Innovators Look for Problems

The fuzzy front end of innovation confronts you with a lot of questions. In my new book ‘Creating innovative Products and Services, I try to solve them with the FORTH innovation method.

When you need to come up with great new products, services or business models, what do you do? I bet you will often start looking for great ideas right away. But in ‘Never start innovation with an idea’, I explained there are three reasons why I advise you not to do this.

1. An idea makes you blind.
2. Not invented here: it’s very hard to convince others of your idea.
3. Only one and a half out of seven new ideas is really introduced.

One of the main reasons innovation is difficult, is that your potential users should change their behaviour. They will have to look for, buy, and use your innovation. And why should they? That’s the question! You will have to give them a strong reason why, and this applies both to consumer as business-to-business markets.

Ask yourself the question: when did I personally change my behaviour recently? We are all stuck into our habits. Doing things in fixed patterns. Even we, innovators do. Reading the same journals for years. Driving the same car brand for years. Being insured by the same company for years. The only reason for us to change is when there is a new simple attractive solution, which is relevant for us. I guess I can make it as simple as that.

Effective innovation is all about matching relevant problems with simple solutions. One can take two routes. The first is to create ideas and solutions and later on try to find target groups with relevant problems that they will solve. Or you can go the other way by identifying relevant problems at target groups first and create ideas and solutions that will solve them later.

But how do you find relevant problems of your target groups in practice? The FORTH innovation method step two ‘Observe and Learn’ is dedicated to find innovation opportunities and concrete customer frictions. You will find them using personal visits, focus groups, web searching social media or crowd sourcing.

I’d like to inspire you with a list of 10 practical problems and innovative new products or services solving them.

You can download here two free checklists on how to find problems among your target groups. Wishing you lot’s of success looking for problems.

image credit: realestategrowthsolutions.com

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Gijs van Wulfen leads ideation processes and is the founder of the FORTH innovation method. He is the author of Creating Innovative Products & Services, published by Gower.