Innovation sessions can be a daunting exercise for any company. It can take months of preparation and planning, takes employees out of the field and can often be very disappointing when the event concludes, leaving you with lots of ideas but no clear way forward. We see a new wave coming and it’s centered on little "i" innovation, tactically focused and market-driven, as opposed to big “I” innovation that looks to transform your entire business or disrupt markets. Tactical innovation is frequently "event driven" innovation; changing regulations, budget shortfalls, new entrants, or emerging technologies may drive the need for a tactical innovation workshop.
What’s Different about a Tactical Innovation Workshop?
While innovation workshops are engaging when they are in full-session, after they are over and everyone returns to their day jobs, often no one gets assigned to bring prioritized ideas to the opportunity state. Here’s how a tactical innovation workshop is different:
- You are focused on a real problem, often caused by an event, that's staring you square in the face and demanding an answer.
- You work with a cross-functional team. Basically, anyone who will touch the new product (developers, sales people, product managers, even customers and vendors) should be involved, not just for brainstorming reasons but also for resource prioritization.
- You leverage existing capabilities or establish partnerships to fill in the gaps in your organizational competencies. Development time is accelerated and new products are launched quickly. There's a difference in timeframe with tactical innovation - you're in a race to market.
Outside events are often the tipping point for creating something new. I would argue that event-driven innovation has spawned just as many new companies as has big “I” innovation, that looks to a paradigm shift for creating new business models. Get the right people in a room with a tactical innovation workshop and you’ll be on the right path to drive a consistent pipeline of new products and services.