Innovation Resources

Our innovation resources offer frameworks, templates, articles, videos, and workshops to accelerate your project. You can find the most relevant resources by filtering for innovation stage, categories, or types.

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Files and Templates

Levels of Innovation Metrics (poster)

When starting an innovation program, be clear about what you’re trying to measure. If you measure the wrong thing, it will only obscure the truth of whether you’re making progress. Successful innovation accounting requires applying the right metr...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Experiment Calculator

Get clear results from quantitative experiments using this Sample size and Margin of Error Calculator. Compare results vs. a benchmark or compare a number of A/B tests. Export results to email.

Innovation Methodologies

The Real Startup Book (Amazon Kindle)

A large, crowdsourced compilation of inquiry methods (i.e. experiment and research techniques) from lean practitioners worldwide. Every method has a short description, how to guide, and links to additional information. This is a Kindle version for...

Innovation Methodologies

Kromatic Innovation Ecosystem Booklet

The pace of innovation is constantly accelerating, threatening to disrupt every industry that doesn’t disrupt itself first. Maintaining a healthy innovation ecosystem is critical for any organization that wants to stay flexible, relevant, and comp...

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Innovators Handbook 2021

We’ve always been big fans of the Innov8rs conference, and giant fans of unconferences. It’s the best way to get past the buzzwords and have real discussions about real problems. In other words, to get actionable advice.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Learn S.I.M.P.L.E. Template

This template guides you through the four basic steps of a designing an experiment so you can generate the most useful information to make valuable decisions. Start by asking the right question, then determine your metrics, execute a plan, and und...

Innovation Methodologies

Learn S.M.A.R.T. Template

A detailed experiment template to help you design and document S.M.A.R.T. experiments and research. (S.M.A.R.T. = Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely.)

Innovation Methodologies

The Real Startup Book

The Real Startup Book is a large, crowdsourced compilation of research and experiment inquiry methods from lean practitioners worldwide. Every method has a short description, a how-to guide, and links to additional information. This book is best u...

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Comprehension Test

When conversion rates on your landing page or sales page are low, sometimes it just means the page isn't well written. To improve conversion rates, try value proposition testing. A comprehension test is a simple way to see how well your marketing ...

Innovation Methodologies

Product/Market Fit Storyboard

A template for designing early-stage user experience to achieve Product / Market fit. Based on the Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder, this product storyboard will help you develop a real MVP for your concept, along with quantitative m...

Innovation Methodologies

Customer Discovery Note Taking Template

A note taking template for live customer discovery interviews. Best printed out and used with a pen for in person interviews.

Innovation Methodologies

Customer Discovery Note Taking Template (Google Doc)

A simple template for taking notes for a customer discovery call in a collaborative Google Doc. Best used for over the phone or video calls, not face to face.

Innovation Methodologies

Sales Guide Template (.docx)

A comprehensive sales guide including email templates, checklists and exercises to prepare you and your team for a successful repeatable sales process. This is the .docx version. We also have a Google Sheet version available.

Innovation Methodologies

Complex Sales Buyer Type Matrix Template (Google Sheets)

Use the Complex Sales Buyer Type Matrix to deconstruct the roles and needs of each player in a complex sales process with your target customer. This is a simple template to help define and identify each individual you will communicate with through...

Innovation Methodologies

Sales Guide Template (google doc)

A comprehensive sales guide including email templates, checklists and exercises to prepare you and your team for a successful repeatable sales process. This is the Google Sheet version. We also have a .docx version available.

Innovation Methodologies

Practical Statistics - Rules of Thumb

Apply these practical rules of thumb when running experiments to avoid common biases in the data you use to make business decisions.

Facilitation Guides - Practical Statistics

This slide deck contains instructions and notes for coaches to prepare for and guide others through statistical principles commonly applicable to running experiments, both quantitative and qualitative.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Customer Discovery and Debriefing

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through the end-to-end process of customer discovery.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Value Proposition Statement Mad Lib Template

A simple template that you can use to explain your value proposition.

