Absolutely!
Some innovations happened by accident – think penicillin or Post-it Notes. However, those accidents are exceptions: most innovations happen through the scientific method.
Why? Look how innovations in corporations typically happen. Someone defines a problem. An innovator comes up with an idea to solve this problem. The innovator has a hypothesis: reasons why that idea might work. The innovator experiments (e.g. with a prototype) to validate the hypothesis. If the experiment fails, the original idea is discarded or adapted. If the experiment succeeds, a larger test (a Pilot) is set up to evaluate the full implementation and value. If the Pilot is considered successful, it is broadly commercialized.
This is exactly how science works: the scientific method is defined as “principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.”
An example of how an innovation was created:
- Problem: a marketer in Turkey had a problem of engaging doctors at his congress exhibits (to make them watch a video of the unique mechanism of action of a new post-surgery medicine).
- Innovation: a colleague, the innovator, identified a then new, emerging technology, VR (Virtual Reality), which he believed could display the mechanism of action in an immersive, 3D way. At this point, the innovator quickly created our simple “One-Pager” (which includes the problem, the innovative idea and the expected value) and a short “Reverse-ROI” (which includes a few key assumptions, i.e. the hypotheses why the innovation could work).
- Hypotheses: the innovator assumed that more than a third of the target doctors would be eager and able to try out this new technology (and thus to watch the mechanism of action).
- Experiment: the innovator worked with an IT colleague to create a MVP (Minimum Viable Product, a prototype) of the mechanism of action that could be watched on Oculus Rift, a VR viewer. He tried it out at an exhibit on the next Congress… and doctors lined up to watch it!
- Next: he created a full 3D version of the mechanism of action, designed for the VR viewers and used it at all relevant congresses in Turkey. The number of doctors that watched the mechanism was tenfold vs the traditional video, at relatively low incremental cost. Because of this success, his colleagues, the Brand Managers in the company, applied it for their brands.
In our Pharma corporations, we all are very familiar with this “scientific method”: this is how, for over 100 years, medicines and vaccines have been invented and developed in our research department. It was a logical step to translate this method into the commercial department.
Although the method may seem rather meticulous, it is important not to over-engineer the innovation process and thus overload/discourage innovators (who typically already have a full day job). In my experience, the most important concept to introduce was the “experiment”.
- There was often not a lack of innovative ideas across the corporation (the main challenge here was to ensure they addressed a priority business challenge).
- The traditional way to try out new (marketing) ideas was to do a Pilot. A pilot required often lots of resources (money and time to design the Pilot, to secure regulatory approvals, to measure the impact, etc.). To limit the likelihood that a Pilot would fail, high risk ideas were eliminated.
- Introducing the experiment stage allowed to limit the amount of resources needed, to quickly validate a few key assumptions and to try out these high risk, more uncertain ideas.
As Arthur C. Clarke said:
“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible”
So, as Innovation Leader, I helped Innovators to follow the “scientific method”, by focusing their ideas on the key business challenges and ensuring they experimented before starting a comprehensive pilot.
More about this topic: “THE TOP FOUR MOST COMMON INNOVATION METHODOLOGIES” by Robert Hoehn, CEO of Ideascale and “71 INNOVATION METHODOLOGIES” by Jan Spruijt from OpenInnovation.EU
Do you agree with this?
Click here for more of my blogs on innovation within corporations: Wim Vandenhouweele