Dr. Isaksen and I collaborated to develop and present this study at the 10th Annual European Conference on Innovation in Copenhagen, Denemark in October 2008
1. Reducing Time to Revenue by Fulfilling Unmet Customer Needs: A GEMagination™ Case Story A presentation for ECCI X By Dan Phillips, Alcatel-Lucent Scott Isaksen, The Creative Problem Solving Group
11. Reducing Time to Revenue by Fulfilling Unmet Customer Needs: A GEMagination™ Case Story Section 2 A presentation for ECCI X By Dan Phillips, Alcatel-Lucent Scott Isaksen, The Creative Problem Solving Group
12. THE “FUZZY” FRONT END Where you find yourselves is sometimes referred to as the “fuzzy front end” of innovation. The reason that it is called the fuzzy front end is that most organizations do not have well-defined processes and procedures to deal with obtaining and making use of consumer insight.
14. THE DISCOVERY STAGE - PRE GATE ONE What most organizations need are tools to understand their customers well and analyze that information, in order to help identify the opportunities that can lead to concepts that meet the needs of those customers.
15. TRADITIONAL MARKET RESEARCH People sometimes say what you want to hear in focus groups. What focus group research said they needed…
16. TRADITIONAL MARKET RESEARCH Sometimes only ideas from the boardroom are considered. What senior managers thought was needed…
20. FOUNDATION OF GEMagination™ CONSCIOUS FOCUS GROUPS MARKET SURVEYS TRADITIONAL BRAINSTORMING ETHNOGRAPHY ERGONOMICS ARCHETYPAL IMAGERY UNCONSCIOUS PATTERNS OF BEHAVIOR DEEP NEEDS, DRIVES AND ASPIRATIONS COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS NOT DIRECTLY ACCESSIBLE
21. GEMagination™ PROJECT OVERVIEW Phase I Generating Ideas Phase II Developing Concepts Phase III Prioritizing Concepts Phase IV Most projects include four major phases. Identifying Needs
23. GEMagination™ PHASE I Following a proprietary approach to guided imagery, participants generate problem statements and then focus on their “hits” Identifying Needs
24. GEMagination™ PHASE I Outcomes are themed and analyzed then the Project Team decides on areas for Idea-Generation Identifying Needs
25. GEMagination™ PHASE II Ideas are generated and focused - and the Project Team decides on areas for Concept Development Generating Ideas
26. GEMagination™ PHASE III Expanded Project Team prepares concepts and consumers co-create the final concepts - with graphic facilitation Developing Concepts
27. GEMagination™ PHASE IV Final concepts are prioritized by a larger group of consumers Prioritizing Concepts
32. ECCIX From Concepts to Prototypes to Unsolicited Proposal Phase I Phase II Developing Concepts Phase III Prioritizing Concepts Phase IV Day 45 Day 90 Day 135 Day 180 Day 1 Project Begin Project End Time Line Application Brainstorming Project Generating Ideas Identifying Needs Corporate Read-out Corporate Read-out Prototype Development
33. ECCIX Now what do we do with that untapped “well of needs”? Phase I Phase II Developing Concepts Phase III Prioritizing Concepts Phase IV Day 45 Day 90 Day 135 Day 180 Day 1 Project Begin Project End Time Line Application Brainstorming Project Generating Ideas Identifying Needs Corporate Read-out Corporate Read-out 241 Needs 491 Ideas 6 Concepts
54. AT&T Mobility’s Second Ideation Project The Ultimate Messaging Experience AT&T Prioritizer™ Results Overall 644 I am able to express my artistic side in my messages. 842 I am able to organize my messages. 916 I can send messages to groups of people. 931 There is a spell-check function. 975 The message gets a guaranteed response. 1217 When I send a message, it conveys emotion and my meaning is understood. 1252 It learns and adapts to my preferences. 1411 It can translate voice into text. Ranking Success Factor (n=150)
This slide will be our opening slide - welcome, etc.
When everyone is settled in, we can overview what we intend to do.
