Think Different Most people think of innovation as a mysterious and unpredictable act of creativity. That’s why most companies fail about 75% of the time. Instead, think of innovation as the process of discovering the target customers’ unmet needs and then devising solution ideas to address them. That’s a simple repeatable process. If you’re like ...

6 Steps to Turn Innovation into a Repeatable Business Process

Execute Innovation and Creativity Will Happen Most people think that innovation and creativity are essentially the same thing. And, for normal everyday conversations, that’s fine. But if you’re responsible for developing winning new products and services, you must make some distinctions. Otherwise, your innovation efforts will continue to be hit-or-miss. If you want to turn ...

Putting Jobs-to-be-Done into Action Some of you may remember that I shared a video a few months ago from which the still shot above was taken. “Squat University,” an online strength-building fitness company, used the video to demonstrate why “strength training is something we should do for the rest of our lives. It allows us ...

How to Make Innovation and Growth a Repeatable Business Process One of the big ideas that makes the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) innovation approach so effective is the insight that innovation is the successful execution of two separate steps that, when done well and in the right sequence, consistently enable organization to establish product/market fit and drive ...

This False Belief is Killing Innovation Most people think innovation is inherently risky and messy. That’s understandable when you consider that about 50-90% of new products fail. And yet, studies have repeatedly shown that the primary reason for high failure rates is misunderstanding the customers’ needs. Some experts claim that 90% of all new businesses ...

How JTBD Reveals Latent Unarticulated Needs Success at innovation requires that we remember “the drill is not the hole.” The drill is a solution designed to help customers make a hole. Other solutions could be a pick, punch, a laser, or some yet-to-be-invented tool. The customer need is to “make a hole.” People confuse customer ...

Podcast on JTBD with Urko and Jeff Baker, Head of Product Development and Customer Insights at NetJets Every leader must learn how to make innovation a repeatable business process or risk being blindsided by disruption. With that in mind, I’d like to share this VoiceAmerica radio show interview that I did with a client from ...

A Beautiful Illustration About What Customers Want Most business leaders are looking for ways to create unique value for their target customers to differentiate and grow. But how do you create unique value in a repeatable manner? Is it even possible? Yes, it is possible, but you must understand what a customer “need” really is ...

The First Three Habits of Highly Effective Innovators