Handbook: Take control of your Digital Innovation

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Take control of your digital innovation 4-phase approach

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Content table Introduction: 4-phase innovation approach Phase 1: Explore 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

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Test the waters Strengthen the core Set up governance Expand step by step Make an organizational strategy

Phase 4: Normalize 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

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Detail your concept Go to market Learn and adapt Make a scale-up strategy

Phase 3: Scale 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

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Understand the problem Iterate your idea Define concept Create a business case Tell the story

Phase 2: Prove 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

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Become data driven Keep optimizing Insource operations Spot new opportunities

Rounding up & next steps

Introduction

So, you have a great idea that will drive innovation for your company. Whether you’re running a scale-up or are working in a corporate innovation environment, innovation is a tough job. You need to prioritize, keep stakeholders happy, and things never go as expected, meaning you need to constantly adapt. How do you take control of your digital innovation process?

In this whitepaper we’ll discuss a four-phase approach that will turn your innovations-on-paper into tangible solutions that get results. It’s important to know which phase you’re currently in and to see if you followed all the steps that come with it. If you skip a step or don’t know in which phase you are, it can cause you to act provisionally or might cause you to go back to the drawing board all the time. With this approach, you’ll have control, you’ll be able to validate if you’re on the right track, and you make sure you plan for the future.

We will share best practices from Greenwheels, NS (Dutch Railways), Growficient and Takeaway.com per phase, bringing you a new perspective on innovation that will help you build new value streams, one step - or phase - at a time.

This approach is one of many possible innovation approaches. We are not claiming that this is the only way to go. We do strongly believe, however, that this approach will give you the tools that allow you to take control.

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Business Innovation: Transforming new ideas into products or services When doing any kind of business, chances are that, sooner or later, you will be faced with the need to innovate. When this happens, you will venture into new, unpredictable and risky territory. Even though this is a natural part of business innovation, it can feel somewhat uncomfortable. One way of mitigating this is by understanding your next step(s).

If you have another way that works for you, we would love to hear about it!

“ Innovation does not always have to be radical.”

If we define innovation as a process that creates value by transforming new ideas into products or services, there is a lot more innovation going on than people realize. To a lot of companies it might even be something they’re not really thinking about while doing it. However, in order to leverage innovation you have to be in control. To have an overview of the entire process and understand where you are in it. You want to know what to focus on and what to expect.

Keep in mind that innovation does not always have to be radical. Or chaotic for that matter. The groundbreaking ‘never seen before’ things that end up on the news more often than not are the result of someone encountering the right circumstances and being smart enough to act quickly. If you see an opportunity like that, go for it.

However, if you don’t want to wait for the stars to align, we suggest starting a controlled innovation process. Maybe one of your innovation steps will be groundbreaking but even if it’s not, you’ll still be innovating.

This article is written from the perspective of digital innovation.

This means innovating on a product or a service that involves digital touchpoints or has a digital core system. However, we do believe that the approach is applicable to physical products or intangible innovations like business model innovation or service experience innovation as well.

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4-phase innovation approach This schematic shows the four phases of business innovation: Explore, Prove, Scale and Normalize

Explore 1. Understand the problem 2. Iterate your idea 3. Define concept

Business Plan

4. Create a business case 5. Tell the story

Prove 1. Detail your concept 2. Go to market 3. Learn and adapt

Scale-up Strategy

4. Make a scale-up strategy

Scale 1. Test the waters 2. Strenghten the core 3. Set up governance 4. Expand step by step 5. Make an organizational strategy

Normalize 1. Become data driven 2. Keep optimizing 3. Insource operations 4. Spot new opportunities

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Organizational Strategy

Stop reading if you don’t have an idea for innovation yet

This model distinguishes four phases: Explore, Prove, Scale and Normalize. Moving from one phase to the next usually requires you to convince stakeholders of the necessity of (additional) budget.

The phases roughly align with ABC-series investments used in the start-up scene. However, we find the model valid for corporate use as well. In a corporate context, the different phases simply correspond with budget rounds.

We find the model quite useful to identify where you are in your process and what to do next. The first two phases are all about introducing a new idea into the market. The last two phases are about solidifying that idea and implementing it into the market and your business. For multinationals, those last phases can become very large in scale.