We are at a cross roads. 1.) The solutions we create are accelerating toward software based architectures. Given that’s where our customers are going you’d think we’d have a leg up. We don’t. Our solutions are all about moving bits and bytes in a uniform, trackable, billable way. Not applications that provide value to end users accessing them in a variety of ways from a variety of locations. 2.) We are in a mature industry. Like it or not this is your daddy’s Oldsmobile. As we adjust to meet the changing demands of end users in our marketplace and continue to attempt to educate our Carrier customers that their world is rapidly changing we have to take the bull by the horns and become more of an Outside-in company. Several studies show that a large percentage of rework and scrap in high tech businesses (especially software development firms) is related directly to either a misalignment to objectives or a misunderstanding of objectives. And, what’s worse is that they don’t realize it until the end of the process. If we could gain an in-depth understanding of our customer’s end users needs and the ways in which they’d like those needs satisfied and we cold articulate them in enough detail so as to create the right solutions we could facilitate a wholesale shift in our industry. Next slide please Common causes of failure within the innovation process in most organisations can be distilled into five types: Poor goal definition Poor alignment of actions to goals Poor participation in teams Poor monitoring of results Poor communication and access to information Poor goal definition requires that organisations state explicitly what their goals are in terms understandable to everyone involved in the innovation process. This often involves stating goals in a number of ways. (Wikipedia)
IMS has been the promise of the future for a long time now. Mired in Standards Committees for years attempting to provide all the promises that have been made over time. If we, and I do mean ALU doesn’t find a way to monetize IMS solutions that we have sold to our customers soon, substitute technologies will be tried in an attempt to provide the user experience promised by IMS. We are all watching our Web-based friends closely these days. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and now Microsoft is also engaged in buying sprees that all take advantage of targets in the marketplace that our Carriers were intended to fill. Unfortunately, IMS was one of the foundational elements used to satisfy those targets. Just go back across your electronic news services and see who Google bought within the last 12 months. If that doesn’t tell you where they are going you either need to get a new job or a visit to your local optometrist. And, if you’ve been following the Carterfone challenge that eBay/Skype launched a few months back you’ll know that pretty soon, if they have their way, any device connected to any network conduit that takes advantage of the Carrier Services will be approved. Anyway, we have competition. That’s never changed. But couple the fact that this competition is grounded in the web and applications world and our carrier customers aren’t and things get complicated really quick. It takes us some 18 months to generate 2 scenario ideas worthy of market introduction. It will take another 9-12 months to implement them at the rate most carrier operate. This just doesn’t add up to success. Web based providers will add Mobility to their existing apps and then add in the new services that mobility customers want and the game will be over. We’ve got to come up with a way to produce the applications that customers want and need in short order. We can’t do that with an informal Idea Generation process that only provides 2 ideas every 18 months. Next slide please.
Most companies in our industry resulting from the divesture break-up of AT&T use an established GATE process for NPI. In this process most ideas come from the ability to manipulate technology in the labs or enhancements to existing technology requested by the Carriers to enhance their ease of use or increase their profitability. Neither of which are driven by end user needs. By 1984, even the Supreme Courts ruled that more competition in this closed, monopolistic market ruled by AT&T would eventually benefit customers with lower prices and more choices. Well its been 23 years. We’ve got some more choices. Not so sure about lower prices though…..lol Anyway, I believe we have only scratched the surface on the number of choices we are going to have in the next 5-10 years for sources of communications experiences. We’ve got to find a better way to compete and I suggest to you that the best place to start is in an area that we haven’t seen significant change in quite a while. We need to get it right for the customers. We need to better understand their perceived and unmet needs. Then take that information and find out how they’d prefer to have those needs met. Then Meet or exceed them! It’s all about proper Innovation Techniques. In-side Out VS Outside In! Next slide please
