Special
Delivery
By opening your process to all stakeholders and understanding the customer’s needs and priorities, you can
engage in research on possible solutions that will be both
effective and efficient. In the research stage of the innovation process, you answer the question “what if we could…?”
This stage brings a more structured approach into play.
The identification of the challenge and its impact, discovered during the education stage, creates the foundation
for identifying possible solutions using a variety of structured brainstorming techniques that are widely accepted
and readily searchable online. It is important during these
brainstorming sessions to look at things from different
perspectives, such as the end user’s viewpoint. One effective
way to do that is to create a “persona” of the ideal users
of your solution, and then identify their key needs. Often
the data you gather during this process will reveal some
trends and patterns that indicate an issue to be addressed,
and brainstorming can bring out solutions around that
trend.
Another key to success is to initially ignore any constraints such as cost, existing technology, human resources,
and so forth. Just focus on the best ideas. It can also be
helpful to look at companies in an entirely different industry, including their issues, how they innovate, and ideas
they have implemented. Determine whether those could be
applicable in some way to your situation.
It’s important to keep in mind that in this stage, the
involvement of everyone in your enterprise—from floor
associates to the executive suite—is critical. The associates
on the front lines are the ones who experience the benefits
and shortcomings of your company’s processes every day.
Many of these workers have great ideas that too often have
no meaningful outlet. Including them in ideation will not
only bring out effective ideas but can also be inspirational
for them as they see their contributions taken seriously.
Again, it is important to ensure titles do not mean anything
in this phase.
Your brainstorming sessions will net a significant number
of valid innovation ideas, which can later be prioritized
against the matrix that was established in the governance
stage. Priority for development should be given to the ideas
with the most potential for both achieving benefit for your
customer and meeting your target business outcomes while
also appearing to be the most feasible. Next, you’ll present
the results of the prioritization analysis to the governance
committee to determine which ideas should proceed to the
next stage. The prioritization matrix will be customized to
every organization, but any matrix should include the key
measures established in your governance stage.
Now it’s time to move to the testing stage.
4. RAPID PROTOTYPING: 90-day cycles with Agile
methodology
x Define the prototype project’s goals and timeline
x Set stakeholder expectations
x Develop and test your solution in basic form
After setting up governance, educating the stakeholders,
and bringing them through the process of ideation and
research, it will be time to prototype one or more proj-
ects. At this point, you must define the project goals and
create realistic expectations for the stakeholders. Remind
them that the prototype process is designed to use limited
resources wisely for determining what is possible. Firmly
set expectations for success so that all can recognize success
when it happens. Remind your team that an innovation
failure is not a flaw, but rather an acceptable outcome. It
is during this phase that you will define “what will work.”
With rapid prototyping, success or failure is determined
within 90 days to demonstrate that you won’t waste your
stakeholders’ valuable resources. The deadline also helps
your team to work quickly and efficiently to find improve-
ments to existing processes and new ways to tackle tasks.
This method of prototyping is similar to the Agile meth-
odology that has brought major improvements to software
development. First proposed in 2001, the “Manifesto for
Agile Software Development” 4 states that it values “indi-
viduals and interactions over processes and tools, working
software over comprehensive documentation, customer
collaboration over contract negotiation, [and] responding
to change over following a plan.”
This last point is critical, because it has been used to
establish an intensely iterative process in which short-term
results are used to assess whether to continue, change, or
end a development program, rather than following a rigid,
long-term plan that is written before there is sufficient infor-
mation to predict its outcome. The Agile model emphasizes
failing fast to succeed often. When applied to supply chain
management, it enables lightning-fast decision making.
Agile has particular value in the innovation of supply
chain services because supply chains operate on relatively
low margins, creating the imperative for maximum efficiency in all aspects. With rapid prototyping, the risk is limited to a 90-day development period, rather than one that
might last a year or more with difficult-to-predict results.
At the conclusion of the prototype stage, a decision will
be made by the governance committee to either kill the
project or rapidly deploy it in the market. There are benefits to both outcomes. The successes you experience will
quickly engender stronger support and participation across
all stakeholders, and the failures will deliver deep learning