Before we go deeper into the separate phases, it’s important to note that this model starts with having an idea for a possible innovation. If you are having trouble with this, please read more about how to frame strategic opportunities here.

From there, define an innovative vision and roadmap for your company.

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Phase 1

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Explore

Phase 1

Explore

Phase 1

Explore

Are you in this phase?

You have an idea and want to know if there is enough value in it to pursue it further. This idea could be a brainwave you had in the shower or a problem you see in your organization and want to act upon. The idea might be a new product, a new service or a game-changing feature to an existing product.

You want to figure out what it could look like and what it would take to realize. After all, right now, you don’t have anything but an idea.

Goal You will need to validate the problem your idea is trying to solve, as well as refine it into something that will help convince stakeholders. This means iterating on your understanding of the problem and the related solution. You might even have to reject your initial idea completely and replace it with something better.

Once you are certain that the idea will create significant value, you will have to think about what it will take to bring this to market. Your ultimate goal is not only convincing stakeholders of the potential of your idea but also of your competence of executing it.

Activities The activities that come with this phase usually start in the order described in this whitepaper, but then quickly start to influence each other, having you go back and forth between them.

Focus points Keeping an open mind. In this phase, change is the only constant.

Involve stakeholders. Welcome critics.

Involve people you might need later.

Find evidence. You have to convince people of the potential.

Polish your story. Being right is useless if people don’t believe you.

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Phase 1

Explore

1.1

Understand the problem

Make sure you know what problem your idea solves. This is one of the mistakes that are made most often. Random ideas are really just fantasies, often related to trends, without any thought about whether there is any real benefit to it (‘we need an app too’, ‘let’s add augmented reality to x’, ‘we need blockchain for y’). Don’t act on these ideas.

Instead, make sure there is a problem to solve and use this phase to refine your understanding of it even further.

Talk to people. Read. Do interviews. Go to the people affected by this problem. See where they are when they encounter the problem.

Follow their lead. What goes on? Who else is involved?

Learn. Constantly ask why things are happening. Record things if you can. This is not only valuable for yourself, but also later on to prove the worth of your solution.

Note that problems may be invisible or latent at first.

Smartphones took several years to be ‘invented’ because it took time to understand that people did not just want a portable computer (who remembers the Palm Pilot?).

nothing like traditional phones or computers. It evolved over time, along with our understanding of how we could solve these problems better.

In a more semantic discussion, some people argue that latent,

“Constantly ask why things are happening.”

invisible problems are not really problems, but opportunities instead. This article, for instance, does not really make sense to me, since all ‘innovation levels’ still solve problems. This is why I dislike this perspective. It brings with it the

The real problem for many people was not being connected to people and information at all times. Today, this is still the core function of smartphones but they look

risk of not understanding why an opportunity exists in the first place.

For an innovation to have true value, there must always be a benefit. And a benefit ultimately rises from a problem being solved.

CHECK:

Do you truly understand the problem your idea is solving?

Describe it in one sentence

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Phase 1

Explore

1.2

Iterate your idea Once you have a basic understanding of the problem, you will probably also have some ideas on how to solve them. Make a rapid prototype just capable enough of testing your idea. See if people experience it the way you intended. Try to get a feeling of what your idea might be worth to them (don’t literally ask them though). Use many quick iterations. Try different angles and see if you can find a good value proposition. Don’t cling to just one idea.

If you have trouble making or setting up prototypes and testing them, look for designers near you, or hire some people to help you out. If you decide to

test things yourself and have no background in (design) research, be careful with your results. It’s easy to unintentionally have people give answers they don’t mean. There is a famous case from Sony that illustrates this really well. Sony asked customers what color walkman (or radio, there are a couple of versions of this story) they liked. They all said yellow, but all took a black one home on the way out.

Prototypes come in many forms and making and/or using them requires a bit of design knowledge.

Just to give an example of some of the possibilities, look at this old but still relevant - overview of techniques made by Roberta Tassi.

You can also look up prototyping techniques on her more recent servicedesigntools.org (filter on prototypes).

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Growficient Besides visual inspections, most growers have limited and imprecise insight into their plants and their substrate within the greenhouses. Startup Growficient came up with the idea to provide them with detailed insights and advice to monitor and optimize their crops while devising watering strategies through IoT sensors.

Like every idea in the explore phase, the first step for Growficient was to validate their concept and test it with growers and consultants. In this stage it is tempting to focus too much on technology rather than the problem you want to solve.

