Review innovation process example

- You've just learned how the Innovation Process comes to life, Diagnose, Dream, Prototype, Test, and Implement. Now, I want to share with you an example of how I've used this in my work. Several years ago, I was hired by one of America's most popular fast food chains as their Innovation Consultant. My job was to take Innovation from 1.0 to 2.0. It meant anything was on the table for me to look at and change. I spent my days in their 30,000 square foot Innovation Center. My last job was in a Cube Farm, so I thought this was awesome. The more I spent time there though, I became curious about the lack of people in the building. You can see, you can only innovate if there's people, so I wondered why weren't people coming in? After all, it was such a cool space. To find the answer to this question, I started with Diagnose. I researched why people weren't coming. I talked with lots of people and I uncovered their pain points and the root cause of the problem. As it turned out, there wasn't a consistent reason for people to come to the Innovation Center. You'd only come if you were working on a project there or running a live prototype. I heard from many employees who had worked there for many years. "I've never been here before." "This is my first time here." "Oh, it's been so long since I've last been here." And their pain point was the Innovation Center took more effort to get to. The majority of employees worked across the street at a different building. After figuring this all out, I moved on to Dream. What would cause employees to want to come here? I came up with a bold new vision for the space. I thought, "I know, I'll give them reasons to come. I'll transform the Innovation Center from an Innovation Doing Center to an Innovation Learning Center too." My goal for the new design was to teach employees how to innovate, increase collaboration opportunities, inspire creativity, and improve the Innovation culture. I created a document that included both my research findings and my ideas, and I presented it to my VP. And guess what happened? I got the green light, so it was time to move to Prototype. At this point, all of my ideas were high level. Since this was a massive project, the process of Prototype, Test and Implement were seamlessly integrated together. I created a Project Plan to determine all the activities that needed to take place and by when, and I iterated a lot. It was a constant back and forth between Prototype and Test. For example, the original design of one of the rooms was way too big. We mocked up the space in foam core. When I walked in, I knew we needed to readjust, so I talked to the team and they shrunk it to a more manageable size. The official implementation, after my team went through this vigorous cycle of Prototype and Test didn't take long. After about a year's work from the start of the project, I was able to set a date for the grand opening. I would never have been able to redesign the Innovation Center without the Process of Innovation. It was far too big of a task for me to know how to figure out. And I was so thankful I had something I could rely on. After the Implementation, I sought to collect constructive feedback from both staff and innovators, from external organizations on the design, and I used their feedback to Learn, Prototype, Test and Iterate the design even further. I hope this example shows you how the Innovation Process comes together and gives you an idea on how you can use it too. Are you getting inspired? You can see the Innovation Process as both a way to think about how to Innovate, but also a way to do Innovation. And the more you practice it, the more it'll become second nature for you.