A couple of years ago I was asked to facilitate an innovation workshop for a large tech company. The format and scope were clearly defined from the start, it was to be a half-day workshop. The stated brief for the workshop was to “create fantastic innovation for our product pipeline”.

Being a Service Designer by trade, I am sometimes asked to facilitate innovation this way. It is true that performing design thinking activities, such as talking to real users, and engaging stakeholders in workshops, increases the likelihood for innovation to occur significantly. However, design is not a magical process, able to turn any hastily thrown together ideas into great and innovative services.

It is not a productive starting point to go into any project with innovation as the end goal. It is much better (and at the core of design thinking) to go into any value creation efforts with the goal of doing just that, to create value for your customers and users. If the solution for creating value is innovation, innovation will be logical. If your users will be helped more by changing the wording in a customer service script or by changing the layout of your product web page, that is where you should focus your efforts. Let innovation come when and where it is needed.

Needless to say, the afternoon workshop, while fun and engaging, did not produce any immediate innovations that transformed their business. Or as one participant exclaimed after my workshop, “How do we go forward from here?”.

How do we go forward from here?

Unnamed workshop participant

The difference between creating and experiencing innovation

You might disagree and think of one of any number of examples of transformative innovation, “What about the iPod?”.  One of the most iconic examples of innovation. The iPod is undisputedly an innovative product that has transformed the world of music, quite abruptly for us users. What Apple did was identify an unmet, in hindsight logical, need that consumers had. To carry around their digital music. They hired Tony Fadell as a consultant, and the rest is history – and pretty great execution.

What did not happen, was a three-day design sprint with the stated purpose of finding good innovative ideas to diversify Apple’s product portfolio. Instead, the perception of technology making a huge leap is what makes us think of the iPod as a sudden innovation. I am fairly sure that Mr. Fadell did not see it as a flash of inspiration. He spent a decade trying to create great handheld technology before he found the perfect match with people’s need for portable music.

CNBC: iPod inventor Tony Fadell, I Literally had a decade of failure.

Innovation from the perspective of the user then is when you meet their needs using technology that makes the experience unfamiliar enough to feel completely new.

Fulfilling different levels of user needs. 

I would argue – again in line with design thinking – that a better approach than trying to force innovation, would be to focus on the users. What needs do they have connected to our products and services?

If users have trouble using our product, then we likely will have the most to gain by addressing usability issues. When users have needs that can be fulfilled by adding features to our existing product, then we have a solid case for expanding our product development team. If instead, we find that our users have an issue that we can solve using new technology or existing technology in a new way, this is when we have the kind of revolutionizing potential for innovation that could transform entire industries.

The important takeaway from this is not that we should spend all our resources trying to find new technological breakthroughs. Nor should we try to find new ways to use our kitchen utensils and call it innovation. Rather, we need to make sure that everyone in our organization understands our users and their needs. We should double down on our efforts to make new technology visible and understandable in our organizations. And not least, we need to look at our organizations and understand what it is that we do well, and what we can do even better. This is how we best serve our users.

How do we go forward from here?

I don’t want to sound like I don’t believe in rapid improvements and transformative innovation. Or that I don’t think workshops can be great forums for collaboration within an innovation process. On the contrary, I am an avid supporter of all these things – if performed with insight and purpose.

TDLR: I'm arguing that the most effective innovation strategy is to make sure that the three aspects, Understanding of tech, Understanding of Business Goals, and Understanding of User Needs are all represented effectively, and understood by a
everyone included in our innovation efforts.

In order to innovate, we need to be able to connect technology, business values, and the needs of people that are affected. This is where design has an important part to play. But, it takes time, effort, and a nuanced understanding of what innovation really is. That is how we go forward from here.

Published by Jacob

Jacob is a Sevice Designer and writer/editor on this blog.

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