A valuable lesson for Growficient in the explore phase was to understand the everyday working rhythm of growers and figure out how that could best be supported or improved. That means not just looking at existing tools they had available but observing their manual processes and understanding what type of insights and monitoring capabilities were essential for them to act upon before shaping a product around their needs.

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Phase 1

Explore

If the use case works out and there is a risky technical aspect to your innovation, you will need to iterate on this as well. Have some developers iterate the technical feasibility of your idea.

Keep in mind that in most cases it’s only worthwhile experimenting with technology after you have made sure there is an actual need for your idea. That’s why we advise you to test the use case of your idea first.

CHECK:

Did your prototype meet users expectations?

Make adjustments if necessary.

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Phase 1

1.3

Explore

Define the concept Once you have a rough idea on what the solution will look like, it’s time to think about the complete picture: your Business Innovation Concept. Consider three aspects: Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability. Each aspect dives deeper into the questions you need to answer. What will the final experience look like? What technology is involved? What are the business processes behind it? Do you have the right people to operate them? Which processes need to be implemented? And last but definitely not least, what will the business model look like? If your business model is not sustainable, you need to go back to the drawing board.

Desirable People want this

Not worth it

Uphill battle

Your Business Innovation Concept Feasable We are good at this

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Viable Good on paper

This is sustainable

Phase 1

Explore

It might feel strange to do all this when all you have done is testing a single simple prototype. However, investors might not see the bigger picture that you do. The first prototype might not be appealing enough for them to get involved. So the goal here is not to go into extreme detail, but you must be able to paint a complete picture for where this is all going. What could the final product, / service/ or solution look like?

CHECK:

Do you have a clear picture of the complete Business Innovation Concept?

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Phase 1

Explore

1.4

Create a business case In order to maintain traction and stay agile, you’ll want to start small. The key to innovation is having a big dream and building towards that one small step at a time. Staying true to the design thinking principles, strip down your idea to the smallest form while keeping it desirable, viable and feasible. When it comes to technology, it can be wise to not go all out yet. If you did not explore the technical landscape during iteration, you might want to take the time to do so now.

Sometimes it is worth it to first choose temporary software solutions, and wait until you have successfully concluded the second phase to scale up to more expensive software licences. However, you have to balance this with the costs of rebuilding parts later in the scaling phase. Same goes for your business model calculations: you might have a different approach for the launch than for the subsequent phases in your concept vision.

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Also, don’t forget about additional requirements like launching your innovation, and set it off to the projected income from your business model. Keep iterating until you have a solid business case.

CHECK:

Can you make a positive business case for the idea, taking all costs into account?

“Keep iterating until you have a solid business case.”

Phase 1

Explore

1.5

Tell the story

Finally, there is one more important thing to do throughout this whole phase, maybe even the most crucial one. In order to move to the next phase you need to convince people to make some sort of investment. In some cases this might be a single key stakeholder but in most cases, the investment will come from many different angles and in many different forms.

Think for instance about business units and partners investing time and resources into your idea, or someone putting his/her ass on the line for your idea.

It’s very important that you involve people early and as much as you can throughout your process. Make sure you have a small elevator pitch ready and prepare your bigger pitch presentation together with as many stakeholders as possible. Make sure they are on board before you are done with the presentation, and collaboratively target the needs of higher-ups you could not get to in the storyline. Make sure to be

transparent and honest about risks and how to mitigate them. And last but not least, don’t forget that besides rationally, in the end, most decisions are made emotionally in the place where trust and enthusiasm meet.

“You need to convince people.”

In this early stage, you want to keep it simple. A nice, low-fidelity example of storytelling is how Dropbox explains why using their service is a good idea.

CHECK:

Do you have an elevator pitch that tells the story both verbally and visually? Make sure to include important stakeholders when creating your pitch.

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exp l ore phase

Checklist: Do you truly understand the problem your idea is solving? Describe it in one sentence.

Did your prototype meet users expectations?

Make adjustments if necessary.

Do you have a clear picture of the complete Business Innovation Concept?

Can you make a positive business case for the idea, taking all costs into account?

Do you have an elevator pitch that tells the story both verbally and visually? Make sure to include important stakeholders when creating your pitch.

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Phase 2

Prove

Phase 2

Prove

Are you in this phase?