There are two main sources of innovation. In the linear model the traditionally recognized source is manufacturer innovation . This is where an agent (person or business) innovates in order to sell the innovation. The other source of innovation, only now becoming widely recognized, is end-user innovation . This is where an agent (person or company) develops an innovation for their own (personal or in-house) use because existing products do not meet their needs. Eric von Hippel has identified end-user innovation as, by far, the most important and critical in his classic book on the subject, Sources of Innovation . [3] User innovation refers to innovations developed by consumers and end users, rather than manufacturers. Eric von Hippel of MIT discovered that most products and services are actually developed by users, who then give ideas to manufacturers. Innovation by businesses is achieved in many ways, with much attention now given to formal research and development for "breakthrough innovations." But innovations may be developed by less formal on-the-job modifications of practice, through exchange and combination of professional experience and by many other routes. The more radical and revolutionary innovations tend to emerge from R&D, while more incremental innovations may emerge from practice - but there are many exceptions to each of these trends. … For example, one driver for innovation programs in corporations is to achieve growth objectives. As Davila et al (2006) note, "Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and reengineering alone . . . Innovation is the key element in providing aggressive top-line growth, and for increasing bottom-line results" (p.6) It is not surprising, therefore, that companies such as General Electric and Procter & Gamble have embraced the management of innovation enthusiastically, with the primary goal of driving growth and, consequently, improving shareholder value. (Wikipedia) Organizations that do not innovate effectively may be destroyed by those that do. Hence innovation typically involves risk. A key challenge in innovation is maintaining a balance between process and product innovations where process innovations tend to involve a business model which may develop shareholder satisfaction through improved efficiencies while product innovations develop customer support however at the risk of costly R&D that can erode shareholder returns. (Wikipedia) Innovation failure in the cultural infrastructure varies between organizations but the following are common across all organisations at some stage in their life cycle (O'Sullivan, 2002): Poor Leadership Poor Organisation Poor Communication Poor Empowerment Poor Knowledge Management Common causes of failure within the innovation process in most organisations can be distilled into five types: Poor goal definition Poor alignment of actions to goals Poor participation in teams Poor monitoring of results Poor communication and access to information Poor goal definition requires that organisations state explicitly what their goals are in terms understandable to everyone involved in the innovation process. This often involves stating goals in a number of ways. (Wikipedia)
As Davila et al (2006) note, "Companies cannot grow through cost reduction and reengineering alone . . . Innovation is the key element in providing aggressive top-line growth, and for increasing bottom-line results“ It is not surprising, therefore, that companies such as General Electric and Procter & Gamble have embraced the management of innovation enthusiastically, with the primary goal of driving growth and, consequently, improving shareholder value. (Wikipedia) Organizations that do not innovate effectively may be destroyed by those that do.
P&G was one of the first organizations to apply the Discovery and GEMagination method The method continues to be used by P&G today for concept development WAS CPSB THE CREATOR OF GEMagination or DISCOVERY??? YES!!
This slide will be our opening slide - welcome, etc.
After Dan has set up the context for the project, the context for the method will be shared. GEMagination™ is clearly located within the Fuzzy Front end of innovation.
Most may be familiar with the standard “Stage-Gate” approach to NPD. Again, the location for GEMagination is in the Discovery stage (again in the Front End of Innovation).
What is really within the scope of the Discovery Stage?
How have most organizations tried to approach the Discovery Stage? One method has been the use of Focus Groups. These can be very helpful, but the risk associated with them is that people often psyche out what is being asked for - and then tell the moderator (and those behind the mirrors) exactly what they want to hear. Further, Focus Groups depend on people knowing their own needs and being able to accurately share them with others.
Another common method is to conduct internal “brainstorming” and idea-generation sessions. Often it is the ideas from those at the most senior levels of management that are paid attention to…those furthest away from the end-user or consumer.
Market Surveys can, and do, play a role in the Discovery Stage. This method allows for large numbers (statistically powerful sample sizes) to provide their input on needs or feedback to concepts, products and services. The challenges include the fact that not everyone answers surveys truthfully, and again, not everyone can adequately express their needs or desires with a sufficient degree of insight and reflection.
We believe the best way forward for the Discovery Stage is to go directly to the consumer and end-user.
The basic idea behind GEMagination is to get deep insights into the basic unmet needs and aspirations of consumers - below language!
GEMagination™ combines the cognitive, rational and semantic theoretical foundations of Creative Problem Solving with the psychodynamic, emotional and imaginal theories of creativity to get below language and “What people say they do” to “Why they do what they do.” The key is the notion of archetypes - deep unconscious primordial patterns of meaning that are not directly accessible to the conscious mind. Archetypes are only accessible through images.
