Blaze your trails

We do not necessarily innovate to be bigger, we innovate to be better, a CEO of a larger bank once expressed to me. My take on this is that getting better at different matters is absolutely vital. As we are getting better at what we do and what we offer, we gain competitive advantages. Competitive advantages affect our likability, which in its turn can be transferred into sales and value creation.

Technical performance as well as business modeling is a key focus area for development, however extracting value from this development is a different process. To achieve Innovation, value needs to be created; else we only have ideas and initiatives.

Seeing is believing

Now, all processes have their specific terms, finding a balance between believing and seeing can be the difference between make or brake. The core change in the offerings of success stories as that of Apple, is said to have taken place based on believing only. Steve Jobs was suggested to believe so much in knowing exactly- even better than the users, what user wanted. There was no use asking them. Ford said, -had I asked my people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. We all quote and admire these super heroes and their boldness.

However, we know from many projects that a whole lot of the development that actually create value is derived from seeing. Seeing what needs there are and understanding how to solve these. In many of the cases we at Googol have been involved in, deep studies of behavior as well as reactions and preferences have laid ground for decisions as well as for new scenarios. The use of immediate- as well as collected data (big data) can and will guide us to interact better and better with clients. However it takes time. And it involves quite a bit of work.

Don't follow paths, blaze new trails

In the spirit of entrepreneurial ambidexterity we continuously seek to blaze new trails, rather than finding paths others have laid. So, knowing that better is better and bigger is not always better, we seek new ways to interact and design relationships to customers, that actually matters. This, the better way of interacting with our customers, forming likability and respond to preferences, can also be developed in a much more agile way.

Add a bit more of the visionary play. Test it. Iterate. Over and over again. Efficient enough to have multiple iterations as we seek the solution that satisfy us and our users.

Fast – Not short-sighted

Being agile we need to act fast, respond fast, reverse fast and succeed fast. I am not saying short sighted. I am saying fast.

So, agility demands a different form of leadership and a different way to organize; in projects rather than in hierarchies.

In Innovation Pioneers last Tank meeting (March 2014) the need for speed and agility when working on service innovation, came clear. The next meeting in May 2014, will partially focus around how to organize teams and projects in new ways. It all makes sense. Luckely.