Activities

You have a concept that was tested thoroughly with customers and internal stakeholders. You have a clear idea on the different things you need to do to bring this to market and a rough idea on what the result will look like.

Based on this, you have managed to secure a budget for this phase. Nice!

The details of this phase probably vary the most depending on what type of innovation you are involved in.

However, the separate steps will roughly be the same in all cases. Although you probably won’t be doing most of the design and development in this

Your goal In this phase you will develop your innovation idea and release it into the market. You want to keep a close eye on how customers react and do everything you can to fix, finetune or change your product or service into a success.

phase yourself, we’ve mentioned the general steps for you to get a feeling of what to keep track of.

Focus points Thorough preparation. It will save you time and money.

People. Your new service or product will fail if people are not well-trained and committed.

Stay focused on what is essential. Scope creep makes projects fail.

Business (and employee) involvement for a deep understanding of back office processes.

Qualitative insights. Solely crunching numbers won’t help you solve problems.

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NS (Dutch Railways) NS loses about 2,000 bike keys annually because users of the OV-fiets (Dutch public transport bike) take them home by mistake. This has nothing to do with malintent or forgetfulness, locking our bikes is just part of our Dutch DNA. To solve this problem, NS has developed a smart lock that allows you to open the OV-fiets with your OV chip card instead of a physical key. During the development of this smart lock, NS asked INFO to research what users think of the service as it is now, what the (possible) impact of the smart lock is and how we can improve the service.

We were able to chart this and to define a minimal viable product (MVP) that adds to the experience of the OV-fiets users. We built an MVP app and tested it with actual users during a pilot, which at the same time tested the new smart lock.

People could now view their rides, get insight into their subscription and which specific bike they rented, they were able to check locations and opening hours, and report bike defects. NS is now devising a strategy to scale up and roll out the smart lock at OV-fiets locations across the Netherlands.

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Phase 2

Prove

2.1

Detail your concept

Don’t start designing, developing, or making anything without first scrutinizing all important details. The better your preparation for production is the smoother production will go, usually saving you a lot of time/money in the long run.

Basically, you take the guesstimates from your business plan and work them out for real, including the required decisions.

Design vision Tech vision Collab vision

CHECK:

Did you go through all the steps in Track 0: Design Vision, Tech Vision, Collaboration Vision, and Scope?

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Phase 2

We at INFO call this step Track 0. Throughout our 25 years of software development we have found the following elements to be crucial before doing anything else. This phase usually takes several weeks.

O

Prove

Track 0

Form a team, kick off, and define clear goals and corresponding KPIs you want to use to measure success with all stakeholders. Make sure everybody involved is aligned.

Create a design vision. This usually means designing and testing all key elements and thinking through all the core functionalities with both people in the business and developers. This is basically a continuation of your exploration-phase iteration but in much more detail. Scrum is great for development but has little room for design exploration. That is why we do that here.

Create a tech vision. Define a (flexible) system architecture, think about required data models (and sources), and select an appropriate software stack to build with. In corporate environments with existing stacks this can be very easy or very hard, depending on how many legacy systems there are still on life support.

Create a collaboration vision. At INFO, we use this for collaborating with clients but it can also be a great way to get stakeholders within a company involved and aligned. It basically is a project plan, including governance, planning, risk mitigation, and escalation procedures.

Define a go-to-market strategy. Will your release be a big bang or will you do a more gradual release (beta/pilot/peer-to-peer)? You might want to outline your rollout plan here so that you can project it on the backlog and determine the correct scope.

Determine the scope. Create a backlog (if you are using agile software development) with a clear line on the required functionalities. It’s paramount that you only go live with the required features for your innovation to be desirable and viable. Anything extra should be moved to later stages.

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Phase 2

Prove

2.2

Go-to-market This is one of the most timeconsuming steps but for this article we won’t go into the details of how to build or deliver a product. In any case, we strongly suggest being an active part of the process through becoming Product Owner. Also, we would like to stress the importance of testing throughout. Nothing is worse than your innovation failing only because the release is a failure due to preventable bugs and flaws.

You want to test your product with real people one way or the other before actually going to market. Also make sure that you understand what the people within your organization need in order to deliver good service

around your idea. Make sure they are committed and try to satisfy their needs before moving on.

