What is “Innovation”?

Innovation, as a concept, refers to the process that an individual or organization undertakes

to conceptualize brand new products, processes, and ideas, or to approach existing products,
processes, and ideas in new waysi. Although everyone defines this in their own way
depending on the kind of change they’re looking at. Here are a few popular definitions of the
term “innovation”. Wikipedia defines innovation as "a new idea, creative thoughts, new
imaginations in form of device or method"ii. If we look at other expert opinionsiii, Nick
Skillicorn, one of the most popular innovation thought leaders, says, “Very simply put,
innovation is about staying relevant. It basically involves turning an idea into a solution that
adds value from a customer’s perspective”.
Infact, according to Deloitte, only 12% of the fortune 500 companies from 1950s are still
functioning and half of them are soon to be replaced if they don’t further keep upiv. Innovation
from a broader perspective involves a way of using modern tools and out of the box methods
to find solutions to problems and most importantly applying and scaling them. Innovation is
often mistakenly thought of as either a revolutionary product or a technological platform. But
there’s so much more to this than just “great ideas”. These innovation measures have in
some case, like Apple Inc., reshaped the entire industry.

What is the need for innovation?

Well in simple words, innovation is the best way to fend off competition. In a day and age
where there’s multiple companies, products and start-ups vying for public attention and
gains, innovation is one of the smartest ways to stay ahead in the game. If we look at any
relatively new industry leaders like Amazon or Uber, they revolutionized their domains by
innovating core processes and even stalwarts like Microsoft or Apple owe a lot of their success
to constant reinvention and renovation.v
More than option for innovation, most of the companies have been forced to renovate their
processed owing to the huge technological changes that have taken place in the last decade
or so. Instead of going through the tedious process of a sudden change, a lot of companies
have now opted for a deliberate innovation intervention once every few years. This helps with
both gains as well as efficiency and also acts as a differentiator in this competitive domain.
It is far better to incrementally grow along the way with products, technologies and processes
rather than plod along. There are various ways of doing the same, like either acquiring
companies that are advanced or setting up a centre of excellence that propels changes
throughout the organization. Also, statistically speaking, 90% of the world’s data has been
produced only in the last couple of yearsvi, causing a sort of “digital disruption” that would
apparently cause about 40% of the Fortune 500 companies to be wiped out. Some other
reasons might include a Maximized ROI, a positive impact on the culture and increased
productivity and in some cases even cost saving.

i
https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/importance-of-innovation/
ii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation
iii https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2016/03/innovation-15-experts-share-innovation-definition/
iv https://www.viima.com/blog/importance-of-

innovation#:~:text=Innovation%20increases%20your%20chances%20to,and%20services%20for%20your%20customers.
v https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/importance-of-innovation/
vi https://orleansmarketing.com/35-technology-facts-stats/
What are the types of Innovation?

Innovation can include working on new ideas or products as well as working on existing
platforms to provide incremental growth to the same. Although, as discussed before, the
nature of innovation is very arbitrary and completely dependent on the problem statement
at hand, it is usually categorized into three typesvii: Process, Product and Business Model.

Process Innovation: This is concerned with improving the process involved in creating,
delivering and/or supporting any existing or new product. The biggest advantage of this type
of change is the low risk involved and the kind of customization at play. However, it is very
often overlooked because the results are not immediate and the benefits are mostly for
internal changes and don’t really produce ground breaking results. The best example of this
kind of innovation would be the invention of assembly line by Henry Ford.

Product Innovation: This involves either developing a new product or improving an existing
product. This change in product can be due to technological advancements, changing
customer needs and/or keeping the competition in check. This is one of the most dynamic
forms of innovation that can either make or break an organization by addressing both the
company’s internal needs as well as customer problems. It is a way of solving customer
concerns by finding unique solutions. However, the results can be equally appalling and
extremely expensive as it includes a lot of market research, R&D and marketing efforts. The
best example for this would be the development of iPhone by Apple.

