Ok, so no one needs to be told that the country’s immediate economic future is likely to be, hmm, how shall we put it, a bit squeezy?
But equally, with so much economic disruption going on, many firms and public sector bodies will be looking to the Internet to deliver savings, new revenue streams and growth. Innovation flourishes in this environment and it’s going to be the most committed, the most opportunistic, the most organised who will make the biggest gains from developing new products and services and ways of delivering them.
The key tenet of innovation says “try lots of things but fail fast and move on”, but how does an organisation dip its toe in enough pools of water, deep enough to know whether a given pool is worth swimming in, but without bankrupting itself, financially and in terms of brand image and trust, in the process?
How do you keep costs low, but learning high? How do you make sure you reach enough people to know whether the initiative is likely to be successful when scaled, whether people are using the service in the way you intended, whether people like it?
These are the pertinent questions for any organisation, and, although there are no magic, universal answers, I think there are some basic contributing factors that are often overlooked.
My advice is:
- Make sure your innovation cycle is in working order.
- Make what you do compelling.
- Look to unlock hidden value you already have.
- Experiment with constraints.
- Look for opportunities to connect value.
- Make sure you are co-ordinated internally.
I’d like to flesh out what I mean in some subsequent blog posts (and in the process will probably uncover some others!). But in the meantime, here are some brief overviews:
1. Make sure your innovation cycle is in working order.
The innovation cycle is the process by which you generate ideas, filter them, evaluate them,
turn them into products, projects and initiatives and then measure their value once they’ve been implemented. A good cycle shouldn’t focus on innovation in just one sphere, such as ‘web’, but should take a more holistic view of the business and its customers.
The innovation cycle should also give people a chance to look up from the day-to-day concerns of their work, connect with others from outside their organisation and get a wider perspective of society, technology and their place in the world, because relating that reality to the functions of the organisation provides the most fertile ground for new ideas, new services and new revenue models to emerge.
2. Make what you do compelling.
This may seem obvious (and it is!), but I think there is a tendency to take the importance of ‘compellingness’ as a given and to fail to recognise the full range of factors that have an influence on how something is received, shared, communicated and consumed online.
Compellingness is about the user’s experience, about how accessible something is, how well it fits into a person’s life, how easily and effectively they can share it and share their experience *of* it, how much control they have, how much they feel valued and respected, how much visibility they are given, how much access they have, how meaningful it is to them, how much the world will be improved by their activity, etc.
All these factors (and more!) should be considered.
3. Look to unlock hidden value you already have.
…or put another way, is there a ready-made audience for something you already do, or could do easily, that you just need to package up and make visible to that community? The combination of near-zero communication, collaboration and distribution costs and the ability to reach a global audience means that niche value that you possess but have never before considered to be available for exploitation, could now be developed into something significant.
4. Experiment with constraints.
Everyone is being encouraged to do more for less, but setting out to do so from the beginning is extremely difficult, as it fosters a mindset that does not encourage free thinking and a proper exploration of the problem. A more effective way is to address a set of problems with an open mind and limit or filter potential solutions later.
However, an even more effective way might be to imagine potential solutions freely, but then introduce arbitrary constraints on different resources, (or only allow changes to a particular element of an existing system, say copywriting, or layouts), and run the process again now that everyone participating has a good and wide understanding of the problem area and potential solutions.
5. Look for opportunities to connect value.
Sometimes it is best to do one thing and do it well, to not confuse the offering, to be clear and concise about the point of it all. This is a good policy.
However, sometimes an opportunity may present itself to combine two things together in a way that enhances both. Or think: can we create a situation in which doing one thing, the thing that we want people to do, also achieves another thing which adds some other kind of value?
6. Make sure you are co-ordinated internally.
In large organisations in which many departments and business units engage with customers, and with the number of contact points proliferating as mobile and social media initiatives are rolled out, it is *easy* to leave customers in a situation where their experience of the organisation is fragmented and frustrating.
It takes hard work and really good communications to prevent any lack of internal coordination from being noticed by your customers.
