gives you a statement of your goals, which should be clear and compelling. It should show resiliency against expectable variations, but not be cluttered by nightmare scenarios.
3. Define your near-term ideals
Near-term ideals mark significant milestones for measuring your progress toward tour goal.
Milestones should be long enough to allow you to make progress: if you know it will take 12 months to launch a new product, having a three-month revenue goal from its sale is pointless. The longer your goal, the more space between milestones.
Milestones should also be meaningful, not arbitrary. It should not be a vague monthly progress check but the accomplishment of a significant step in the process. They can be incremental, such as gaining percentages of revenue over time, but only if this can be tied to specific actions performed. For example, measure brand awareness after a marketing campaign that reaches one segment or one location.
Again, define the key metrics and ensure they are meaningful, and are the result of actions taken, not waiting for things beyond your ability to influence to take place.
4. Formulate strategic questions
Strategic questions depart from the "what" and begin to ask "how" - if we mean to achieve a 10% market share after two years, what will we do to accomplish that? This gives you actionable items.
(EN: A particular problem I've seen in strategic planning is basing success on external events: if the market improves, if more people move into the area, etc. These may be conditions that can lead to success, but if they do not correlate to actions that can be taken, there's nothing to be done.)