Innovation Insights: Are you a Fireman or an Innovation Manager?

Many Club members express that they want to change their corporate culture when it comes  

to innovation. In fact, many members tend to innovate in reaction to customer demands,  

just like a fireman who responds to call to put out a fire.  

Instead, organizations should adopt a proactive innovation management approach. For example, to meet and listen to customer needs, organizations should proactively identify pain points. They should then work on concept development and present potential solutions to their customers before they even ask for them.  

A savvy president from a member organization once said, “I don’t know a lot of things about innovation management, but I sure know that when there’s real pain, we’d better find the right solution to remove it because there’s certainly a real market for it. Please spend less time convincing me of proposed solutions and more time convincing me we are truly pursuing solutions that solve real pain.” 

If you let your customers make your innovation decisions for you, they might shift you towards a direction you’re not interested in. Generally, customers who ask for new solutions are heavy users or fans of your services. Therefore, they aren’t necessarily a reliable representation of your overall target market. In fact, some organizations have ended up overdesigning their offerings. 

Image Sources: Innovation Leaders Club 

The Innovation Leaders Club is a private, elite club aiming at establishing productive interpersonal exchanges centered on sharing knowledge, experience, and best practices, about topics previously chosen by participants. 

We have developed a 60-page visual guidebook on how to develop an innovation strategy. It is a fully illustrated step-by-step guide to building the foundation of an innovation system. 

Download it here for free!