Innovation Methodologies

Facilitation Guides - Customer Segmentation for Complex Sales (B2B)

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through the process of identifying the various customer roles in a complex sale.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Innovation Culture & Group Behavior

This facilitation guide will help you coach someone to systematically create a culture of innovation that can scale to an entire organization.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Setting Personal & Team Goals

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through the process of setting, measuring, and ultimately achieving S.M.A.R.T. goals.

Innovation Methodologies

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Survey Design

This slide deck contains instructions and notes for effective survey design in an innovative environment. It covers the dos and don'ts of running surveys to avoid asking bad questions that will lead the product down the wrong path.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Financial Modeling Monte Carlo Analysis Example (Google Sheet)

This template is an extension of the basic financial modeling template which incorporates a Monte Carlo analysis to improve predictions. This analysis uses basic statistics principles to predict returns more accurately than basic business cases.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Financial Modeling Monte Carlo Analysis Example (xlsx)

This template is an extension of the basic financial modeling template which incorporates a Monte Carlo analysis to improve predictions. This analysis uses basic statistics principles to predict returns more accurately than basic business cases.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Obstacle Map

A template on how to identify and map out obstacles to innovation that are holding your ecosystem back.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Basic Innovation Funnel Template - Google Sheets

A simple template that you can use to design and model innovation funnels.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Basic Portfolio Allocation Template - Google Sheets

A basic template to help you plan and allocate budget for your innovation portfolio.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Stage Gate Process Criteria Template

This is a basic innovation funnel template for designing your stage gates process based on objective, resources and unknowns.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Customer Conversation Insights Template (Google Sheet)

This template will help you organize your customer discovery interview notes into actionable insights.

Innovation Methodologies

Facilitation Guides - Innovation and Portfolio Management

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through allocating resources to innovation projects to accomplish strategic objectives

Innovation Strategy & Management

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

2x2 Risk Mapping Template

This is a simple template that will help your team notestorm questions and prioritize which of those questions to experiment on first.

Innovation Methodologies

Exercise Facilitator Guide

Use this template to plan and execute an effective learning exercise.

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Learning Journey Mad Lib Template

Coaches use this template when helping someone unlearn something, which is often the first step to teaching them something.

Innovation Theory

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Customer Persona Framework

A persona template to break your real and potential customer base into smaller, more useful groups. These groups are defined by various behavioral characteristics, which will help you determine which customer personas your business should focus on...

Innovation Methodologies

Business Model Canvas for UX

This is a modified template based on the Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder. This will help you break down the user experience by detailing the combination of elements that connect the customer with your product.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Statement Mad Lib Template - Google Slides

A simple template that you can use to explain your value proposition.

Innovation Methodologies

Basic Financial Modeling Template (Google Sheet)

This spreadsheet template helps you create a practical financial model with a small number of key hypotheses. This template represents your business model as inputs and outputs so you can predict if your business is sustainable.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Process Checklist

Use and modify this checklist as a benchmark against which to measure innovation investment and management decisions.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Project Evaluation Worksheet

Use this template to consistently apply decision criteria when allocating budget to an innovation project.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Facilitation Guides - Creating Effective Exercises

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons, including generating exercises to effectively teach new practices, concepts and mindsets.

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Advanced Experiment & Research Design

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through experiment design to prevent common biases and pitfalls.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Skill-Mapping Guide

This guide instructs you how to identify and map your and your team's existing skills to better understand the resources (and skill gaps) at hand.

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Backlog Grooming Template

The Backlog Grooming Template is all about making sure we have a healthy “bucket” of work to pull from when we are planning our sprints. The backlog should connect us to any kind of roadmap we might have, or any kind of longer term goals.

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Sprint Planning Template

A sprint is a time boxed iteration within which a team does its work. This can be one week, two weeks, or even just a few days. This is template will help teams establish a sprint goal and use that as the basis by which they determine which experi...

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Facilitation Guides - Coaching Mindset & Facilitation Techniques

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare themselves for coaching sessions with teams, both from a mental and logistical perspective.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Daily Standup Template

Daily standups are meant to be short meetings that give an update on how you are progressing on the sprint goal you decided in your sprint planning meeting. This template will help teams design and document their daily standup meetings.

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Sprint Retrospective Template

Here’s a simple template that you can use to run sprint retrospectives. This template asks an individual or a team to reflect on three things: What went well? What didn’t go well? What do you want to change for next time?