This is the moment where you start preparing the operational side of your innovation. No matter what innovation you are doing, any existing business processes will be affected.

That’s why people need to be

trained and supported throughout. This is where involving all stakeholders at an early stage comes in handy since you won’t have to explain your innovation from scratch. If you did this well, the bigger changes have already been put into motion.

Finally, you launch your product.

CHECK:

Is your company ready to launch the product /service (operational, business processes, training people)?

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Phase 2

Prove

2.3

Learn and adapt After a lot of hard work, your innovation is finally out there in the world. Pop the champagne! But don’t drink too much, since you’re only just started. A lot of things will go wrong (usually).

Fixing bugs is the first thing that comes to mind, followed quickly by business processes being less realistic than you thought. As a direct result, the customer experience usually suffers.

Both these aspects will be at the core of this step. Make sure you have processes and people lined up to make quick fixes and fast iterations.

The first two weeks after launch usually are just as busy and stressful as the two weeks leading up to it.

going up and down. Measurement is everything in this phase.

When the first dust is starting to settle, we strongly advise you to not only look at numbers but to get out there and do qualitative testing with your customers again (user testing).

Numbers are nice to have, but rarely explain the why of things. If you want to make any real improvements to your innovation, you will need to understand why things go wrong.

We advise you to track all issues, when they happened, and how they were solved. This is because another important aspect of this phase is measurement. When you look into your statitistics (measuring the KPIs you set earlier), you want to be able to explain why curves are

CHECK:

Do you have a team and the resources in place to measure (quantitative and qualitative) success and to do quick fixes and iterations?

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Phase 2

Prove

2.4

Make a scale-up strategy Let’s assume everything is going well. People are using your new product/service, the business got things covered and even though you see many possible improvements, the biggest gain will usually come from widening the user base. Either by marketing the product/ service to another audience or by releasing the formula in other geographical areas.

In either case you will need a scale-up plan. How will you reach the new user base? How will you find out what changes will need to be made? What are the cultural/social/income/behavioral/moral differences? Depending on a first estimate of such aspects, you determine what area is easiest to start with (also in terms of investment), and make a rough milestone planning. Don’t plan too far ahead however, unless your innovation struck absolute gold.

Use the evidence of success so far to project required time and resources for scaling, and discuss this with your stakeholders. For multinationals, this usually requires pitching your success to other regions first. Just like with the first phase, involving people early works best.

CHECK:

Do you have a clear understanding of your target audience and where you want to scale?

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p rov e ph as e

Checklist: Did you go through all the steps in Track 0: Design Vision, Tech Vision, Collaboration Vision and Scope?

Is your company ready to launch the product/ service (operational, business processes, training people)?

Do you have a team and the resources in place to measure (quantitative and qualitative) success and to do quick fixes and iterations?

Do you have a clear understanding of your target audience and where you want to scale?

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Phase 3

Scale

Phase 3

Scale

Are you in this phase?

You have successfully transformed a new idea into a product or service that brings value to its users. You launched bareboned and expanded your idea into a fleshed-out product/ service that is viable enough to hold its own. However, the idea has not reached its full potential.

Yet. There is still room to improve even further by widening the user base. To achieve this, you have a plan in place and secured a budget for this next step.

Focus points Cultural and legal differences between the old and the new markets.

System stability. Make sure you have a strong core.

Quantitative data. It helps to determine where to use qualitative research.

Governance. You will need it to stay in control.

Goal The ultimate goal of this phase is controlled growth. Make sure that your current product or service has a strong enough foundation to scale up. You do not want your technical systems failing when traffic goes up, the

Activities same goes for your business support processes. There will bemany variables coming at you in this phase and you will have to balance local needs with keeping the total ecosystem manageable.

Activities in this phase can take a long time and some steps will have to be repeated every time you scale up further.

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Takeaway.com Through the acquisition of Lieferando.de in 2014, Takeaway.com inherited a points based loyalty programme, which they replicated on their platform in 2016.

After a 2 year period they had seen enough evidence that the programme enabled them to stimulate favorable customer behavior. Time to scale up the programme and roll it out across the globe.

However, the platform in place was built separate from their main platform and not stable or flexible enough to deal with a global release. They needed a stronger core. Since their IT department was very busy with various migrations with newly acquired companies, Takeaway.com looked for a partner to speed up the process.

