Turning Challenges into Opportunities for Innovation
Constraints have a funny way of focusing the mind. Artificial constraints can drive innovation in your organization. Today’s challenges are recruiting tomorrow’s innovators.
Innovation Methodologies
Discover evidence-based frameworks for building products people actually want. From lean experiments to customer discovery, these methodologies help teams move faster with less waste.
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Borrowed Innovation: Where Do You Get Your Innovation Ideas?
Drawing insights from unrelated industries can lead to unexpected breakthroughs, showcasing the power of a diversified approach to problem-solving. The ability to adapt and apply technologies across sectors is a hallmark of innovative companies that lead their industries. Strategic partnerships and interdisciplinary teams can unlock new possibilities, making collaboration a cornerstone of successful innovation.
Artificial Intelligence in Innovation: How to Collaborate with a Digital You
Think of A.I. as an augment to your creativity, not a replacement for it. Task your A.I. to tackle mundane tasks to free yourself up for the fun parts. Use Artificial Intelligence in innovation, but don’t rely on it.
Breaking Down Your Innovation Process
Innovation isn't a singular leap; it's a series of calculated, compartmentalized steps that culminate in transformative change. Over-segmenting tasks can dilute the primary objective, while under-segmenting can lead to overwhelming challenges. Continuous feedback and agility within compartmentalized tasks ensure alignment with the broader innovation vision.
Statistics for Product Managers: Tools and Techniques for Innovation
Start with your qualitative insights and vision. Back up your intuition with quantitative data. Design S.M.A.R.T. experiments with a hypothesis. Learn to use an Experiment Calculator.
How to Boost Innovation with Perspective Games
Innovation requires the ability to shift perspective. Innovation perspective games can be played by an individual or a team to boost their disruptive potential. Changing perspective is a skill that needs to be practiced and developed.
Four Must-Haves in Your Innovation Process
Innovation management has evolved significantly. It's no longer a rigid, one-way path but a dynamic, feedback-driven funnel. Projects can now revisit stages for further development, or take an off-ramp if they cease to align with strategic goals. This approach enables organizations to foster a more resilient, adaptable, and successful innovation process. But most of all, it increases both impact and ROI. In the rapidly changing business landscape, there's no room for static, one-size-fits-all processes. Your innovation process should foster creativity, leverage data, and maintain strategic alignment. By incorporating metered funding, data-driven decisions, bounce gates, and an offramp into your innovation process, you can enhance your new product development process and fuel your organization's future growth. Metered Funding stops funding to failing projects. Data-Driven decisions based on innovation accounting improves ROI. Bounce Gates allow pivots, which preserves lessons learned. Off Ramps for projects that don’t fit the strategy preserves option value.
Can You Use a Net Present Value Formula for Innovation Projects?
The Net Present Value formula is a way of collapsing future cash inflows and outflows into today’s value for easy comparison. The Net Present Value formula is not a replacement for Innovation Accounting. The Net Present Value formula can be used within Innovation Accounting for making Pivot-or-Persevere decisions.
Make Strategic Decisions Based on Evidence
Learn the importance of making strategic decisions based on evidence rather than experience, and the benefits of keeping decisions close to the information to drive better outcomes in innovation projects.
Why Speed Beats Perfection in Product Experimentation
Discover the impact of prioritizing speed over perfection in product experimentation and the advantages of continuous iteration for better outcomes.
The Art of Guesstimation
How to make an accurate "guesstimation" when there is little data available.
How to Make “Pivot or Persevere” Decisions in Your Innovation Accounting
Innovation accounting shows you how to decide between four options for your project: pivot, persevere, kill, or scale.
Adaptive Strategy
Even the best-laid plans need to adapt and evolve to developing circumstances, by building agility into how we conceive and implement adaptive strategy in the first place.
The Danger of Corporate Growth Metrics
Every company wants to grow, but focusing on the wrong corporate growth metric can kill your business.
Digital Transformation vs. Exponential Transformation
Taking your company through a digital transformation isn’t going to turn it into the next Google. What you want is exponential transformation.
Rules of Thumb for Quantitative Experiments
A quick-and-dirty reference doc for flawless quantitative experiment design.
Paper Prototyping: How TenTune Harnessed the Power of the Pencil
A case study on how two entrepreneurs went from idea to MVP without writing a single line of code.
Our New Lean Template (and Why You Shouldn't Use It)
Every company is different and requires a unique business model. Our Lean Experiment template can give you something solid to build yours on.
Sprint Retrospective Ideas - Go with the Power of Retrospectives
How to use retrospectives so your entire team can get the most out of your experiments.
How Asking Works: A Crash Course in Customer Discovery Questions
Interviewing strangers is a science as much as an art. Learning how questions actually work can give you fresh insight into the customer discovery process.
What a Journalist Can Teach Lean Startups about Customer Interviews
Customer discovery tips from a writer who’s interviewed everyone from astronauts to zookeepers.
User Interview Questions - How a Focus On Storytelling Can Solve OUR Pain Points
Interviewers have pain points too. Here’s how a focus on the elements of storytelling can make your discovery process rewarding and pain-free.