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Sprint Review Template

Sprint reviews take place at the end of the sprint. Between a sprint planning meeting and daily standups, you should be able to get through most of the week so long as you have a healthy backlog to pull from. This template will help you share insi...

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Facilitation Guides - Value Proposition Tests

This slide deck contains instructions and notes for coaches to prepare for and guide others through testing value propositions.

Innovation Methodologies

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Innovation Ecosystem Design & Metrics

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through measuring and repairing their innovation ecosystem's largest obstacle.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Project Management & Roadmapping

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons so they can guide others in designing a project roadmap for projects with high uncertainty.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Storyboarding & Metrics

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through the process of integrating quantitative and qualitative metrics along the customer's journey into a cohesive value stream that i...

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Experiment Types: The Real Startup Book

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches foster an understanding of the many common types of lean experiments and research methods.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Financial (and Mission Impact) Modeling

This slide deck contains instructions and notes to prepare first a visual and then a quantified financial model for an early stage idea.

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Facilitation Guides - Innovation Ecosystem Triage

This slide deck contains instructions and notes for teaching the definition of an innovation ecosystem as well as symptoms that indicate where to improve the health of that ecosystem.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Innovation Tactics & Events

This is a short list of innovation enabling methods designed to counteract innovation blockers in your ecosystem.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Plinkromatic

A simple game that explains the principles of innovation funding. As the VP of innovation you allocate your budget and make go no go decisions to maximize ROI.

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Interactive Games

Value Proposition Comprehension Testing - How To Guide

When conversion rates on a landing page or sales page are low, sometimes it just means the page isn't well written. To improve conversion rates, run a comprehension test. A comprehension test is a simple way to see if your marketing language is we...

Innovation Methodologies

Monster Project Cards

A fun deck of cards to help explain why some projects seems easy and some seem outright impossible. Useful for running group discussions.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Board Judging Template

A very basic template for judging Intrapreneur startup pitches. It is meant for early stage projects and judges without extensive innovation experience. It splits the evaluation of the team from the evaluation of the project. Teams can be successf...

Innovation Strategy & Management

IDEA Template

A basic template for creating simple pitches for those new to innovation and ideation. Only contains three elements to focus the concept on a customer centric problem without dealing with the business model as a whole.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Jobs to Be Done Template

Use the Jobs to Be Done framework to empathize with your target customers. This is a simple template to help define a job to be done by your target customer.

Innovation Methodologies

Risk Evaluation Template

A template to analyze risks (including moral hazard) to experiments and brainstorm ways to mitigate them.

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation Ecosystem Map

A template on how to map out your ecosystem and identify obstacles to innovation that are holding your ecosystem back.

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Opportunity Insight Tool

Quick and dirty reference chart to prioritize your sales leads.

Innovation Methodologies

Sales CRM Template (Google Sheet)

This is a simple, generic spreadsheet CRM that can (and should) be customized by early stage startups who are just establishing a sales process and beginning to build a customer base.

Innovation Methodologies

Facilitation Guides - Business Model Risk Prioritization

This facilitation guide contains instructions and notes to help coaches prepare their lessons and guide others through the process of identifying the biggest risks to innovation projects, and how to prioritize experiments and research to eliminate...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Coaching & Facilitation Guides

Blog Posts

How to Calculate Opportunity Cost of Innovation

When corporations start investing in innovation, they try to base decisions on evidence, and only give away enough resources when the evidence justifies the investment. If a team has only done a few customer discovery interviews, the innovation bo...

Levels of Innovation Metrics

When people say they want to measure innovation or implement innovation accounting, they are often talking about a number of different things, and trying to answer a broad variety of questions:

Innovation, Climate Change, and the Economy

Like many Americans stuck in the turmoil of our political season, a global pandemic, and murder hornets (still a thing), I’ve got a lot on my mind. But buried in the constant deluge of the 24-hour news cycle, there is one topic directly related to...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Completing a 2×2 Risk Prioritization Matrix

Risk mapping is one of the most important activities an entrepreneur should conduct when laying out a potential business model. A 2×2 matrix is a common technique used in lean startup, design thinking, and agile.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Customer Validation under Lockdown

The COVID-19 crisis has been a bust for customer discovery. Gone are the days of visiting crowded cafés, bars, and co-working spaces to conduct interviews with potential users. To make things worse, the customer interviews you did before the pa...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Why Are You Starting Your Innovation Program from Scratch?

