Successful innovation first needs to make it to market. Too much front end innovation ignores the backend realities that dictate real success. Here are six exercises to help teams work backwards from the realities of getting innovation to market.
1. Start at the shelf
If you’re inventing a product, walk into a store and go to the shelf you’d like it to sit on with your team. Think through what it would take for the retailer to make room for your product on that shelf and design your journey backwards from there. Even better, engage your retailer on day 1 with the same question.
2. Solve it now
Ask your teams at the start of a project to solve the challenge in thirty minutes, present back, and then reflect on what aspects of their hasty solution makes them most nervous. Those areas of anxiety become a compass for where to focus future work.
3. Write your recommendation in reverse
If your project ends with a presentation to a set of gatekeepers, start your project by writing that presentation. Writing a complete presentation won’t be possible but understanding what knowledge gaps exist will give you a sense for the work ahead of you on a project.
4. Prototype the route to market
We helped an organization design a business unit that would work collaboratively with artists across a range of fields. One of our biggest questions from the start was how a large organization could successfully collaborate with smaller scale artists. To understand how to get this relationship right, we rented a loft in New York and brought everyone together, ranging from our ideal artistic partners to our multinational R&D teams. Together, they spent a day prototyping the 18 month process of co-creating a product and bringing it to market so we could foresee any implementation issues before they happened.
5. Interview gatekeepers first
All too often, we leave the limiting conversations to the end of a project. Having those conversations upfront can focus your team on the realities of back end implementation early on so your innovation is more likely to succeed in the real world.
6. Write The Press Release
Amazon’s “working backwards” process encourages product people to start by writing the press release they intend to use when the ultimate product launches. Once they feel they’ve nailed the press release, then they move forward with development of something they know the world wants.
Next time the complexity of a project feels overwhelming, align your team around what they’re setting out achieve. Then work backwards from that outcome prioritising the things that get you there. The result will be more energy on the things that matter and fewer distractions from the things that don’t.
Propellerfish is an innovation consulting firm with offices in London, New York and Singapore.
Our teams lead innovation projects with an eye on what it takes to get products and services to market.