Helping you engineer your:

Ideas | Collaborations & Partnerships | Systems, Programs & Process

Innovators:

• Do you have an idea but not sure what the next step is?

• Are you getting a lot of advice & a lot of jargon but more confusion?

• Are you feeling people just don’t get it?

Institutions:

• Are your processes & programs producing the information you need when you need it to make innovation decisions?

• Are you building an integrated innovation system across the institution.

• Are your programs designed with empathy for the innovator?

We apply a structured decision making and strategy to balance the investment of time and resources to convert ideas into an asset.

1) What & why. Not how.

What the core idea, discovery or insight is never clear at the start. It is abstract, a notion, stuck in someone head. Why that idea justifies the effort isn’t clear either.

We provide structure to move from abstract idea to a clear focused what and why articulation. We focus on getting to the core value proposition.

2) Action focused.

Once knowing the what & why we assess and identify what are actionable next steps. Our focus is on how to move forward and applying your limited time and resources strategical to create the most impact and value to make you competitive for more resources and support.

1. We clearly identify what you can do and what the most important thing you can do to build the value of your idea.

2. We identify what type of resources you need that are most critical to moving the project forward. We help you plan, connect and develop the materials needed to acquire those resources.

3) Listen, learn, reassess, move forward.

Learning along the way is critical to all innovation. By being focused on the most important and actionable step, we can quickly learn and adjust coarse based on feedback and results. We are always reviewing steps 1 & 2 to make sure we are efficiently and effectively moving forward.

Goal: Building the case.

Innovating, the process of going from an idea to a commercially viable product, service or asset, is hard. I requires a belief that the idea will work, that people will want it, that it can be built, it will save or make money, etc.

We help you build the case for your idea and tell your story so that others want to join in on your innovation journey and provide you with the resources needed to advance.

Are you making early innovation decisions?

Decisions about innovation often get made after a lot of investment has been made: employee & staff time, effort, energy and hopes.

We help you move decision earlier in the innovation journey so you are more efficient with your resources and provide a better innovation experience.

• Act faster on supporting viable or high priority ideas.

• Direct, guide and advise on ideas that have potential but yet ready for further support.

• Stop less promising ideas sooner

Is your program innovator centered?

Empathy for the innovator:

The innovator is the asset. There are no startups, no licenses and collaborations without the innovator. How many ideas, opportunities, and returns are you missing because your process isn’t innovator centered?

It all starts with empathy. Innovation is hard, we ask people to do hard things, doesn’t your program show that it is about helping them move their ideas forward or are your processes design to make it easier to manage innovation but harder for the innovator?

Read my blog post on how a little empathy goes a long way with innovators and why I think it makes innovation management easier and leads to better decision making.

Are your programs a coordinated innovation system?

Innovation system design:

It takes a village to innovate. Have you designed your innovation system? Are you thinking as an innovation system?

Internal innovation is different than VC, startups, or a internal business unit. Are you applying a VC model or an accelerator model without think about the system you need? Have you thought about what resources you have and startups don’t and vice versa? Why would what works for startups work for you?

Read my blog post on why internal innovation programs should model themselves after cities, states, and countries, and not VC’s, accelerators, and incubators.

Your innovation teams are busy building and managing. We help them review their systems, process and programs.

Innovation is all about change, growth, development, trial and error. That is no different for your innovation team. They evolve, things evolve, but have you provided them the chance to review the programs & process and opportunity to optimize what they do well, identify what aligns with current priorities and what no longer does?

Assessments to help optimize your innovation efforts.

Working with your team we will asses:

1. What is the innovator experience?

2. What is the collaborator experience?

3. Why that program or process?

4. What are gaps in innovation services?

Want to offer some support to your internal innovators but don’t have an innovation hub?

Supporting innovators with ideas is our passion. We provide services focused on helping individual innovators in larger systems. Our specialty is hospitals and universities.

Contact us to learn more about our offerings.

Trying to create a new collaboration but not sure how? We can help.

Starting a collaboration is hard. There is that key moment when both sides are interested but can’t seem to get on the same page and get to an SOW. We can help.

Contact us to learn more about our offerings.