Are you doing the necessary research to give your products/services half a chance? What do you presently learn from your sales and marketing efforts? Are they always increasing your knowledge about your customers? Prospects?
I found it helpful to review this framework and ask these questions upfront, and several times during the product/service development process. It will assist you in discovering a few experiments along the way and focus on what really matters…your customer and the environment your innovation will have to be successful in.
PDF of the Value-Added Research Framework
This outline is adapted from the work of Macoubrie & Harrison, 2013 and created by Public Strategies Inc., for the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, 2013.
Someone asked how I implemented this and wanted to mention that the easiest way is to use a Trello Board. If you use the phases as columns and the questions as cards, it is quite easy to start. In fact, the easiest way is just to make assumptions about what you don’t know and validate/disprove that assumption.
Remember to also validate what you do know for sure….as a wise man once said (M. Twain) “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
The core challenges can just go into an attached Google Doc or Excel sheet and be used as your KPIs. It can be as simple as we are improving or losing ground in this area. The idea is to keep it simple, create conversation and provide some measurement. As you proceed, you will find certain areas become more important and that you want more precise and accurate information.