Insights & Blog

Brant Cooper discusses what innovation truly means and why so many organizations fail at it. It often means something different to varying members of the organization. It needs to be defined by the organization, then shared with everyone.

While “innovation” might be one method of achieving priorities and goals, having an innovation mindset is required no matter the pursuit. The innovation mindset is characterized by behavior reflecting learning and exploration. It’s how to deal with uncertainty.

‍

Whether discovering a new value stream for a still-to-be-launched product or seeking to improve existing value creation in the face of new uncertainty, the task may seem daunting. The Value Stream Discovery Loop and Moves the Needle is available to help. The tool provides an intuitive progression to enable both value stream discovery and optimization.

‍

A product’s value stream provides an opportunity for organizations to identify inefficiencies, redundancy, bottlenecks, and other types of waste in their processes. Unlike most company cost-cutting efforts, mapping, analyzing, and improving the value stream leads to increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, reduced costs, and increased profitability, without sacrificing value creation.

‍

Value streams are all the activities an organization does to create value for customers and other stakeholders (usually within a specific product). “Lean” practitioners help you map your workflows, so you can see how to improve them while maintaining value creation. But what if the value isn’t there? Or you’re creating a new product? Or “innovating?”

‍

The Value Stream Discovery Loop is a customer-centric approach to value creation. It helps businesses understand what their customers need and how they can provide value to them in an efficient, value-enhancing way. At its core, this is accomplished by looking at a customer’s lifecycle journey from their perspective.

‍

Tracing the origin and evolution of Product management to understand how we got here and what's next to continue to drve business impact.

People often aren’t conscious of their needs or how to address them. This explains why we buy a lot of things we don’t need. Because of this, if one wants to create value in the world, it’s up to product managers to understand needs. In other words, they shouldn’t be asking customers what they want or asking them to predict how they might behave in the future. 

‍

The pandemic marked a point of acceleration for corporate digital transformation. The companies that performed the best were digital or had at least adopted a digital age mindset. These organizations are now living in a world where the product is never done and their systems, structures, and processes must reflect that. The product management function is the right group to design, test, and iterate upon those systems.

‍

‍

‍

Product Management has been a discipline in the business world for several decades. However, it has become increasingly important with the acceleration of digital transformation in large businesses. As organizations continue to adapt to advancements in technology, and increasingly incorporate digital solutions into their products, Product Management will be a critical part of product success and innovation. Product Management will help organizations understand what their customers need and create new products and services that meet those needs for both the short and long term. The Product Management function leads the way in the human side of digital transformation.

‍

The future of successful innovation labs is NOT to take on the responsibility of invention or figuring out new business models that will disrupt their industry. Rather, it is to become a “center of excellence” for supporting an “innovation mindset” throughout the organization.

‍

Companies not hitting their targets or attempting to achieve some type of transformation, such as cultural, digital, or agile, are all potential reasons for reorganizing portions of the company. Whatever the reason, the method is often NOT geared towards achieving the desired outcomes. The reality is that the re-org of today tend to focus on cost-cutting and “efficiency” instead of asking the more serious question: “what structure will facilitate and incentivize the behavior we need?”

It should be seen as a chance to re-think and re-align the company’s structure, culture, and mission. In this way, it makes for an amazing work environment where people will be happy to contribute, leading to increased retention and more engaged employees. which in turn will generate the results the organization is hoping for.

‍

In this episode, NYT bestselling author and founder of Moves The Needle, Brant Cooper goes over the common errors associated with innovation labs and the real pivot they need to make in order to survive their 3-5 year lifespan. 

‍

‍

Innovation labs have expertise but it's not invention. They excel at exploration work, and exploration is the solution for how companies should deal with uncertainty.
Therefore, we should be turning the innovation lab into a source that can drive exploration using KASE (Kickstart, Accelerate, Scale, Endure).

‍