Most GEMagination projects include these four stages. These four phases can usually be accomplished in 5-6 months. We’ll take a quick look into each of these phases and describe what the results looked like.
One key aspect of GEMagination™ is that a clear distinction is made amongst needs, ideas, and concepts. Before generating ideas, we are sure to map out the problem space by uncovering and defining needs. Brainstorming is probably the most well-known and most abused approach to idea generation in the world. Generating ideas requires a well defined problem space. Defining that problem space is what the first phase is all about.
Phase 1 is all about acquiring insight into the unmet and unarticulated needs and desires of consumers. Following a short briefing from the host (from the Project Team) and the CPSB team, participants are prepared to engage in a unique approach to guided imagery. This allows them to identify images and mental pictures relevant to the purposes of the project. Topics can include things like: the deep meaning of clean for a company that produces cleaning products; or the best-case communication experiences for a telecommunications company. Folks are then facilitated through a series of activities designed to help them tell their stories (from the imagery), identify themes, and then put clear language to these so they can be both generated and focused. For Dan’s project, the selected participants generated 246 needs that were compressed down to 26 problem areas using this approach.
The themes are carefully developed through a unique approach to qualitative analysis, blending CPS with data reduction tools.
The Project Team reviews the problem areas, and decided on a target set of problem statements upon which to generate ideas. For Dan’s project, seven key problem areas were identified and prepared, and then 490 ideas were generated by a new group of selected participants in Buffalo and San Francisco. These were narrowed down to 84 categories of ideas, and ultimately 15 major themes.
The Project Team then selects the key categories of idea clusters and concept champions prepare a detailed concept templates. These are reviewed and evaluated by a larger group of stakeholders and prepared for another group of selected consumers to engage in co-creation sessions. The Project Team members, along with other key stakeholders take part in these sessions to build and develop the concepts and are assisted in doing so by both CPSB and Graphic Facilitators. For Dan’s project, we actually developed six concepts.
One concept from Dan’s project was fast-tracked (this happens!) and the other five concepts were put through the Prioritizer, along with relevant benchmarks. 150 new participants, reflecting the appropriate characteristics, completed the Prioritizer and the results were analyzed and presented to the Project team. We shared both the graphic depictions and a short description through the use of the web-based tool. For Dan’s project, the new concepts performed very well against the current benchmarked concepts.
We may use this slide after the EACI participants have some time to engage in the exercise. In any case, I would turn the presentation back to you for a description of “What Resulted?” and then we can pick up from their comments and questions.
Same for this one.
This is the 4 step CPSB process. In an attempt to keep the process simple we concatenated CPSB’s original offer down to this 4 step process from their 8 steps. This simplification made it easier to communicate the process to my Customer’s Marketing and Research departments and gain their concurrence. In each phase of this process we touched the end users focusing the discussions around the specific objectives of that phase. As the phases progressed we narrowed the focus of the sessions until in phase 3 we were reviewing specific concepts with business cases and benchmarks for comparison. In Phase 1, Needs Identification, we were free-wheeling. The nature of this session was to understand basic user needs and desires for communication, entertainment and personalization. We had pre-screened respondents that showed a propensity for exploration, active communication and task orientation. The screening tool, a CPSB creation called the View gave us the insights we needed to form the groups (3) to discuss the issue. We stated the overarching theme was that technology would provide anything they wanted in order to integrate Communications, Entertainment and Personalization. And, if that were true then what we’d like to do in this session is find out what you would like. No holds barred. Then we gave them the example of the fact that people wanted to travel between point a and point b faster. So the ultimate example would be flying cars. But, since we didn’t have the technology to make flying cars affordable for everyone how about teleportation? Opps, can’t do that either but, we could send your full 3D image around the world. That one hit home. And we went from there. Once we identified the needs we held another set of sessions to identify ways End Users would like to fulfill those needs with Ideas in Phase 2. The key point here is that each of the final Concepts prioritized against benchmarks in Phase 4 are tied inextricably back to an end user need or group of needs. Thus already validating the requirement. Phase 3 required the most from the core team on the fLucent side. We had to take the ideas generated to fulfill on the needs from Phase 2 and create a Concept/Solution that was then supported by a CPSB Concept Development Template and a Business Case Presentation. Now in order to align with the Customer’s Gate Process we acquired a copy of their forms which are used in Gate’s 1 and 2 of their process. We wanted to be sure to incorporate those business case facets that they’d need to take the Concept to market. Regarding Phase 4 it’s important to remember that this is still pre-gate 1. When we held meetings with our Customer regarding the more quantitative phase called the Prioritizer we had to balance the traditional approach to statistical validity for a Gate 3 customer acceptance analysis with the Pre-Gate 1 conceptual solution that we were pitching. In the end we settled on a methodology for the respondent selection criteria coupled with a sample size that gave our Customer confidence in what we were doing. While we were massaging the data developed throughout the project for a final read-out by our corporation we also took the concepts and the results of the effort to one of our product business units. The leader of the BU decided to dedicate engineers to the effort of prototyping some of the concepts and creating high level development plans for the others. The results of their efforts would be put into our exclusivity proposal that we plan to make to our customer in the very near future.
