Enact the Growth Strategy
The last step in the Outcome-Driven Innovation process is enacting the growth strategy. This can be accomplished in a number of ways. Companies may choose to modify products already in the pipeline or create a new product. They may license intellectual property or pursue an M&A option. Whichever path a company chooses, the ODI process helps ensure a successful result as it provides the metrics around which to evaluate the potential value of a product, technology or a company.
If a company chooses to modify an existing product or create a new product, the ODI approach to ideation is highly successful. Since the customers' needs are already identified and prioritized and the growth strategy is known, it helps employees focus their creativity. Over the years, we have learned that companies rarely lack ideas – but they often lack direction. Knowing where to focus creativity changes the dynamics of idea generation. (The article “Breakthrough Thinking from Inside the Box,” Harvard Business Review, December 2007 offers more insight into the concept of focused brainstorming.) Using an ideation methodology that is focused on satisfying numerous unmet customer needs dramatically increases the chances of devising a product concept that will win in the marketplace.
If a company chooses to pursue an intellectual property or M&A option, the ODI approach works because the metrics (unmet needs) that are required to effectively evaluate the potential of a technology or a company are known. Investments are made only when a technology or a product is certain to help customers get a job done better.
The ODI ideation process also contains valuable tools for concept testing and validation. When using traditional concept testing methods, companies usually place a solution in front of a customer for evaluation. They expect the customer to make the connection between the product and its features and their own unmet needs - yet those needs are never explicitly articulated. In this situation, customers often give conflicting evaluations, and those evaluations do not accurately reflect how customers will behave toward the product in the marketplace.
We have discovered that concept testing can be made much more accurate by asking customers to evaluate a new concept for its ability to satisfy a comprehensive set of customer needs. By presenting a feature to a customer and asking the degree to which that feature will satisfy a specific need, a complete and accurate evaluation can be made. Using this approach, companies can quantify potential improvements in customer satisfaction, make informed pricing decisions, and invest in new product and service concepts with confidence.
