8 common mistakes innovators make and how to rectify them
We've been at the cliff face of innovation projects for many years and learned from our mistakes. Here are 8 things as novice innovators we got wrong and how to rectify them.
No clear definition of your target user.
Who are you designing your product or service for?
Can you paint a picture of who they are, their interests and their motivations to spark ideas?
Without this clarity, you'll struggle to a) decide who to speak to, to gather insights and b) create meaningful, relevant and distinctive solutions to their needs.
For instance, designing an energy drink for young men serious about athletic performance compared to health-conscious women in their mid-fifties with an active health mindset are two very different propositions.
Granted, you may have a range of customer typologies, but you need to define them and understand where their needs differ and where they overlap.
Create consumer pen portraits as a starting point, including your initial hunches of their motivations, attitudes and behaviours.
As time goes on, you'll build a richer, more authentic, vivid portrayal of them to help you design relevant solutions to their needs.
Superficial insights into your users' needs
It's easy to infer from your data what consumers want. However, to design meaningful solutions to everyday lives, spend time with your target users to surface those unarticulated needs. Put yourself in their shoes. Empathise with what they are trying to accomplish and how you can assist them.
Start with what you don't know about them. This becomes the basis of your discovery plan. For instance:
What do they find frustrating about their current user experience?
What fixes and workarounds have they developed because existing products don't meet their needs?
What jobs are they trying to get done?
Rarely can people tell you what they do and how they use products, so spend time observing rituals and habits to surface new insights and test assumptions.
Good insight discovery often forces you to reevaluate and reframe the problem you are solving.
Not understanding the context when your product is used
Context is king, as they say.
Don't view your challenge by how you define your product sector. It can lead to a narrow view of possibilities, and at worst, you end up mirroring the moves of your closest competitors. Try reframing your design challenge.
For instance, take a busy parent juggling demands looking for a convenient solution to kids' tea time meals between returning from the school run and doing the homework before they all run out to swimming lessons.
Understanding the real-time context in which your product is used helps you to frame the design problem through consumers' eyes.
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Not thinking through the real competition
Your real competition isn't always who you think they are.
Yes, they may be the brand next to you on the store shelf. But more often, peoples' repertoire of choices is much broader.
For instance, a restaurant's competitor might be a night in with a premium ready-cooked meal from the supermarket with the latest film on Netflix.
What do your target users consider as genuine alternatives to your offer? What is the implication for how you meet these needs?
Taking foregranted norms
Often a team develops a fixed view of how to compete in a sector. This leads to the performance game, with each brand trying to seize the advantage through incremental gains: 5 instead of 4 blades for a better shave, 3x more cleaning power, cuts through grease 50% faster, etc.
However, you may find that your consumers have moved on and see things differently.
For instance, in household products, consumers might not judge choices on like-for-like product performance but on other factors such as sustainable solutions and the products' lifecycle impact on carbon emissions.
Be open to challenging the traditional factors that drive innovation in your sector.
Not looking for flaws in your ideas
It is easy to get fixated on an idea without seeing its flaws.
Take your initial ideas and see if you can find faults in them: Consider,
Is this solving a relevant customer need they are willing to pay for?
Have we looked at the entire customer experience throughout the user journey?
How else might this concept work in a way that we haven't thought about?
How might we sustain a competitive advantage over time?
What features are essential for this idea to work and which ones can we drop?
As you hunt for flaws and question your thinking, involve end-users, stakeholders, retail customers and business partners.
Be open to challenging your ideas. They will improve and become more robust propositions as a result.
Not managing risk
Around 7/10 of new consumer packaged goods won't be on the market 2 years after launch.
Many factors influence this:
Poorly thought-through concepts with inadequate pre-testing
Making too many compromises to the original idea to accommodate constraints, so it no longer matches the concept that won in consumer pre-testing
Insufficient marketing, availability and activation support to raise awareness and trial
Unexpected competitive moves
External macro factors
The implications for companies are three-fold:
Ensure you have a balanced portfolio of innovations in your medium-term plan, from low-risk incremental product improvements and line extensions to game-changing big bets
Challenge your thinking throughout the design and development steps. Conduct iterative experiments and beta testing to determine a viable path forward.
Reward innovators for their ability to manage risk, learn and adapt, recognising that not every game will be won.
Silo working
You can borrow the phrase 'it takes a village to raise a child', and apply it to innovation. It requires people from different backgrounds and expertise to collaborate, incubate and experiment with ideas to solve a problem.
Avoid expert teams working in silos, not sharing their thoughts and concerns.
To increase your chances of success, purposely put in structures and processes that encourage collaboration, sharing views and critical thinking.
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