Scott Isaksen and Dan Phillips described a very interesting case on innovation with the enticing title “Reducing Time To Revenue”, who can say no??
Dan Phillips works for Alcatel-Lucent who’s clients – like all others in the telco industry – are desperate about finding that new product that can win back the customers from the competitors and the software based services.
Phillips made clear that his industry is conservative by nature and that most innovation has been done inside-out without any end-user influence.
He hired Dr. Scott Isaksen and Creative Problem Solving Group to facilitate the innovation proces. CPSG uses their proprietary GEMagination-proces to bring out user needs, transform these into ideas and finally concepts ready for prototyping.
Phillips laid down the background for the project and Isaksen took us through the steps (needs, ideas, concepts, prioritizing concepts and corp. read out) that has given Alcatel-Lucent six revolutionary (so they say) concepts in six months.
The purpose of the method is to address un-met and unarticulated end-user needs and to focus on immediate monetization of the innovation. The presentation was very convincing and Isaksen/Phillips’ approach to creativity and innovation seems to be very professional and operational. A shortfall of the method might be it’s focus on product innovation, it could be interesting to know if the method was applicable to other kinds of innovation like organization, marketing or value chain innovations.
All in all an inspiring breath of professionalism…. keep it coming!