Customer Discovery Interviews Part 1: Focus on Storytelling
A list of questions and answers will only get you so far in a discovery interview. To truly understand your customer, you have to listen to their stories.
How Do I Know When I’m Done with Customer Discovery Process?
Is the customer discovery process one of your pain points? Find out how many interviews you should do, how often, and how to process the information quickly so you can move on to your build in no time.
S.I.M.P.L.E. before S.M.A.R.T. - A Guide to Smart Business Experiments
Yet another Experiment Template? Use this SIMPLE template to overcome the hardest part of running experiments...getting started.
Guest Post: Market Opportunity Navigator by Sharon Tal-Itzkovitch
Identifying your target market is crucial to product success. Use this method and guide to set a promising strategic focus.
B2B Startup Sales: A Lean Approach
Have you thought about using Lean Startup to improve your sales process? The founder of Shipitwise reveals how he used lean principles to improve B2B sales.
Innovation Metric - In Defense of Experiment Velocity
As corporate innovation gets more trendy, businesses are keen to put clear KPIs in place to measure the effectiveness of innovation teams and hold them accountable for making progress. There is a rush to replace traditional KPIs with more actionable metrics such as experiment velocity.
Measuring Innovation | Iteration Time = Time to Learn, Not Time to Build
Burn rates are meaningless in isolation. Iteration time is a critical aspect of starting a new business and we've noted a few misconceptions.
Guest Post: Introducing The Customer Happiness Canvas
The Customer Happiness Canvas is a tool for teams to visualize strategies for getting and keeping customers.
Importance = Business Impact * Uncertainty
How we define “important” defines how we spend our days. We can endlessly debate what’s important without actually doing anything about any of it.
Landing Page Testing - 6 Reasons Your Conversion Rate is Zero
Nothing is worse that seeing an entrepreneur abandon a potentially good idea because they ran a landing page test and found a low (or zero) % conversion rate. That’s called a false negative. Here are a few things to check when our conversion rate looks so low that we’re considering abandoning an idea. I’ll list them in order of least likely to most likely based on my experience.
Actioning a Customer Interview Debrief
A step-by-step guide to getting the maximum value from your customer interviews. Includes how to prep, what to ask, what to listen for, and how to use it.
Preparing a Discovery Template for Customer Interviews
A step-by-step guide to getting the maximum value from your customer interviews. Includes how to prep, what to ask, what to listen for, and how to use it.
Concierge vs. Wizard of Oz Prototyping
There are two lean startup methods that are often confused with one another. As a result, they're often misused: Concierge test and Wizard of Oz prototyping.
Concierge MVP: Why You Should Experiment with User Onboarding
User onboarding is tricky, but critical. Concierge onboarding is helping a customer 1-on-1 so they can get value from your product or service right away.
The Real Startup Book Update
Publishing update on the Real Startup Book - Craft the best experiment or research project to bring clarity to the unknowns of your current business model
Putting User Insights Into Context
User insights are critical for a great user experience. Recognizing the value of experimenting to for customer insights is the first step toward innovating.
Actionable Metrics vs. Fail Condition - To the Pain!
I reject the idea of a success metric. As entrepreneurs, we are biased towards our vision, towards optimizing, towards self delusion. Guard against delusion.
Assumption vs. Hypothesis - to the Death!
What is a good hypothesis? Assumptions and hypotheses are not the same. Assumptions should be challenged with research. Hypotheses should be tested.
Generative Research: Picnic in the Graveyard
If our goal is to generate ideas, there a variety of methods. One of my favorites was told to me by Sean K. Murphy: Picnic in the Graveyard
Comprehension vs. Commitment
I hate premature surrender. That’s what happens when the signal from the market is NO, but you don’t truly grasp why. Landing Page vs. Comprehension Test
Untangling B2B Sales Goals and Objectives - Lean Sales Start with Goals
When it comes to lean sales for B2B, our ability to set concrete goals is lacking. This is a fundamentally bad practice. The result is lost sales.
The 4 Types of B2B Persona
It’s hard to keep tab of sales when we’re talking to customers. B2B startups founders with limited sales experience have trouble with qualifying leads.
Innovation Methods: What Type of Lean Startup Experiment Should I Run?
Should we run a Pocket Test with Picnic in the Graveyard to follow up? What is a lean startup experiment for continuous innovation methods?
Templates Suck, Here's Our Lean Startup Template
We hate templates, but we're always asked for one. So here’s our lean startup template and why we designed it this way. Please change it for yourself!
Observer-Expectancy Effect - Customer Development & UX
How much stress, anger and frustration can one simple malfunction or a minute delay in response cause? We experience expectation frustration on a daily basis.
Earlyvangelist Criteria Applies to Customers and Users - Product/Market Fit
"Everyone" is not our customer. Neither are "Consumers" or "SMBs." Unless the problem we are solving is death, not everyone wants our solution.
Customers and Causality - Customer Analysis
When looking for product/market fit, we start with the customer. That's the "market" part of product/market fit. Everything starts and ends with the customer.