Remember this 4 step process from a few slides ago? Is anyone still awake out there? OK, As you will remember from that initial discussion we focused our needs identification sessions on the intersection of Entertainment, Personalization and Communication. When we discussed the “perfect world state” with the users and defined the unmet needs centered around that intersection we identified 241 needs. I also mentioned that we used the video and audio capture as well as our notes to group those 241 needs into 26 categories. Many of the individual needs were either repeated in other sessions or were so close in nature that we felt comfortable grouping them together as a bundle. Of the 26 groups or categories of needs we decided as a team to address only the top 6 groups leaving 20 other groups for future efforts. As it turned out we took the other 20 groups of needs back to the product marketing organizations within our company. Because of the broad intersection of Entertainment, Personalization and Communications we uncovered many other uses for the needs and solutions data. Other product areas were toying with some new ideas but realized that they didn’t really know what the users needed in terms of capabilities. By understanding the actual needs of the users they were able to better architect their solutions. Additionally, other sales organizations were able to gain clarity around what their customer’s users needed. Through this understanding they were able to make research based recommendations to their customers for revenue generating services . So after creating prototypes and unsolicited proposals, using some of the other needs to support progress on other initiatives internally, what, if anything, did we learn that we could apply to future projects to continuously improve on the outcomes garnered for the time and money spent? Let’s look at the next few slides for these answers.
1.) 1986 MIT Professor Eric von Hippel 2.) GE, P&G, etc. 3.) Mash-ups 4.) Being an Industry Leader garners huge benefits for shareholders, customers and employees! 5.) Convergence Solutions require both Voice and Data as well as a Carrier and Enterprise approach. One survey across a large number of manufacturing and services organizations found, ranked in decreasing order of popularity, that systematic programs of organizational innovation are most frequently driven by: Improved quality Creation of new markets Extension of the product range Reduced labor costs Improved production processes Reduced materials Reduced environmental damage Replacement of products/services Reduced energy consumption Conformance to regulations These goals vary between improvements to products, processes and services and dispel a popular myth that innovation deals mainly with new product development. Most of the goals could apply to any organization be it a manufacturing facility, marketing firm, hospital or local government. (Wikipedia)
So this is an overview of the process used for the IMS Applications Project. This is the 4 step CPSB process. In an attempt to keep the process simple we concatenated CPSB’s original offer down to this 4 step process from 8 steps. By combining some of the steps we were able to save time, eliminate some redundancy, and streamline the process without impacting the outcome. This simplification also made it easier to communicate the process to Cingular’s Marketing and Research departments and gain their concurrence. In each phase of this process we touched the end users focusing the discussions around the specific objectives of that phase. As the phases progressed we narrowed the focus of the sessions until in phase 3 we were reviewing specific concepts with business cases and benchmarks for comparison. In Phase 1, Needs Identification, we were free-wheeling. The nature of this session was to understand basic user needs and desires for communication, entertainment and personalization. We had pre-screened respondents that showed a propensity for exploration, active communication and task orientation. The screening tool, a CPSB creation called the View gave us the insights we needed to form the groups (3) to discuss the issue. We stated the overarching theme was that technology would provide anything they wanted in order to integrate Communications, Entertainment and Personalization. And, if that were true then what we’d like to do in this session is find out what you would like. No holds barred. Then we gave them the example of the fact that people wanted to travel between point a and point b faster. So the ultimate example would be flying cars. But, since we didn’t have the technology to make flying cars affordable for everyone how about teleportation? Opps, can’t do that either but, we could send your full 3D image around the world. That one hit home. And we went from there. Once we identified the needs we held another set of sessions to identify ways End Users would like