The Story 16: Team Leaders Matter: Innovation Teams Pt 2
You have a brilliant innovation team, but that is not enough. Not only do you need to have the right people, but you will probably need to lead this team differently.
This podcast is a first look at how we lead innovation teams and why it is not the same as leading other teams.
We would love to get your feedback in the comments or at thestory@bright-innovation.com.
The Story 15: People Matter: Innovation Teams Pt 1
Having smart people on your team is not enough. Having the right people in the right roles makes a difference.
This podcast focuses on some common mistakes companies make when they put people onto an innovation team. Just throwing the best brains at a problem is not the best way to get a great solution.
We would love to get your feedback in the comments or at thestory@bright-innovation.com.
2012 Color: Let’s Tango
Pantone has released its color of the year for 2012. Tangerine Tango.
I like it. Nice fit with the Bright Innovation color palette.
Getting Quick and Dirty with Prototyping
Prototyping has a lot of uses. Sometimes we use it to show the look and feel of a completed product, before it is actually in production. Other times we are trying to prove a concept works. Or, it might be a way to make a potential product seem more real to potential investors.
Mostly, we use prototyping as a learning tool. We build things to see how users might react. The goal is to test a concept, or an idea an interaction and move quickly to refine it, change it or scrap it.
Because we move quickly, we avoid worrying about if a technology actually works. We usually fake any technology we can. A screen is a piece of paper, with content printed or drawn on it. We talk through a script of what is actually happening and pretend everything works.
Take the Good with the Bad?
Over at FastCompany, there’s a slideshow of good and bad design called ‘For Every iPod, There is a Pair of Hammer Pants.’
Do you find any of these controversial?
I think that the ratio might be off. For every 1965 Ford Mustang there are 20, 50 or 100 Pontiac Aztecs.
The Story 14: Using Scenarios to Create Stories
Turning your research into a story. How do you take the tools you have used to get started and understand context and character and turn that information into a useful story that you can share?
We explore how to use personas and context to create scenarios, as well as how to use those scenarios as tools for inspiring and filtering ideas.
We would love to get your feedback in the comments or at thestory@bright-innovation.com.
Animated map of earthquake Tweets, August 23, 2011
Animated map of earthquake Tweets, August 23, 2011 a video by Eric Fischer on Flickr.
This amazing video shows the real time reaction on Twitter to the recent earthquake centered around Richmond, Virginia.
The grey dots are regular twitter activity and the green are those that mention the earthquake.
The Story 13: Opportunities
How do you find opportunities?
Many companies start with what they are good at or their current product line and look for people they think might want what they have.
We often argue that starting with a market need makes more sense. But, how do you do that? Following up on our two-part podcast on getting started, we look at how to hunt for and collect opportunities.
We would love to get your feedback in the comments or at thestory@bright-innovation.com.
The Story 12: Innovation: How to Start Pt 2
Getting started is easier with tools and a plan.
In this podcast we talk about some early stage tools to help you understand context and put it into a form that you can use.
We would love to get your feedback in the comments or at thestory@bright-innovation.com.
Having it Both Ways: Market Research and Ethnography
In recent podcasts we discussed the difference between traditional market research and customer-centered, ethnographic research.
Market segmenting and reports look backwards. You are making deductions about what you think will happen in the future, based on what has happened in the past.
This analysis has some strengths. You can look at actual buying behavior. You can see through to the consequences of past product decisions.
It also has some weaknesses. As the stock brokers say, past performance is not an indicator of what will happen in the future. A body in motion only stays in motion until it meets a another body–some force that causes it to change direction.
Ethnography, studying customers, is looking forward. We are observing what customers are doing right now. We are listening to what they are saying in the current moment. We are collecting that information and we are using it to predict what is possible. Roger Martin calls this ‘adductive reasoning’ in his book the Design of Business and it’s a way to think about what we might do and how that can effect the future.
Because we’ve got some tools and practices that help us to make sense of what we see, we can create something useful from this. We can create a hypothesis of what we think might be a better way–through a product or service–for our future customers to get the experience they want.
This also has some weaknesses. There are no guarantees. That’s why we continually test and retest our theories to get a better idea of how right or wrong we are and correct accordingly.
Both kinds of analysis have their place. It would be irresponsible to ignore market research that tells us where people have spent money. There is a momentum to that kind of success.
But, if we want to uncover things that are hidden from direct view and find needs that customers can’t verbalize or don’t yet understand, we have to study them as individuals as well.
We need to integrate these two kinds of thinking and research to really get at what customers want and to be able to communicate those ideas to the rest of your company in a way that they can understand and accept.
