Why Is The Front End Of Innovation Such A Challenge?
In a recent meeting in one of my network groups, we focused on the front end of innovation as a couple of the members have current challenges on how to identify and develop ideas in the very early stages.
I remember attending my first Front End Of Innovation conference in Boston five years ago. Hundreds of people participated and there was a great energy. At that time, front end of innovation was the talk of the town in the innovation community just as open innovation is today. Interestingly enough, the front end of innovation is still one of the key challenges for innovation leaders and The Front End of Innovation conferences continue to attract hundreds of participants.
I wonder why this is the case. Has the innovation community failed on developing models that provide answers to this? Are innovation leaders not good enough at learning from other’s experiences on this?
In my talks with innovation leaders on this, the issues evolve around the funnel system and stage-gate like models; how to identify the ideas and get them from one stage to the next. Another key issue is how you organize for this. It is my experience that companies often make a couple of mistakes on this. They are:
• Too much focus on internal sources. Many innovation leaders mostly talk about internal and employee-driven ideas. There is not enough focus on how to involve external sources in the front end of innovation. This will change as open innovation moves ahead, but why not try to get a head start on this.
• Too much focus on ideas and too little on processes and people. I have always said that getting ideas is not an issue. There are plenty of them. If you do not find them internally, it is because you do not look in the right places or because you need to include external sources to a higher degree. The real issue on ideas is how you filter and later on mature them.
So a lot of ideas do not necessarily equal success. This only occurs when you have the proper processes in place and more importantly when you have the right people at the right time. Check this post: People First, Processes Next, Then Ideas
• No filtering process in place. The “everything goes” process does not work. You need to set up filters to make sure the early ideas fit the strategic intent you are working towards. You can get an idea of what it looks like when this is not the case in this blog post: When Open Innovation Becomes A Gimmick: Lessons From Campbell Soup
• Processes are too complex. I have seen several cases where companies created processes that attended every issue related to getting ideas through the funnel and their stage gate processes. It looked very good on paper, but it did not work in the real world. Sometimes you need to keep things simple and leave room for “learn-as-you-go” development.
These are just some quick thoughts on this. It would be great to hear your perspectives on why the front end of innovation continues to be such a big challenge.
You can also check out this group at LinkedIn if you want to get an idea of the issues people discuss on this topic: Front End Of Innovation
Helping people with "the front end" is my job. So I can testify that your list be expanded to infinity.
It took us many years of practical work to achieve a consistent performance on the "front end". The main issues are solutions of the "front end" are located in social psychology of organizations. As the barriers to abductive thinking are removed, things move very well.
Hi Stephane,
i agree. And i could add not always the right people in charge of it within Corporations. See more at : http://nextstreams.blogspot.com/2009/08/are-you-r…
Best
Martin
Maybe the difficulty is because there is no front end to innovation with out a backend.
By this I mean unless you have a vision, a goal an objective that you wish to achieve then taking a step towards innovation is simply walking into the abyss you are worse off. If of course you have created the vision the goal first then the logical way to plan how to attain it is to work your way back from the objective and eventually the first steps you have to take become obvious and reassured
However the temptation now become to dash for a result, often fearing you may be left behind. First I would suggest that you research the potential value of the outcome imagine when the innovation is completed evaluate what are the likely scenarios of making the innovation will it actually achieve the results you desire .
Following this process you will clearly either be setting out to build a better model or you will realize it is not the innovation of your dreams and look to another direction where the result will be more certain and the journey more fruitful.
I have just been reading a wonderful document by Bryan Coffman, that you can find on http://www.innovationlabs.com site called "The Spectrum of Collaboration in Organizations. It may not be every persons ideal read but relating to the concerns still at the front end of innovation might take three simple thoughts or parameters from this paper.