Business Model Innovation: In simple words, this refers to changing the way any product or
service is brought to the market and to the customers. This is much more complex than both
product and process innovation and highly risky for any company. But in case this results in
success, it can change not just the company but that entire sector. However, the rate of
success of this type of innovation is extremely low and mostly results in failure. This needs
lots of meticulous work and attention and high investments. The biggest example of this
would be Amazon bring online retail into the market.

Although there’s no particular strategy or method that can be pinpointed for successful
innovation, there’s however, three most popular strategiesviii that can be used viz. Open
Innovation, Lean Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy.

Open Innovation: Open innovation is a strategy that allows you to align your innovation
efforts with the wants, needs, and ideas of those that make up your company and your overall
market. By welcoming input from a wide array of sources both inside and outside of your
organization, this strategy also allows for more ideas to be circulated, bringing about
information from different perspectives that may have not otherwise been considered.
However, building an effective process and clearly defining and communicating process goals
to contributing audiences can prove to be difficult.

Lean Innovation: Another common approach is lean innovation, a process that makes use of
design thinking to solve problems using customer feedback while minimizing waste in the
development cycle. The process values experimentation and continuous, incremental
improvement, and is most commonly applied to product innovation. In its simplest form, lean
innovation involves creating a solution to a customer’s problem, building a prototype, testing
it, and gathering feedback from the customer. The key to this process is collecting customer
feedback early and often in order to reduce waste and make continuous improvements.
Major benefits of this approach include its emphasis on learning, and its ability to bring
products to market sooner and with fewer resources.

Blue ocean Strategy: This can be used to identify the ways in which an organization can
innovate, differentiate from the competition, and improve overall performance. Despite
being nearly 15 years old, the ideas represented in this text are still relevant and widely used
today. Specifically, blue ocean strategy encourages organizations to innovate by thinking
without assumptions and creating new markets rather than competing in existing ones. While
this strategy can be useful in any sector, it is especially relevant in cases when supply exceeds
demand in a particular market.

Furthermore, based on these strategies and a research conducted by Harvard Business

Reviewix, innovation can further be classified into four types as follows:

Fig 1.1 Types of innovation

Sustaining innovation: Most innovation happens here, because most of the time we are
seeking to get better at what we’re already doing. We want to improve existing capabilities
in existing markets, and we have a pretty clear idea of what problems need to be solved and
what skill domains are required to solve them. For these types of problems, conventional
strategies like strategic road-mapping, traditional R&D labs, and using acquisitions to bring
new resources and skill sets into the organization are usually effective.

Breakthrough innovation: Sometimes, we run into a well-defined problem that’s just

devilishly hard to solve. In cases like these, we need to explore unconventional skill domains.
Open innovation strategies can be highly effective in this regard, because they help to expose
the problem to diverse skill domains.

Basic research: Pathbreaking innovations never arrive fully formed. They always begin with
the discovery of some new phenomenon. In simpler words, every firm can start the step of
innovation by employing scientists, researchers and inventers to just conduct research in any
field relevant to the firm’s domain. And out of those research findings there’s always a chance
of some big breakthrough idea coming through. This is exactly the reason why so many firms,
including small sized companies invest in research and that sometimes helps them to stay
ahead of their competition.
Disruptive Innovation: When the basis of competition changes, because of technological
shifts or other changes in the marketplace, companies can find themselves getting better and
better at things people want less and less. When that happens, innovating your products
won’t help — you have to innovate your business model. This is where the blue ocean strategy
and lean innovation kick in. Most firms that have failed in their domains look for ways to bring
about disruptive changes in order to sweep the market.

