What is the "right" Innovation Methodology?

It is a question many people have asked me in the last few years. Many innovation and problem-solving methodologies are available nowadays. Design Thinking, Agile, Lean Six Sigma, Design for Six Sigma, Business Model Navigator, Stage Gate and many more.

I spent time analysing and structuring all these methodologies to seek the right innovation and problem-solving methodology.

The answer is: It depends on the stage of the lifecycle of your product or service.

Now let me explain this a bit further.

All these methodologies have certain things in common but differ in how they manage and guide you through the process.

1. Customer focussed

The great thing about all these processes and tools is their customer focus. Design Thinking might take it the furthest in utilising personas. However, Six Sigma uses the Voice of Customer (VoC) as part of its methodology, and similarly do the other methodologies.

Customer focus is one of the essential elements all methodologies have; in my eyes, it is the foundation for the success of your innovation. Without customer focus, your product or service will have challenges in the market. Often engineers alone will develop products from a technical perspective as they are trained to do so. We have to ensure that other departments assist them or provide the necessary tools to create a customer point of view first, how they would utilise our inventions. The hardest part might be what the great Steve Jobs once said:

People don't know what they want until you show it to them.

You've got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.

2. Define a goal

Without a doubt, all methodologies require a goal to be set. Often it is called the problem statement. The challenge is to create a single, specific and well-balanced one.

A single problem statement means that the team can accept only one statement. Therefore, there is only one interpretation of the goal of this project.

The statement has to be specific regarding what problem or challenge to solve. It should keep the team focused.

Finally, it has to be balanced. The definition shall not be too narrow, nor shall it be too broad. Creativity can't flow to create new solutions if it is too narrow. On the other hand, if it is too broad, you might go completely out of scope and miss your target.

3. Creativity

All methodologies require human creativity to find a solution. So besides intuition and the sparking lightbulb in your head, you can use tools and techniques to nurture creativity.

One of my favourite techniques is the 6-3-5 method, or as I call it, X-3-5, as you can run this creativity technique with any group size between 3-6.

Making creativity work for you is not only a specific tool or technique. Most people utilise the idea generation not fully. So it is important to conduct a divergent AND a convergent creativity method to unleash humans' full creative potential.

4. Building

All of the process methodologies above have a prototyping stage. Well, it can be a physical prototype or a virtual prototype.

Many processes already require a digital workflow in the digital transformation age. Some platforms in the market allow you to create digital prototypes without programming. That is what I love.

Building prototypes is a very costly activity. Therefore I recommend you always start with low-fidelity ones before you create a high-fidelity prototype. For physical prototypes, I prefer cardboard, styrofoam and tubes. They are easy to cut, and you build very fast. Yes, they might not look pretty in the first place. However, you can learn a lot from it. High-fidelity prototypes, such as 3D printing, can come later, as you have to create a 3D model in the software, which takes time and stops your creative prototyping approach as you get stuck in technicalities.

5. Testing

Finally, all the methods above somehow require a testing procedure. The intensity of testing might be different from methodology to methodology. However, it is important that you somehow test your solution.

Nothing is worth it than having a not-ready solution that goes to the market, and you have to call it back. It is your last chance to do modifications based on real user feedback.

So what's the difference?

As you can see, these five steps have all innovation methodologies in common. The question is now, what is the right one? As I mentioned, it depends on the stage in the life cycle of a product or a service, as each methodology has a certain characteristic.

In terms of a life cycle, the methodologies can be arranged in the following way.

1. Design Thinking

2. Business Model

3. Agile/ Stage-Gate

4. Lean

5. Six Sigma

I want to explain how my thoughts behind it.

Design Thinking is a fantastic process at the beginning of product or service development. The Human Centred Design approach allows for very creative and intuitive development. The outcome is a Minimum Viable Product or MVP to test early market engagement. Design Thinking uses minimum formal process steps and controls compared to other processes. Although there are templates for the usual five phases, it allows for an open and iterative flow. Designers run even Design Sprints which allow an MVP even within a week.

After an MVP is tested, it is important to build a Business Model.

Business Model Navigator and the Business Model Canvas are great methodologies to strengthen the initial MVP and provide a better and more defined market approach. It also creates a differentiator compared to competitor products. In my eyes, the Business Model will complete the MVP. Without it, the long-term service or product success might be vague. Therefore, I incorporate the Business Model Navigator in my Design Thinking classes.

Once you have a tested MVP and a good Business Model, you can use Agile or Stage Gate.

These process methodologies are fantastic if you have a clear scope of work and are good for a more structured development process. The documentation is more compared to Design Thinking. Gates are used to check the requirements of various stakeholders. It is a more linear process rather than iterative. To go to the next stage, you must pass a gate. Once the gate is passed, a move should return to a previous stage. This process focuses on a more mature product or service with a defined structure and business plan.

However, after a while, improvement is required. The first level of improvement can be done with Lean methodologies.

Lean itself is a philosophy to streamline things. While Stage-Gate or Agile focuses on launching a product or service, Lean focuses on optimisation. To stay competitive in the market, permanent optimisation is needed. Tools like 5S and PDCA are well known in today's manufacturing environment. They are easy to use and help us to optimise our products and services further.

Finally, there is Six Sigma. I put it at last mainly because the strength of the process lies in the statistical approach.

At the beginning of a product or service, little or no data is available. Therefore, statistical tools as used in Six Sigma are less effective. However, after you have a product or service in the market, Six Sigma can identify pain points and provide statistically proven solutions to create an almost perfect process around the product or service.

Again, in my eyes, there is no "right" process for any product or service. However, multiple methodologies are great for selecting the most effective one. Of course, you can use these methodologies according to your preference too.

In summary, all methodologies have five elements in common: