How would you feel if your doctor told you to raise your tolerance for pain before trying a simple, reliable remedy to reduce it?
That is the advice boards and executives routinely get about innovation: raise your risk tolerance. The diagnosis is wrong. Innovation is not inherently risky. The way most companies do customer discovery is.
The Global Innovation Management Institute, the ISO-aligned association for innovation professionals, has published my case for a different approach, and announced the GIMI-accredited Level 1 certification course we are building together to teach it.
Inside the article:
- Why smart teams keep building things customers do not need, and why it is not for lack of creativity, technology, or effort
- What customers can and cannot tell us, and the misreading that shaped today’s most popular innovation methods
- Two decades of studies showing companies rate their customer understanding far higher than their customers do
- Why AI has made building faster and cheaper without making anyone better at knowing what to build
- The first step: the questions your team should be able to answer with defensible evidence before a next dollar is committed
If you lead a business, this is the case for de-risking your next innovation investment before the money is spent. If you guide discovery, product, or innovation decisions, this is the system the Level 1 certification course will teach.
Want to be part of the first certification cohort? Reach out to GIMI to schedule a conversation.
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