We rebuilt the platform from the ground up and added functionalities to match their international governance structure and ways to deal with local differences around points, marketing, and compliance.

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Phase 3

Scale

3.1

Test the waters

There are a couple of areas you will need to pay attention to. First of all, you want to find out if your new or extended user group(s) has a different context of use. For new user types (age, background, etc.) there might be a lot of overlap, but if you move to a new geographical area differences will be bigger. This includes cultural differences, language, local legislation (this one is particularly nasty sometimes), and whether your business model will still be viable (income levels, tax, penalties) in this new market. Secondly, you want to look into the technical infrastructure. Think about device usage, internet stability, and logistic capabilities in the area, for instance. Another, more obvious, important area is the competitor landscape. Maybe your innovation has less value in an area because they already have access to other, similar, or overlapping services. Do not forget to check the history of your market-to-be as well. It could be exhausted from failed previous attempts. In that case, you might want to wait a bit or enter the market via a different route.

If you plan to scale up by rolling out to different areas, scan all areas for these aspects to map the ecosystem, since some might not be as viable as you initially thought. This will allow you to see how much effort it will cost to scale up to each area, and whether there are similarities between them. All of this might force you to adjust your approach for rolling out.

CHECK:

Did you map out the ecosystem of where and how you want to scale?

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Phase 3

Scale

3.2

Strenghten the core Now that you have a general idea of how to scale up and what the impact will roughly be, you want to double-check whether your technical infrastructure is solid enough, or whether you need to replace some parts of it. You might want to customize elements of your architecture to give you more freedom to adopt all the variable requirements coming at you.

Sometimes you might even need to rebuild the entire product.

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CHECK:

Is your infrastructure ready for growth?

Phase 3

Scale

3.3

Set up governance Finally, you want to think about governance and maintenance. Will you control the entire ecosystem yourself, or will you delegate activities to local employees and/or partner businesses? In that case, you will need to set up guidelines, and clear governance.

While testing the waters, you scanned all the different areas, and we suggest that you start with focusing on the easiest ones with similar prospects. Collaborate with the local employees to find out what they need to operate your innovation. Then see whether you can consolidate new requirements from different scale-up areas into a single new feature.

We suggest using a governance model that looks something like this:

Innovation team

Strategy

Design product or service

Improvements

Innovation team

Requests

Local business 1

Local business 2

Local business X

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Phase 3

Scale

Try to balance the different requirements coming from the new areas you want to roll out to with the ones you already have. The above image describes a governance model where one team is in control of managing requests. This team consists of one or two key stakeholders from the business (at least a product owner, the design lead and the technical lead). New requests or idea’s will be compared and if possible combined with existing features. They will also give priority to new developments. This way, new features will be added in a smart and efficient way with maximum effect. This is just one way of doing it. If local businesses have mature development capabilities you can extend this model to incorporate their creative power to benefit the whole.

Remember that, just like in phase 1, you need your stakeholders to stay committed. Force fitting a solution usually does not work very well and local businesses will need some freedom of movement. In our experience, providing a set of strict base rules with guidelines that have room for localized freedom works best.

CHECK:

Do you have a clear governance and guidelines in place for your team?

Phase 3

Scale

3.4

Expand step-by-step Once you are confident you have gathered all the required changes, you want to make the appropriate adjustments to your core systems. After this, you can roll out to the new user group. We suggest doing this one by one. The main reason for this is to keep your analytics clean and to make sure each area gets the attention it needs.

This activity will look a lot like the launch step in phase two, except that you have done it before and the problems you encounter are different in nature.

way they are. So, just like in phase two, we suggest not only relying on quantitative data, but also including qualitative insights. In this third phase, this is usually the second step.

CHECK:

Are your core systems ready to roll out your innovation to the new user group(s) and are you able to track its success on a large scale?

Another difference is measurement. The scale will put more emphasis on quantitative data. You can use your existing data as a baseline and measure the differences in new areas.

When you spot any outliers you can zoom in by using qualitative measurement and research to figure out why things are the

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Phase 3

Scale

3.5

Make an organizational strategy The transition from this phase to the next is gradual. You might still be scaling up in one area, while already normalizing in the one you started in. You will notice at some point that the operation of an area of your innovation might become routine. Your initial governance model might need some tweaking, and you begin to have an idea of how to optimize workflows and systems to smoothen the process and make it more efficient. If you think this through and project it on the other areas you scaled up to, you can form this into an organizational strategy. An organizational strategy will detail process flows, capabilities, and will try to find as much synergy with other parts of the business as possible to cut costs. Once you have this, you are ready for the next phase.