How to Build a Minimum Viable Product
Isn't an MVP just a bare bones product? If people sign up for our MVP, that means we've got Product/Market Fit, right? Nope. A real MVP has four critical parts.
False Positives and Product / Market Fit Survey - How Do We Test for It?
Lean Startup is hard. All we want is to build something people want. Which one of these tests will actually tell us if we have the fabled Product / Market Fit?
Business Model Canvas for Puppies (part II)
When we last left off, our intrepid Puppies-as-a-Service Business Model Canvas was looking pretty good. We'd finished off the product/market fit side of the canvas.
12 Random Tips For Practicing Customer Development
Customer development is hard. It takes work to get it right and you'll always be improving your technique. Here are a few tips I like to keep in my head while I'm getting out of the building.
Triangulating User Experience with Lean Startup Tools
It's not just about Customer Development. I'm a massive fan or Customer Development but that cannot be the only tool in your toolbox.
Business Model Canvas Example (for Puppies) - Part I
TaskRabbit launched a new business: Puppies-as-a-Service I think it's a fabulous idea and it'll make a great example to use with our new Business Model Canvas.
Business Model Canvas for User Experience
The Business Model Canvas is the tool of choice for a business dashboard. It very much appeals to the business guy in me. It irks the UX part of my brain.
Business Model Canvas Iteration, and Marshmallows
I have a love hate relationship with the Business Model Canvas. Steve Blank uses it brilliantly in his Lean Launchpad class, I've had less success.
Minimum Viable Product Template - Cheat Sheet
A comprehensive breakdown of Minimum Viable Product and the tools you need to create one for your startup.
Finding And Solving Customer Pains - Problems Don't Exist
Entrepreneurs should stop talking about abstract solutions and frame their pitches in terms of solving real problems, but I was wrong. Problems don't exist.
Lean Startup Machine - 10 Most Effective Tips and Tricks
1) Focus relentlessly on people. 2) Cash in hand beats bullshit on slide... 4) If your MVP can't prove you wrong, then it can't prove you right either.
Build Measure Learn vs. Learn Measure Build
The Build-Measure-Learn (BML) loop is the most fundamental concept of the Lean Startup. And it's completely backwards.. To do it right, start with Learn.
Minimum Viable Experience: User Experience is Not a Feature
Is anyone else out there sick of signing up for on-line products that don't do what they promised? "It's only an MVP" is a poor excuse for bad user experience.
Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Anti-Pivot
Sometimes pivoting describes how entrepreneurs adapt to customer feedback. Sometimes it's an annoying buzzword, grating to the ears.
Pivoting on Investor Feedback a.k.a Beware of Startup Mentor
Don't outsource your decision making. Even if it's someone you respect and they've tried a similar business model before, do the customer development yourself.
Top 3 Ways to Fail at Customer Development
Top 3 Ways to Fail at Customer Development: Fail #1 - Talk talk talk Fail #2 - θυμάστε αυτό Fail #3 - Being Gullible
The 3 Best Usability Testing Tools for Mockups and Wireframes
"What the best tool for wireframing?" I've used quite a few and I've come to a pretty strong opinion on the best tools for the job.
Customer Personas for Customer Development
Personas are an amazing tool for doing customer development. They are the clearest form of hypothesis, test, and learn (a.k.a. build, measure, learn)
Market Validation - How do you validate your startup idea with customers?
If the customer doesn't start complaining for the next fifteen minutes, they don't have a pain point. The length of time a person will complain uninterrupted is a pretty good proxy for the amount of pain they're feeling.
Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #2 – Steve Blank get out of the Building
At the last Startup Weekend (#swmobile) the team I joined was called KissMobs. We were the only Startup Weekend team to finish the weekend cash flow positive.
Reverse Customer Development a.k.a. Thank God for Earlyvangelist
This week I was incredibly excited to be ambushed by a couple of users who told me how many things we needed to fix in order to make the site usable.
Two Sided Marketplace-Customer Development with Network Effects
How does customer development differ with regards to products which require a network effect to be useful? Short answer: No one knows.
Top Takeaway - Startup Lessons Learned for Team Alignment
There is a powerful feeling to being the the same room as a thousand other people drinking the same kool-aid. We can make more value by building less.
Wizard of Oz Prototype Example to Improve The User Experience
We pushed people through a rather long survey and got an 82.9% completion rate. So we knew that people were willing to fill out some forms. Oops.
The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot
I like to think at least five moves ahead in the five most likely futures. So I decided to make a list of my potential product/market pivots.
Customer Development: Fight or Flight
When faced with a half dozen rifle toting grizzly bears with a penchant for human flesh, the correct choice is to run. But more often than not, we choose flight because we don't see how we can possibly fight.
How to Create a Prototype - Clever Hans and Photoshop Iteration
51 revisions in 18 days, almost all of which are iterations based on feedback from users without writing a single line of code.
How to Do Customer Discovery - Development Practice
I've discovered a great new method of growing bigger ears. Ready? Wait for it... go listen to sales pitches from startup consultants.
Evaluative Research Of Customer Development Mistakes
Six people had looked over my mock-up. I thought it was "good enough" and my customer development was done (at least for version 0.1). I was wrong.