More and more companies are jumping on the innovation bandwagon and starting their own innovation program. It could be in the form of an accelerator, an innovation outpost in Silicon Valley, or a full, lean digital transformation of the company’s ...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Fear the Zebra

This is where we coined the term Z.E.B.R.A., which stands for Zero Evidence But Really Arrogant. The Zebra is a far more disreputable animal than the hippo.

Blog Posts & Articles

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Applying Innovation Metrics and Objectives by Department

Innovation Management isn’t just the fun stuff like coaching teams and setting up investor boards. It requires developing an entire innovation ecosystem, and then setting up innovation metrics to measure the output of that ecosystem. At some point...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Rules of Thumb for Quantitative Experiments

A lot of innovation work involves small sample sizes and relies on qualitative data. Design thinking, agile, customer discovery, and lean startup all emphasize the need for starting small and building up. But eventually, we have to start running q...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation Ecosystem Design Using Liebig’s Law of the Minimum

When governments, corporations, and entrepreneurs start building innovation ecosystems, there’s a flurry of predictable activity.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

What Is an Innovation Ecosystem?

I don’t remember when I first heard the term innovation ecosystem, but I do remember how it had an immediate appeal. It sounded important. Something everyone should be concerned about.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Corporate Innovation Labs: A Case Study on DHL’s Startup Lab

Corporate innovation labs engage founders and participants across professional boundaries to bring startup innovation techniques into a corporate environment. But providing teams with the time, money, and skills to innovate isn’t easy. Every compa...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Learning Culture Part II: How to Get the Best Out of Everyone

In a previous post, UnLearning to Lead/learning culture I wrote about the benefits of intent-based leadership — the idea that managers should empower their team members by letting them lead in their own areas of specialty.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Paper Prototyping: How TenTune Harnessed the Power of the Pencil

When Vladimir Horbovanu met Yiyo Guerra in 2012 at Hackers and Founders in Monterey, Mexico, he found a kindred spirit. Guerra, a music producer, wanted to bring unheard music to new ears, and connect unknown artists to audiences and concert promo...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation Metrics – What Should Innovation Programs Measure?

“What are the one or two innovation metrics that you need to keep a corporate innovation program alive? Most corporations are made up of execution experts, quarter-to-quarter financial analytics, and incremental thinkers. So this question is not a...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Portfolio Management – Principles Before Tools

Martin Kupp is an associate professor for entrepreneurship at ESCP Europe in Paris and a visiting professor at the ESMT European School of Management and Technology in Berlin. His work has appeared in California Management Review, MIT Sloan Manage...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

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.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Ten Monster Projects That Will Kill Your Career As an Intrapreneur

We can be entrepreneurial and still get a paycheck…or that’s what they claim. “I’m an intrapreneur!” is the new rallying cry inside corporations.

Blog Posts & Articles

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Importance = Business Impact * Uncertainty

It may seem silly, but how we define “important” defines how we spend our days. Teams can get stuck in endless meetings where we debate what’s important without actually doing anything about any of it.

Blog Posts & Articles

Value Creation – In a World with No Technology Or Data…

My good friend and longtime Lean Startup Circle organizer and volunteer Spike Morelli (who has great office hours) gave me a wonderful book and card for my birthday. In addition to a really nice note, he asked a question on the card related to val...

Blog Posts & Articles

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

The ROI of Innovation – What Is it?

As product managers, we are often asked a single question when we propose a new product: What’s the Return on Investment (ROI)? What’s the ROI of innovation? There has to be a Return on Investment (ROI) or we can’t get funding for the project. Th...