CHECK:

Are you able to create an organizational strategy to improve workflows and processes?

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s c ale p hase

Checklist: Did you map out the ecosystem of where and how you want to scale?

Is your technical infrastructure ready for growth?

Do you have a clear governance and guidelines in place for your team?

Are your core systems ready to implement the new product or service and are you able to track its success on a large scale?

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Phase 4

Normalize

Are you in this phase

Your goal

You have come a long way, and your initial idea has grown from an idea into a new type of product or service that is being used by many different people in many different locations. All important functionalities are running smoothly and most bugs are gone. By now, the innovation doesn’t even feel that new anymore. It’s being operated by a steady part of the business, and there is a dedicated part of the budget allocated to do so. Even if you have not finished scaling up, the areas where you originally started in will probably need some love by now. The business wants to optimize the revenue stream and you see possible improvements on both the customer and employee side.

The goal is optimization and turning every process into ‘business as usual’. There are two ways of doing this. One is by increasing the efficiency of existing processes.

For instance, by automating processes, by improving the usability for employees, insourcing elements, or sometimes by using better technology, making systems faster or more stable. The other

way is by adding value through small improvements like better design, new quality features or (if applicable) focusing on brand manifestation.

Activities Depending on your type of business, some of the activities described in this phase might be more important than others.

Focus points Data gathering. Stay sharp and keep adapting.

Employee skill and happiness. Cultivate an innovative culture.

Customer centricity. Don’t fall asleep and become a dinosaur.

Build your network. Look for interesting partners and new opportunities.

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c as e

Greenwheels A good example of an innovation that reached the Normalize phase is Greenwheels. The car-sharing service is being used by many different people in many different locations and has reached national coverage.

We started working with Greenwheels five years ago to build a solid car-sharing platform. After co-creating the platform, we helped Greenwheels to insource and train their team to constantly improve the platform and to become agile to maintain an innovative mindset.

In the Normalize phase, Greenwheels mainly focuses on collecting customer feedback and data on how their service is used. The service is continuously optimized based on the gathered insights. For example, by using data, Greenwheels knows exactly where to place or remove cars to create an optimal car network. In this phase, it is time to explore new opportunities and to start the innovation process again.

Phase 4

Normalize

4.1

Become (even more) data-driven

Although this phase is about normalizing the daily operation of your innovation, one of the most important things to normalize is the activity of actually looking for change.

Keep doing user tests, keep listening to customer service center feedback and keep an eye out for cultural changes.

Check what competitors are doing and learn from them, but don’t let them chase you around. If you decide to move in the same direction, do so based on your own insights and according to your strategy. It’s shocking how often we have seen companies make this mistake: assuming that what the competitor does must also be right for them. Their situation might be completely different.

The key is to form a solid and recurring process around research and decision making (customer centricity). Think about who should be committed to this and which stakeholders should be involved. Customercentric, data-driven business is the most important element that will keep you successful in this phase.

CHECK:

Do you have solid, recurring research and decision-making processes in place?

In case of new things (innovations), customer reactions can be volatile. What is hot now, might be obsolete in a few weeks. Stick to your plan and listen closely to your customers. Then make your own decisions.

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Phase 4

Normalize

4.2

Keep optimizing In order to be able to consistently optimize the experience for your customers and the efficiency of your processes, you will need a dedicated team. This team should have technical capabilities (we suggest looking into Scrum) as well as organizational capabilities.

The technical team is obviously extremely important to get things done well and on time.

Good developers are scarce for a reason. On top of this you need someone on that team looking into your software stack and overall architecture. This last phase is all about consolidation and integration.

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You need organizational capability to look into processes and people surrounding the product. This might be a good time to hire a skilled service designer, since they specialize in designing systems and business processes from a customer-centric perspective.

One thing in particular we find valuable, is employee happiness. If you make the

employee journey more enjoyable, the quality of their output will go up. If their work is made more efficient, that will free up their time for innovation.

There is a lot of talk about how to create a culture of innovation.

Although innovative cultures aren’t all fun and games, we do believe that employee happiness is at its core.