Organizational Structure can be defined in simple words as the coordination of various

stakeholders in a company at various stages to come together and achieve the goals and aims
of the company. It plays a very important role in the smooth functioning of the organization.
And more so for innovation in an organization as it needs a lot of resilient drive by the
management of any organization to make innovation a part of the company DNA. It is most
definitely a continuous process and hence the leadership and team leading this process needs
to be chose very carefully.
As far as innovation is considered, while a good and rigid structure in the team provides
stability to the organization, the team needed has to have the required technological and
psychological fit for the team. Endurance, adaptability and flexibility are the most reverent
qualities needed in any member of the innovation cell. There are a lot of studies done to show
the correlation between innovation and the organizational structure driving the process. And
based on that and interviews that we have done with pioneers of innovation across a plethora
of organizations, we will try and deduce the formula for a team fit to drive innovation across
an organization.
Types of Team Structure
The type of team can be between centralized, decentralized or hybrid, based on what the
company culture is like and the kind of innovation they’re looking at.
1. Centralized Innovation Structure
One of the most traditional forms of the organizational structure is the centralized one. Here
the innovation strategies are set at the center. Also the resources are centralized in the
innovation department. In general, in companies with a centralized innovation unit,
governing, managing and measuring innovation is easier. However this structure can lead to
bottlenecks, which in turn can drive the cost of innovation up.
Moreover under this structure the ‘Not Invented Here Syndrome (NIHS)’ might be more
prominent. Hence there will be a stiffer opposition for adopting ideas back in the regular
business units after they’ve been developed by the centralized innovation unit.The
organizations which will benefit the most from adopting a centralized innovation structure
are the ones whose divisions have similar innovation needs (eg.: standardization). Procter &
Gamble, Apple and ING are examples of corporations deploying this structure.
2. Decentralized Innovation Structure or BU-Driven
The polar opposite of the Centralized is the Decentralized structure (BU-Driven innovation
structure). It is distinctive from the previous as each business unit has full control over the
innovation effort. In this structure tasks and responsibilities are evenly distributed between
the employees, which may enables open communication & collaboration. Additionally,
although management is given the freedom to “run their departments as they see fit”, they
are still held accountable for their teams’ inputs.
Under this structure resource allocation is done faster. And once matured the ideas will be
easier to integrate with the BUs. This structure allow for innovation to happen on scale as
very limited innovation resourcing (if any) is done at the center. However, in the BU-Driven
innovation structure, alignment of each BU innovation strategy with the overall corporate
goal might prove difficult. Also consistency across BUs in tools, approaches, methodologies
and measurements might be tricky in the absence of clear guidelines from the center. A
decentralized structure will be the most beneficial for the companies where divisions are very
different. Examples of such companies include Johnson & Johnson, Illinois Tool Works and
Tyco International.
3. Hybrid Innovation Structure or BU-Enabled
Hybrid structure (BU-Enabled structure), is a combination of both functional and divisional
structures. Its diverse features allow the company to be more flexible in distributing and
assigning roles. It also helps to maintain a healthy relationship across all departments. Under
this structure the corporate strategy is easier connected with the innovation strategy of each
BU.
For all its advantages, the Hybrid structure’s biggest pitfall is a high chance of conflicts
between corporate departments and divisions. The line of authority might become vague,
and dilemmas regarding deadlines and resources are prone to cause the company issues on
many levels. Another cause of concern when deploying this structure is the mandate for
innovation. Which type and form of innovation needs to stay in the BU and which one needs
to be sent out.
From the three models, the hybrid one is most adaptive, with business units able to opt in or
out of central support. But this model has a high risk of inconsistencies and duplication.
Starbucks, GAP Inc and Google are the perfect examples of organizations with the Hybrid
structure. In general, this structure is most suitable when divisions have differing needs but
central coordination is needed. Every company’s innovation structure is inherently different.
By cultivating innovation, businesses cultivate a unique system. So, for them to choose the
most appropriate one, they have to thoroughly investigate each one of the models and decide
on the most appropriate one.
The decision needs to consider company and industry peculiarities. Companies have to ensure
that the chosen model aligns with their values and goals. They also have to include in the
equation the individuals whose roles and dynamics influence the very innovation culture they
are cultivating.
Bahcall introduces a formula he calls "The Innovation Equation," which offers four parameters
companies can use to tilt the balance in favor of innovation and away from politics. The
parameters are:
Equity Fraction: the fraction of compensation tied to project outcomes vs. tied to rank
Fitness Ratio: the ratio of two measures--how well employee skills are matched to their
projects, and how much politics matters to promotion decisions
Management Span: the number of direct reports that executives of the company have
Salary Growth: the increase in salary with promotion

