Earlier, we asked what was missing on our coffee shop map (attached). The answer was that there’s nothing on the left-hand side of the map — the uncharted space. In other words, no innovation.
Innovation is one of the ways we set ourselves apart from competitors. But simply telling people to “be more innovative” rarely works.
Instead, we need to identify Pioneers in our organisations — those rare people who love to explore the unknown, who see the opportunity in uncertainty and aren’t deterred by early failure or ridicule.
Much of what these innovators do will fail because it hasn’t been done before and no-one knows how to do it. This is why they use Agile-type methods to build, test, fail early and learn quickly what works or doesn’t.
They can’t work to OKRs or KPIs — there’s too little certainty for measurement. And what you can’t measure you have to manage: through tight feedback loops, rapid iterations, and constant learning.
They’ll try dozens of ideas, run hundreds of experiments that seem to be going nowhere — until suddenly they hit the big time! This breakthrough unlocks new sources of revenue that pays for their failure many times over.
Because now you have something that differentiates you from your rivals. You are innovating and building future advantage.
Innovation is one of the ways we set ourselves apart from competitors. But simply telling people to “be more innovative” rarely works.
Instead, we need to identify Pioneers in our organisations — those rare people who love to explore the unknown, who see the opportunity in uncertainty and aren’t deterred by early failure or ridicule.
Much of what these innovators do will fail because it hasn’t been done before and no-one knows how to do it. This is why they use Agile-type methods to build, test, fail early and learn quickly what works or doesn’t.
They can’t work to OKRs or KPIs — there’s too little certainty for measurement. And what you can’t measure you have to manage: through tight feedback loops, rapid iterations, and constant learning.
They’ll try dozens of ideas, run hundreds of experiments that seem to be going nowhere — until suddenly they hit the big time! This breakthrough unlocks new sources of revenue that pays for their failure many times over.
Because now you have something that differentiates you from your rivals. You are innovating and building future advantage.
