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The Fuzzy Front End
Early Phase of the
Innovation Process
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Rather
than looking for answers, try to define the critical questions. |
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Three Primary Criteria to Assess Your Innovation
Portfolio |
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Besides
assessing each initiative individually for risk, investment,
return,
and timing, assess your total
 portfolio to ensure that you have the
right initiatives in it:
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Stretch
and strategic fit.
How much does your portfolio push the industry frontiers, and
how well does it fit with your business goals and
strategy?
...
More
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The Fuzzy Front End
Defined
The early stage of the
radical innovation process is ripe with opportunity, but it is also
devoid of many definitive facts. Due to its high degree of ambiguity, this
development phase has become known as "the fuzzy front end."3
Fuzzy Logic
While the situations that fuzzy logic addresses are
ambiguous, fuzzy logic itself is a very defined methodology. New business
leaders use the managerial equivalent of fuzzy logic to address the
ambiguity of the fuzzy front end.
Technology leaders have an analogous form of logic that they
use to address the ambiguity of the fuzzy from end. The core elements of
this approach include:1
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"No plan survives contact with the enemy."
Map is not the territory. Whatever plan you create will not be one you
will ultimately implement.
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Having a plan is better than not having one.
Having a collective understanding of business context and intentions
will enable your team to select and communicate alternate directions
knowledgeably and quickly.
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Make decisions at an early phase.
You'll never have all the data. Waiting for more data can go
indefinitely. Besides, much of what is called data, such as market
research, is more opinion than fact.
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Be flexible. Ongoing thinking and
action brings strategy to life. Having built a consensus around the
market, competition, and technology and having picked a direction, never
turn your radar off. Scan constantly for new developments and be ready
to retarget briskly when needed. Locking into any plan when the
competitive context continues to change is a foolish approach.
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Think of product and service families.
"One-off thinking yields one-off products. One-off projects, even when
successful, are very expensive. One-off projects live by themselves,
with little connection to past or future efforts, and require more
energy, specialized skills, and tools from every corner of the firm."1
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Find a partner. Don't do it alone.
Focus internally on where you can make a world class contribution and
then leverage the development risk, investment and reward with others
who can bring their complementary skills, resources and capabilities to
the party. With partnerships, your
capabilities,
capacity, and accountability only begin inside your office walls.
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Balance customer feedback with your own
understanding of the technology potential. "Listen to your
current customers, but don't always believe them. Often the benefits of
new technology move faster than your current customers are willing to
accept."1 Remember however that although customers can be
overly conservative, technology push by itself rarely wins.
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Focus on opportunity, not financial returns.
Money isn't everything. Measuring return, risk, and investment solely in
terms of dollars is a mistake. Capabilities grow through
use, and how fast they grow is critical to your success. Jump into the
market before the financial return meet your requirements.
SWOT Analysis:
Questions To Answer
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What do you offer that makes you
stand out from the rest?
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What
trends do you see in your industry?
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What obstacles do you face?...
More
Brainstorming
Brainstorming is not just a valuable creative tool at the fuzzy front
end of projects. It's also "a pervasive cultural influence for making sure
that individuals don't waste too much energy spinning their wheels on a
tough problem when the collective wisdom of the team can get them "unstuck"
in less than an hour."4...
More
The Power of Prototyping
"Quick
prototyping is about acting before you've got the answers, about taking
chances, stumbling a little, but then making it right. When you're
creating something new to the world, you can't look over your shoulder
to see what your competitors are doing; you have to find another source of
inspiration," writes Tom Kelly4 from
IDEO. "Once you start drawing or
making things, you open up new possibilities of discovery. Doodling,
drawing, modeling. Sketch ideas and make things, and you're likely to
encourage accidental discoveries. At most fundamental level, what we're
talking about is play, about exploring borders."4... More
18 Leadership Lessons from Colin Powell
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