KRAs and responsibilities of the innovation cell

Corporate innovation efforts at large companies often lack a clear mission and framework.
Even businesses that are well versed in the best management practices can, without realizing
it, generate an environment hostile to innovation. It’s a particular problem for a company’s
frontline business units, whose business processes and performance metrics are optimized to
relatively short-term goals that are anchored in what they are currently doing or selling rather
than in what they could be doing differently. As a result, line managers instinctively reject
innovations that won’t immediately contribute to their goals.
Supporting best practices: This involves scouting and standardizing market research methods
for novel ideas and insights; strategic innovation; promoting open innovation; and
introducing group tools and processes that encourage creative thinking.
Developing skills: This is about training company personnel on the skills they need, and
developing and applying measures to track improvements in innovation and the skills
underpinning them.
Supporting business units in new product and service initiatives: This means acting as
methodology expert and facilitator for the most critical innovation teams across the company,
supporting them in “raising the bar” of their aspirations. Training other managers to perform
these roles also allows them to support innovation in business units.
Identifying new market spaces: This includes analyzing trends and market disruptions and
searching for emerging new market opportunities. In some cases, they’ll need to be
developed at the corporate level when they do not fit into the current business units’
boundaries.
Helping people generate ideas: Setting up and running ideas generation platforms and
formats like jam sessions, hackathons, and internal or external crowdsourcing for the benefit
of the corporation.
Directing seed funding: Owning and allocating a yearly budget to fund “homeless ideas” that
are either too risky for the business units, or outside their existing business boundaries, which
might not otherwise get funded. This provides an organizational home to nourish and protect
new ideas.
Designing shelter for promising projects: Designing resource allocation processes (portfolio,
stage-gate, capex, budgeting) to take potentially disruptive innovations forward from the
seed stage to the market without getting killed on the way by managers who are invested in
the status quo.

USE CASES:

“Use cases are an important component of the innovation process. It acts as a bridge between
the problem statement and the customers satisfaction”.

A use case is a methodology used in system analysis to identify, clarify and organize system
requirements. The use case is made up of a set of possible sequences of interactions
between systems and users in a particular environment and related to a particular goal. The
method creates a document that describes all the steps taken by a user to complete an
activity.
Use cases describe the functional requirements of a system from the end user's perspective,
creating a goal-focused sequence of events that is easy for users and developers to follow. A
complete use case will include one main or basic flow and various alternate flows. The
alternate flow, also known as an extending use case, describes normal variations to the
basic flow as well as unusual situations.

Use cases provide a structure for gathering customer requirements and setting the project
scope. They are also extremely useful for having the end users ‘test’ the system as it's being
designed, which leads to quicker development and a more useable system. While use case
modeling does not provide a complete solution to gathering requirements, it does facilitate
the development of user interfaces (screens), screen edits and messages, and acceptance
test scenarios. Business analysts have traditionally struggled not only with how to translate
what the end user wanted the system to do into a technical design, but also with how to
have that same end user verify that the translation was correct well before the system was
built. The pseudo code typically written by software developers was too technical to be
verified by most end users. Use cases help solve this dilemma by providing a translation that
end users can understand and change before too much time has been invested in the
project.

A use case should display the following characteristics:

• Organizes functional requirements.

• Models the goals of system/actor interactions.
• Records paths -- called scenarios -- from trigger events to goals.
• Describes one main flow of events and various alternate flows.
• Multi-level, so that one use case can use the functionality of another one.
• Business clients articulate their needs.
• Business and IT communicate with each other.
• Requirements-based testing and user acceptance test scenarios.
• Structured handling of exceptions.
• Definition of edits and messages.
 • More complete and quicker requirements definition.

Three elements that a use case must contain:

1. Actor, which is the user, which can be a single person or a group of people,
interacting with a process
2. System, which is the process that's required to reach the final outcome
3. Goal, which is the successful user outcome

Additional elements that are included in a complex use case:

1. Stakeholders, which are those who have an interest in how the system turns out,
even if they aren't direct users
2. Preconditions, which are things that must be true before a use case is run
3. Triggers, which are events that occur for a use case to begin

The writing process includes:

1. Identifying all system users and creating a profile for each one. This includes every role
played by a user who interacts with the system.

