Why It Is Essential to Get the Front End of Innovation Right
The late great coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, began the first day of practice every year telling his players, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” Some people might find this silly but that would be a mistake. Coach Lombardi knew that even his elite players had to stay focused on mastering the fundamentals to be successful. This is true in football and it is true in innovation. If your organization is struggling to innovate and grow, the answer is almost certainly not hidden in the complex; it is right in front of you in the fundamentals.
There are many steps that must be executed well to succeed at innovation, but none are more important than mastering the front-end, that is, everything that comes before generating new product ideas. If you want to consistently succeed at innovation, then you must identify the most attractive opportunities in your target market with precision. Getting the front-end of innovation right is essential because it guides everything downstream including generating ideas, project prioritization, product development, product portfolio management, and messaging and positioning. Steve Jobs understood this:
“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to sell it.” – Steve Jobs (YouTube Clip)
Robert Cooper, Co-founder of the Stage-Gate Idea-to-Launch Process, adds some helpful details about this in his findings from a recent study as well:
“A thorough understanding of customers’ needs and wants, the competitive situation, and the nature of the market, is an essential component of new product success. This tenet is supported by virtually every study of product success factors…Sadly, a strong market orientation is missing in the majority of firms’ new product projects. Successful firms spend about twice as much time and money as unsuccessful firms on these vital front-end activities…Research shows that homework pays for itself in improved success rates and actually reduces development times.” (The Drivers of Success in New-Product Development, Industrial Marketing Management 76, (2019) 36-47)
Most organizations think they are executing the front-end of innovation as well as is possible given the inherent complexity and uncertainty of the “fuzzy front-end.” But, in fact, the front-end of innovation remains fuzzy due to fuzzy thinking, not complexity and uncertainty itself.
Complexity and uncertainty exist at the front end of medicine, too. But today, doctors generally have the knowledge, skill, and tools to make an accurate diagnosis that pinpoints the problem and consistently leads to a successful treatment. Physicians know that, if they get the diagnosis wrong, the treatment will likely fail. They only resort to trial and error when their diagnostic abilities are insufficient to identify the problem or when there is no reliable cure for the problem. Innovators can dramatically improve their new products and services by mastering the “customer diagnosis” as well.
The jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) innovation approach gives organizations new knowledge and diagnostic tools to cut through the complexity and uncertainty of the front-end of innovation. Like an x-ray of your target customers’ condition, JTBD enables you to pinpoint and rank the best opportunities in your market with statistical validity. This process precedes, complements, and enhances other important downstream processes like Design Thinking, Lean, Agile, and Stage-Gate.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t even try to master the front-end of innovation because of the prevailing misbelief that “customers cannot tell us what they want.” In fact, customers can tell us what they want if we ask them what they want to accomplish, feel, and experience rather than asking them for product or service specifications. Doctors don’t ask patients what the treatment plan should be, only what pains them and what results they want. Innovators can dramatically improve the efficacy of their customer interviews by taking the same approach.
Innovation should never be a guessing game. You deserve to know exactly what your target customers want before you spend time and money developing ideas. Knowing where to focus your creativity makes all the difference in the world. This is how leading firms are mastering the fundamentals of the front-end of innovation and consistently getting results. You can, too.
Schedule a call with me to see how we can help you create winning new products/services. Or, in the meantime, download this free PDF on How the Jobs-to-be-Done Approach Delivers Dramatically Better Results and see what clients say.
A version of this article was published in The Business Journals: Why it is essential to get the front end of innovation right.