CHECK:

Do you have technical and organizational resources in place to constantly optimize and keep an innovative mindset?

Phase 4

Normalize

4.3

Insource operations If you are still relying on third parties to actively participate in the process of operating the product or service, this is probably the time to phase them out. It is far more efficient to build the capability yourself, especially when it comes to daily operations.

At INFO, we like to see the business innovations that we are involved with become mature and self-reliant. We have procedures in place specifically for this step. We help companies to internalize processes, integrate technology, and build up the capabilities.

One thing we learned that works well, is using mixed teams. What we do is scale down our team and gradually replace the team members with the client's employees. That way, there is a natural knowledge transfer between our employees and the client's own employees.

Be careful with insourcing, though. Maintaining an innovative culture requires a certain breathing room, and closing your company off from third parties completely might suffocate the flow of ideas and fresh input. One way to avoid this is to cultivate external relationships with people that help you leverage new insights and fresh ideas.

CHECK:

Do you have the right capabilities and people in-house to manage the process yourself?

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Phase 4

Normalize

4 .4

Spot new opportunities

This last step is actually the same as the first. Sometimes your researcher comes across an improvement or problem that is too big or too complex to handle by your dedicated team.

This is actually the starting-off point of a new cycle. Circle back back to the explore phase and start innovating again.

or not your current concept can be adapted and applied to a completely different context.

Uber moving to food delivery is a classic example amongst many others.

Whatever you do, keep an open mind and stay in control.

A proactive way of starting new innovations based on your current one, is looking whether

CHECK:

Does your team have an innovative mindset to proactively look for the next innovation?

“ Whatever you do, keep an open mind and stay in control. ” 43

no rma lize pha se

Checklist: Do you have a solid, recurring research and decision-making process in place?

Do you have technical and organizational resources in place to constantly optimize and keep an innovative mindset?

Do you have the right capabilities and people in-house to manage the process yourself?

Does your team have an innovative mindset to proactively look for the next innovation?

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&

Rounding up next steps There are many ways to innovate your business. Depending on your company’s size, shape, and domain the phases might look slightly different. Also, the phases described here can potentially take a huge amount of time. We advise fast, small-scale innovations. However, in some industries this is harder than in others (particularly, tightly regulated industries).

ROI of innovation Something we haven’t talked about yet is Return on Investment (ROI). Obviously, your business case should have financial projections and risks in place in the early stages but apart from that you want to almost always keep things small.

Innovating costs money, and reducing the risks of investment is crucial. That is why this whitepaper aims at learning fast and mitigating risks from an

early stage. In our experience, many business innovations only start returning investments after several years, unless you scale up fast. A common pattern is illustrated below. Of course, this completely depends on the type of innovation.

Investment Revenue

Development team starts

Test idea

Concept

Explore

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Launch

First revenue

Adapt

Prove

Core

Make systems scalable

Start earning money

Rollout 1

Rollout X

Scale

Steady revenue stream

Embed

Improve

Normalize

Business innovation Although every innovation path is different, we think that if you check all the boxes within each phase, you should have as much control over your innovation process as possible. The key is to stay flexible, open for change, to involve stakeholders from an early stage, and to keep measuring the progress throughout the whole process. These user-experience insights give you the best sense of where you need to go.

As you’re already working with innovation, you might recognize in which phase you currently are.

If you realize you are already in a certain phase but you didn’t check all the boxes for the previous phase, you might want to go back a step. Otherwise you will encounter challenges in the future.

At INFO, we work closely together with our clients to make sure they don’t miss a step and provide them with a thorough innovation process that is ready for the future.

Let’s think business and start innovating!

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Want to learn more about how you can successfully take control of your business innovation?

Contact: Hoite Polkamp Business Development Manager hoite@info.nl

We are INFO. We’ve been helping organizations grow their business through innovation since 1994. We take a holistic approach, because we believe that innovation can only be successful if we zoom in on different levels. So we help you define your innovation vision and roadmap (advisory), design new digital products and services (strategy) and develop high-end, tailored solutions (delivery). That’s how we deliver exactly what you need to move your business forward. Whether your company is entering a new market, or is right in the middle of a competitive playing field.

business innovation partner

Sint Antoniesbreestraat 16 1011 HB Amsterdam

+31 (0) 20 530 9100 contact@info.nl

www.info.nl