Establish a structured approach for identification of growth ideas in a $10B industrial technology business.
Challenge: Establish a simple framework to help business units systematically identify adjacent market growth opportunities
Impact: Approach deployed across several business units and various ideas identified resulting in successful business launches (links below)
Situation: Given the nature and history of the business there were several key challenges
- A heavy bias towards technology first approaches to growth without too much understanding of market needs or business viability
- Mindset of…if we need new ideas lets get in a room and ideate with stickies!
- Very little pre-ideation and post ideation session rigor and follow through. Innovation happens in your free time…
- Equating failing ideas to personal failure
Approach: There were certain types of growth the business was seeking – specifically adjacency moves. I defined an approach focused on this.
- Studied and defined the various types of adjacency moves possible for a business (identified 7 possible moves)
- Defined a step by step process which was facilitated and centered around a visual canvas I created called an “Adjacency Map”
- Step 1: Discussion around the core:
For a business define its core strengths with the general manager, marketing and technology leader. Based on core strengths – look around the visual adjacency map and consider where might we play or expand?…(new markets, geographies, value chain integration, business model changes, or new offerings in our existing markets)
- Step 2: Prioritize Areas of Interest:
Define future back challenges or questions…e.g. What key challenges would we need to solve for to achieve $XX M in Asia? - Step 3: Business Idea Hackathons:
Conduct focused ideation sessions around specific challenge areas. Define idea hypothesis (market need, concept, key assumptions to test) for selected areas in a time boxed fashion (30/60 days) test key assumptions to prove or modify the hypothesis. Fund program if basics look promising
- Step 1: Discussion around the core:
Impact: By means of defining various structured approaches to defining or ideation around growth projects I was able to achieve the following
- Significant projected growth revenues from new projects. Several new businesses already launched. (e.g. Glass replacement for healthcare applications, High performance engineered fibers for outdoor apparel, Smart phone based brand protection and anti-counterfeiting)
- Repeatable and easy to use visual framework created for defining new growth hypothesis