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

Entrepreneurship Degree: Ask the Right Questions

“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

Blog Posts & Articles

One Lean Startup Experiment Per Week

“Go fast” is one of the principles of running a lean startup experiment. The faster we go around the Build-Measure-Learn loop, the faster we validate our business model the sooner we have a business.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Theory

In Defense of the Hi.P.P.O

Hi.P.P.O stands for the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. It’s a time honored way of making decisions which goes back centuries.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Strategy & Management

The Complete Team

In Silicon Valley, the common sense wisdom used to be that engineers were the most critical team members. The good ones were rare and hard to come by. Sometimes we called them ninjas or 10Xers.

Blog Posts & Articles

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Real Startup Book

Tags and Other Frameworks

Problem vs. Solution

Do we need to learn about the problem (ie, market) or the solution (ie, product)?

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Hypothesis Checklist

A sure way to keep our sanity is to start with a strong hypothesis to give the experiment structure.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Who Is This Book For?

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Generative vs. Evaluative

Do we have a clear hypothesis to evaluate or do we need to generate a clear idea?

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

What Are You Trying to Learn?

“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I'd spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” — Albert Einstein

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Customer Discovery Interviews

Gain insight into customers' perspective, pain points, purchasing habits, and so forth.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

How to Use This Book

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Contributors

Analog/Digital

This technique helps decouple the risks around physical delivery of a product from a digital component of the product.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Focus Groups

A small group discussion designed to rapidly gain customer feedback on a given topic.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Version History

Open-Ended Survey

Fixed set of questions, usually via a mass-communication channel such as an email or website pop-up.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Secondary Market Research

Secondary market research gathers and interprets available information about the target market, and includes published reports, newspaper articles, or academic journals.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Comprehension Test

A comprehension test will evaluate whether or not the customer understands the marketing message explaining the value proposition.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Dogfooding

Dogfooding is simply using the product as if we were the customer and experiencing it firsthand.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Demo Pitch

A demo pitch is when we present or pitch our solution using some kind of product or service demonstration in the hope of convincing a potential customer to buy.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Broken Promise

This smoke test helps test how much of a natural/inherent virality lies in the idea itself. It helps identify high-potential ideas before we've built a product.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Ask an Expert

Founders ask experts for opinions, then choose whether or not to act on those opinions.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Video

The video smoke test consists of using a trailer video to test excitement and virality/buzz when describing the product to an early-adopter audience.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Closed-Ended Survey

Converge on what's relevant in great detail, particularly to customers or prospects.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Competitor Analysis

Competitive analysis is very much a secondary research method that we can perform online relatively quickly and comprehensively.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Competitor Usability Testing

Competitor usability testing is observing our target market using a competitor’s products or services to gain insights on the mindset of the user, common issues, and potential improvements in our own product.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Concierge Test

Concierge is a technique to test the solution of a customer problem by manually performing tasks as a service.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Index of Methods

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Scorecards

A scorecard is an evaluative decision-making or prioritizing shortcut, often done in a spreadsheet.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Dashboards

A dashboard is a simple view of product metrics that displays information about the general health and viability of the product.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Net Promoter Score Survey

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) identifies customer loyalty to the brand or product.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Paper Prototyping

Quickly test a solution idea by simulating user-product interactions using paper drawings and cutouts.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Wizard of Oz

The Wizard of Oz (WOZ) test involves one or more individuals simulating fully functioning product features without the use of technology.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Data Mining

Data mining uses statistics from large amounts of data to learn about target markets and customer behaviors.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - High Bar

A high bar test helps to gauge the customer’s willingness to pay without using any form of monetary payment.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Pocket

This smoke test applies to physical goods or products with hardware components — at minimum a mobile phone.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Experience Sampling

Get information about a participant's daily behaviors, thoughts, and feelings in real-time, or as close to it as possible.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Contextual Inquiry

Combination of semi-structured interviews and observations done in the actual location where the problem occurs or the solution will be used.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Fake Door

People are bad at predicting what they want, but they are great at reacting to new offers. Building just the entry to an offer makes it possible to predict future reactions based on actual behavior.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Event

We can use an event to smoke test a problem, and to some extent, content that is attractive for our target audience.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Flyer

Flyers serve as placeholders for conversations that need to happen.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Landing Page

A landing page used as a minimum viable product evaluates whether a particular type of customer wants a proposed product based on actual behavior (as opposed to a declared preference).

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Pre-Sales

Pre-sales involves accepting payment in exchange for a promise to deliver the value proposition at a later date.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition Test - Sales Pitch

Conducting a sales pitch as a smoke test is when an entrepreneur pitches a value proposition to a potential user or customer for the purpose of gathering feedback on a problem.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Solution Interview

The solution interview builds on our research around the problem and proposes a solution to see how potential customers react.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Usability Testing

Usability testing involves observing people trying to complete a series of tasks while using an interactive product.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

A/B Testing

A/B testing (also known as split testing and bucket testing) is a randomized method of comparing two versions of an element (A and B) against each other to determine which one performs better using a metric to define success.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Off-Brand Testing

Off-brand testing is a technique that helps established companies run experiments while minimizing risk to their brand equity.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Index of Questions

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Product/Market Fit Survey

The Product/Market Fit Survey (PMF) specifically asks the customer, “How would you feel if you could no longer use this product?” with a multiple choice response.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Picnic in the Graveyard

This technique involves exploring "near miss" failures similar to our product idea to generate ideas about what to test and how to build a business model that could work in a second attempt.

Blog Posts & Articles

Innovation Methodologies

Workshops

Advanced Experiment & Research Design

Entrepreneurs are strongly biased towards action to overcome analysis paralysis. But such haste often leads to poorly designed experiments and poorly conducted research, both of which provide confusing or misleading data that leads to bad decision...

Innovation Methodologies

Business Model Risk Prioritization

All innovation projects come with risks, and successful businesses know how to navigate them. This module covers how to brainstorm and prioritize risks with your teams, and clarifies why certain risks are the right thing to focus on at certain sta...

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation and Portfolio Management

Why don't stage gates work? Why doesn't spending more money on R&D lead to more innovation? How can I drag my company into the future? This module dives into how to understand the ROI of innovation, explain it to stakeholders, and make a case f...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Pitching Innovation Projects

At some point, you're going to need resources and you're going to need to pitch to investors. Whether you're pitching a VC or an internal investment board at a big company, you've got to explain your vision and show some proof, and you have to com...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Building and Resourcing Teams

How can an innovation project succeed when teams are working half time on the project? In short, they can’t (or it’s at least very difficult!). Participants will engage in a rapid task switching exercise to demonstrate the inefficiency of siloe...

Customer Segmentation for Simple Sales (B2C)

Demographics used to be a marketer’s only tool, but it's insufficient for early-stage customer discovery, and almost useless for designing user experience. Now we use customer personas to generate an intense focus on early adopters and empathy wit...

Innovation Methodologies

Setting Personal & Team Goals

Goal-setting is an important step before any major journey. Defining effective goals allows you and your team to make progress and then measure it. This module covers program goal-setting, and how to use these techniques to create a dashboard to k...

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Project Management & Roadmapping

Managing a series of experiments aimed at discovering a business model is different from managing the execution of a known strategy. The goal in both cases is efficiency, but efficiency-planning changes drastically when you don’t know what the nex...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Experiment Types: The Real Startup Book

After identifying a clear business question, we need to identify the right method to gather data that will answer that question. This module helps navigate the dozens of experiment and research methods to find the quickest answers to your business...

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation Ecosystem Design & Metrics

All ecosystems are different, and blindly copying another company’s model can lead to disaster. Each company must take its strengths and weaknesses into account and design an innovation program to complement their vision and resources. This module...

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Creating Effective Exercises

What’s the most effective way to teach a specific skill or lesson? How much theory should be taught vs hands-on lessons? Using a topic of their choosing, participants will construct exercises in order to demonstrate effective teaching towards a...

Storyboarding & Metrics

Qualitative data and quantitative data do not exist in opposition. Qualitative data from UXers should not compete with the quantitative data product owners need for their business model. Both are necessary to a complete understanding of where the ...

Innovation Methodologies

Complex (B2B) Sales Mapping

Complex sales with multiple stakeholders is far more complicated than simple sales for a consumer application. Long sales cycles and complex bidding practices make applying rapid prototyping and lean startup a challenge. This workshop examines way...

