Radical innovation success starts with asking the question - Why are we doing this project?

by Greg Githens, Principal, Catalyst PM

Successful radical innovation programs are driven by the answers to four key questions. In this article, Greg Githens discusses the first question, "Why are we developing this product?" and provides readers with valuable techniques and insights on how to use this question effectively.

While leadership is an important determinant of success for radical innovation teams, it is not some elusive, magical quality. You can increase your ability to build commitment for radical innovation by asking and answering what I call The Four Driving Questions for Radical Innovation. These are listed in Exhibit 1 on this page. Notice the order: the first two questions are strategic factors that affect the program’s success, whereas the second two are tactical.

You will find useful definitions of radical innovation, incremental innovation, and commitment in the sidebars on pages 22 and 23. These definitions help to explain why radical innovation must be approached differently. Instead of using a template-driven planning effort, the best radical innovation projects find ways to increase strategic thinking and increase stakeholder commitment.

The scope of this article is the first question, "Why are we developing this product?" Where appropriate I describe some useful supporting techniques. I will use the shorthand term "why" in the article to refer to the entire first question.

A good learning environment
The "why" question is useful because it stimulates a learning environment. Projects that learn well perform better at radical innovation. The high levels of uncertainty distinguish radical innovations, compared to incremental innovations. The simple rule to remember is this: "Projects that are fastest to learn are fastest to market." Asking "why" encourages people to reflect and learn. Here, in no particular order, are some questions that stimulate personal reflection:

The project learning environment starts with individual personal reflection. Give individual stakeholders in the proposed project this article, and ask them to answer the question "why." Share their answers and you will have the basis of a common, aligned vision.

A reality test
Secondly, asking "why" is something of a reality test of the market’s need. The program’s funding should be commensurate with the ability to answer the question.

Inherent in the question "why" is an external market view of reality. Radical innovators often struggle to find the right target market, asking, "Where is the need?" For example, du Pont’s Biomax has the capability to be recycled or decomposed and was originally intended as a material for diapers. But it found one of its first commercial successes as a bagging material for bananas. In this case, the answer to "why" was "We have a material that has unique properties that some customer ought to find attractive. We need to probe deeper to identify unrecognized and unprioritized customer needs." There is considerable potential for breakthrough advantage by finding and delivering to the customer’s unvoiced, unexpressed needs.

The biggest challenge for most NPD projects, particularly radical innovations, is bridging across interfaces. One prominent example is the R&D/Marketing interface. Typically, specifications documents are tools for making requirements more specific. All good specification documents should include a statement of rationale for the product, and the rationale is particularly important for radical innovations.

Manifesto writing is a technique that you might find useful for clarifying the value proposition of the radical innovation. A manifesto is a statement that rejects the current status quo. With the skillful use of rhetoric, a manifesto can put forward reasons that stimulate passion and courage. For example, Apple Computer’s famous "1984" commercial for the Macintosh Computer was in part responsible for energizing its customers and employees to "bring down big brother," and resulted in a legendary product success.

It creates clarification
This "why" also clarifies organizational capabilities, capacity, and co-development agendas. To see how this works, let’s look at a successful co-development program. The Chrysler Viper was launched with great success over a decade ago, and produced a remarkable, head-turning product. Even more important, the changes to the development process proved that the company could change its methods and significantly reduce cycle time, produce smaller production runs, and creatively engage its suppliers as partners rather than vendors. The Viper program applied all four of the questions listed in Exhibit 1, and in the order listed.

Also inherent in the question "why" are an internal-capabilities view that captures the portfolio management concern of "Can we make it?" "Is it within the capabilities of our organization?" and "Can we make it in sufficient volume at sufficient quality?" Radical innovations stretch already stretched organizations; someone will own the responsibility for producing and servicing the product.

Co-development is a powerful tool of innovation strategy and needs to be based on a solid grounding of complementary strategies and capabilities. Failure to address "why" could lead to a poor partnership. Could the following scenario be true of your co-development strategy? The perceptions of middle managers and their defense of their view of the world, have caused the organization to reach out to co-development partners. Organizations are political entities and middle management has considerable power and interest in protecting their "turf." It may only take one negative or lukewarm response to result in selecting a co-development option. Could it be, once you examine your assumptions more critically, your organization drifted unintentionally into co-development? Could it be that your co-development program is heading towards an avoidable, unpleasant situation? Could it be that co-development is not the right solution for your organization?

There are plenty of differences in values, goals, and cultures of co-development partners. Asking the question "why?" can help assure a better understanding of each party’s interests. Individuals representing the partner organizations still have bosses back in their home organizations who will be judging their work and performance.

It improves dialogue
This question is also a tool for improving dialogue. Most NPD people have faced this issue: In organizations, people tend to resist and/or ignore new ideas and behaviors. Innovation projects are fraught with conflict, in part because people have different opinions on the best methods to use to achieve their goals, as well as differences of opinion on what the goal is, or even should be. In my experience, what people call "resistance" is really lack of knowledge and misunderstanding. They don’t resist radical innovation projects because they are opposed to the project; they don’t yet understand the project and their tentativeness is perceived by others as resistance.

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