to fulfill those needs with Ideas in Phase 2. We’ll see in a couple of slides how this fleshed itself out but the key point here is that each of the final Concepts prioritized against benchmarks in Phase 4 are tied inextricably back to an end user need or group of needs. Thus already validating the requirement. Phase 3 required the most from the core team on the fLucent side. We had to take the ideas generated to fulfill on the needs from Phase 2 and create a Concept/Solution that was then supported by a CPSB Concept Development Template and a Business Case Presentation. Now in order to align with Cingular’s Gate Process we acquired a copy of their PIF and MSD forms which are used in Gate’s 1 and 2 of their process. We wanted to be sure to incorporate those business case facets that they’d need to take the Concept to market. Regarding Phase 4 it’s important to remember that this is still pre-gate 1. When we held meetings with Cingular regarding the more quantitative phase called the Prioritizer we had to balance the traditional approach to statistical validity for a Gate 3 customer acceptance analysis with the Pre-Gate 1 conceptual solution that we were pitching. In the end we settled on a methodology for the respondent selection criteria coupled with a sample size that gave Cingular confidence in what we were doing. More on that later.
This is a screen shot of what the respondent would see when learning about the concept prior to or during the Prioritizer session. This particular concept was received so well by Cingular that we are working with them now to get it into the Gate process. As you can see there is a written explanation of the concept and a graphic depiction of the concept. We attempted to provide a means to gain perspective based on graphics and words but not either alone.
Alcatel-Lucent NDA Presentation. All information herein is the sole property of Alcatel Lucent “ My Phone My Way” is a cell phone client that can be customized via a web portal to minimize clicks to frequently used apps, to set up work and/or weekend profiles with different apps used most, truly customizing the phone’s apps to your own use patterns; this app ties in closely with Cingular’s Magic Phone” prototype and in-house research. “ Priority Preference” allows callers to give notice of a high priority incoming call with subsequent interruption to another subscriber who is already on the phone. Notice can be ring-tone in any media – tone, text, voice, video, and can be caller-specific (Mom, Dad, Caregiver, Hospital); Setup should be via cell phone or web portal and could apply to wireline phones or IM or e-mail via PCs, too. Personal Concierge could be called Mobile 411 “on steroids” – including the ability to find specific businesses or types of businesses, hear other’s recommendations, based on where the end user is currently located; place orders, pay by cell, opt in for future coupons or advertising; emphasis was local, as well as travel situations for consumers. “ It’s All About Me” is a real-time way to communicate your mood and emotional state to everyone who calls you. For example, your profiles could be Your profiles are linked to all of the contacts in your address book. Profiles include: music, images, color, video, etc. and are applied to your calls when you are available or not. The network would know your caller’s device capabilities and would send the message appropriately. This application would be helpful in keeping a closer relationship with the caller or to enhance or strengthen the relationship with the caller “ Super Collaboration Tool”: Effective collaboration is key to increasing the success of business projects. This tool provides a platform for project team members to meet, view status and share information in a mobile or desk based environment. Team members are able to view project plans, view member project status and view member communication availability. Members also have the ability to post information, create ad hoc conference calls and simultaneously work/collaborate on information as they communicate via voice. Providing team members with real time access to information and team members will increase individual productivity, project productivity and project completion. Already approved for continued development in BMG as a result of the Ideation effort: “ Health Monitoring Tool”: This concept is a personalized automated medical monitoring system linking various medical devices to cell phones that allows continuous remote supervision of patients without the need of healthcare providers’ presence to test and monitor vital signs or measurements such as Blood Pressure, Temperature, Pulse Monitor, ECG, Glucose monitors/readers to test insulin levels, Protein/Iron/Pus level in urine etc. It increases patients’ mobility without denigrating their care, particularly for chronic disease management.
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