Innovation Methodologies

Value Proposition & Comprehension Testing

Creating a compelling product or service for the customer starts with a compelling value proposition. If a customer can't understand what's being sold, they won't buy it. In this module, we learn about the different tasks involved in creating a va...

Innovation Methodologies

Usability Testing

Even if your product has all the right features, customers can't love what they can't use. You may have the curse of knowledge. What is obvious to you isn't obvious to your users. By running simple tests in as little as 30 minutes, you can generat...

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation Strategy

Define a vision for the future, a path to get there, and effective watchtowers to see when disruption is coming. This module puts your company on the path towards self-disruption, helping you stay on the leading edge of your market and allowing yo...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Culture & Group Behavior

How can startup culture be maintained when growing the company? How can existing companies bring startup culture into their teams? Maintaining an innovative culture is a competitive advantage. Participants will examine their own work in building ...

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Leadership Habits

Become a better leader by identifying habits that work and don’t work in startup environments. This module helps you identify your own bad leadership habits and design better habits that work for your team. You will create a plan for collecting fe...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Entrepreneurship - People, Culture, & Mindset

Business Model Design

This module shows you how startups use business models to drive innovation, including how uses of a business model differ between startups seeking product/market fit and larger corporations that have already found it. Learn how to fill out a busin...

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Coaching Mindset & Facilitation Techniques

This module goes into the softer side of coaching, with a focus on familiarizing you with facilitation techniques, understanding different team makeups, and learning how to get the most out of your teams. You will practice on tools like our Busine...

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Financial (and Mission Impact) Modeling

Every entrepreneur needs to understand how to create a basic financial model of their business. This module teaches you the most important elements to model for the most common business types, and to project how your business will grow based on th...

Innovation Strategy & Management

Innovation Methodologies

Effective Survey Design

Learn the dos and don'ts of running surveys to avoid asking bad questions that will lead your product down the wrong path.

Innovation Methodologies

Innovation Ecosystem Triage

Innovation Ecosystems are complex, and they challenge some of the traditional models of R&D and innovation. A holistic view of how culture, people, and processes interact is vital to allow a system to disrupt and reinvent itself. This workshop foc...

Innovation Theory

Innovation Strategy & Management

Sales Call Training

All customer discovery skills learned so far won’t close a sale. At some point, active listening and discovery of a customer’s problems must result in a well crafted sales call. Participants will learn how to transition from active listening to pr...

Stakeholder Management

How can an innovation project avoid typical political hurdles of large companies? We will discuss how different cultures, industry domains, and companies contain groups and individuals with more power than others. We will explore how power mani...

Advanced Customer Discovery & Debriefing

There is nothing more impactful to your early-stage business model than truly understanding the person you are building for and selling to. This interactive online workshop teaches all you need to know to get out of the building and start talking ...

Innovation Methodologies

Practical Statistics for Quantitative Experiments

Support your customer discovery, landing page, and comprehension test processes with a basic grasp of applicable statistics. You will learn how to recognize false signals in your experiments, determine sample sizes for experiments, calculate margi...

Marketing Channel Development

How does a company acquire effective sales channels and use them to scale sales & marketing? In this section we will discuss the different ways of scaling a business that has found Product/Market Fit. We will learn how to build a business aroun...

Lean, Agile, & UX Principles

Lean Startup was born from a need for companies to innovate in high-risk environments in constantly changing markets. Like its predecessor, Agile Software Development, Lean Startup methodology aims at applying a scientific approach to innovation, ...

Innovation Theory

Customer Segmentation for Complex Sales (B2B)

Larger organizations require more stakeholders to close a sale. Understanding the differences between Economic Buyers, Technical Buyers, Evangelists, and Users can turn a longshot into a win. Learn the basics of Value Proposition design, and how t...

Innovation Methodologies

Customer Relationships

Early adopter customers are hard to find and shouldn’t be forgotten by the entrepreneur and the product. A simple follow up can build relationships and community among early adopters and even create evangelists for you. In this session, we will co...

Team Accountability

Knowing the work that needs to be done on an innovation project is one thing. Knowing how to actually get it done is another. This module walks you through how a team holds itself accountable by agreeing on ways of working to accomplish the tasks ...