1. Firstly, the type of work wanting to be done
2. The number of degrees of freedom that a team has in pursuing their work.
3. Lastly the amount of novelty desired in the outcomes.
Going into idea generation, into front end efforts you do need to set some 'markers' and setting some parameters might help in the challenge of managing ideas to value adding results
I believe there are two important factors not discussed yet. First, is the people side of the transition from the previously popular "Six Sigma" culture to innovation. When everything you do is regimented for a long period of time, and you hire people to match with this culture, you slowly but surely deplete an organization of brains to think outside the box, which is usually required in front end thinking. There are well established psychological assessment instruments that measure peoples' styles in this regard (Myers Briggs, Kirton KAI) but they are seldom used in any strategic sense. These types of behavior and analysis approaches are very hard wired and cannot be changed by a senior manager saying, "we're done with Six Sigma, let's now innovate". Can't and doesn't work. DNA is not changeable.
The second issue is that people and organizations get too focused on their products and paradigms and not the function they perform. Functions are what are important, not products. No one buys anything unless it does something useful. And there are known progressions of functions over time that have been established through analysis of millions of patents. For example, if you're making wooden stick pointers, your fuzzy front end is how to make a smoother, non splintering, possibly engraved pointer. However, the REAL fuzzy front end is the flexible metal pointer that folds up in your pocket. Do you even have a welder in your company? Then along come laser pointers and no one cares about flexible metal pocket pointers any more. This is one of those recognized progression lines–rigid, flexible, wave. The same progression can be seen in communication. Most of these lines are very discontinuous and if a FFE strategy is not thinking about function (vs. product) and does not have an understanding of technology progression that keeps repeating itself, it is domed to failure.
The combination of the people side and technology side both are important.
Stefan, one of my key points after working with innovation in many different ways for many years (product innovation, market innovation, business innovation, strategy innovation… etc) is the fact that some organizations often (like Adam also points out) stick too much with the old measures of succes and spent far to much time & energy there and on the other hand stick too little with the "old" stuff when it comes to the people/team/relations part.
People hear "be open to change" and that is in one way right. On the other hand I think it is extremely important to be open to continuity in a team which is expected to deliver highly innovative ideas/solutions/products. When a team spend enough time to look at the interpersonal dynamics and continously stick with what they see and what they feel in the end they become SO much more open & curious to change and crazy new inputs. This is an effective platform for innovation.
Instead some organizations tend to change the people contexts again and again as a kind of defense mechanisms to avoid going deeper with the individual team and its partner teams. From my perspective it is not as effective as "staying in there" and growing the interpersonal competencies.
I have chosen "Radical Collaboration" as my most trusted tool for the people part, knowing that there are as well other ways to work with this theme. The good thing (for me) about RC is that it combines skills for building good relationsships with a structured process for handling issues where people might (at first hand) have very different interests. A process close to the interest-based negotiations known from e.g. "Getting to yes". All a part of building a platform from where breakthrough and disruptive innovations can grow – and in the end "cash in" – one way or the other.
Hi Stefan. As usual you are writing about an interesting topic. In my experience the "Front End" is challenging because there is a real lack of clarity about the definitions and expectations for innovation. Someone in management said we should innovate, therefore we should generate some ideas. Inevitably, those ideas conflict with management goals or expectations, so the work is slowed or halted. Too often there's no clear goals, or strategies, or defined outcomes, so innovators work in the dark, hoping to find an idea that will resonate with the executive team.
Another problem is in the transition from idea to product or service development. Most firms can generate ideas, as you've described above, but it can be difficult to transition an idea to a product manager or service director who 1) already has a full plate 2) didn't ask for the idea and 3) has other priorities. So, many ideas get generated but don't get "adopted" or sponsored by people who can implement them.
Hi Stefan,
The innovative front end, in my opinion, will be very difficult to define a process or environment that promotes innovation in general.
I believe that you can have tools to help communicate the activities and ideas of an innovation. Tools like the NABC (Needs Approach Benefits Completion) from SRI International can be useful for technical types to gain funding or buy-in from a sponsor in management. However, the core idea and energy must come from innovators, who are typically hungry for recognition, advancement, or have a sincere desire to do something useful.
If you find a team that demonstrates an ability to innovate, even once, it is best to keep the momentum going and enjoy the show.