2. Selecting one user and defining their goal -- or what the user hopes to accomplish by
interacting with the system. Each of these goals becomes a use case.

3. Describing the course taken for each use case through the system to reach that goal.

4. Considering every alternate course of events and extending use cases -- or the different
courses that can be taken to reach the goal.

5. Identifying commonalities in journeys to create common course use cases and write
descriptions of each.

6. Repeating steps two through five for all other system users.
Examples:
Let's use the example of a microwave. There are many ways we, the actors or end-users,
want to make use of the microwave, including heating up leftovers, boiling water for tea,
defrosting frozen food, cooking a meal. Each one of these is a ‘use’ of the microwave and can
be described in a use case. If we want to boil water for tea, we tell the microwave what we
want (our request to boil water). The microwave boils the water and notifies us when it's
done.
Let's take another example, that of an automated order system. Some of the uses of that
system may be to choose an item, or check the availability of the item. Other uses include
creating orders, copying or moving them, and deleting them. Use cases would describe each
of these system functions.
VALIDATE THE USE CASES:

Simply put, if the requirement is implemented as written, the market need is completely
addressed. No additional requirements are required. When writing a specification, we may
use decomposition to break individual requirements into more manageable, less abstract
criteria

Requirements completeness validation is performed, when using structured requirements,

by validating that the supporting documents completely support the requirement being
validated. Each market requirement is supported by one or more use cases, as shown in the
following diagram:

NON-FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS EQUAL RIGHTS AMENDMENT

Determining if a goal will be completely achieved is a function of confirming that it will be

completely enabled. This requires us to review the use cases that have been written to
support the goal (or market requirement).

There are therefore two activities – writing the use cases, and reviewing the use cases. We’ve
already described the activity of writing the use cases to support a market requirement. We
only now need to cover the activity of reviewing the use cases.
Reviewing the Use Cases that Support a Goal

We will use the format of an informal use case to document this activity.

Title: Review Supporting Use Cases for a Goal

Trigger: Validation of the completeness of a market requirement is required.

Actors: Business Analyst and Stakeholder

Description:

• Business Analyst (BA) organizes all use cases that have been identified as supporting
the market requirement to be validated for completeness.
• BA and Stakeholder (SH) review the goal.
• BA and SH confirm that the goal can be achieved solely by performing the assembled
use cases.
• BA and SH confirm that none of the assembled use cases can be ignored and still
achieve the goal.
• BA and SH record their agreement that the use cases are both neccessary and
sufficient to achieve the goal.

Additional Notes:

• The reviewers are not evaluating the quality of the use cases, and work under the
assumption that the use cases are successfully completed. Reviewing the quality or
accuracy of the use cases is out of scope for this procedure (but is still required).
• If additional use cases are required, the BA and SH will identify their titles and brief
descriptions to act as placeholders for the purpose of this review.
• If use cases are determined to be redundant or extraneous, their existence must be
justified. For example, there may be more than one way to achieve the supported
goal. Each method of success must be explicitly valued and prioritized.

Execution Tips

The process above tells us what we need to do, but doesn’t provide guidance on how to do
it. Two common mistakes made when validating completeness are overlooking missing
activities, and not discovering alternative activities.

To assure that missing activities are not overlooked, we can imagine playing a game, where
the actors in the use cases are only allowed to perform the actions that are documented in
the use cases. With one person verbally walking the actor(s) through the steps, the other
person will likely find any missing steps. Changing from reading to listening triggers our brains
to process the information differently and uncover gaps that we might overlook when reading
(because our brains will fill in the gaps in the prose).

To discover alternatives to the documented use cases, we can apply brainstorming

techniques. We can start the brainstorming process with a simple question, applied to each
use case. “How else could someone possibly achieve the results of this use case?” We must
make sure that we don’t constrain our answers to the easy, practical, or relevant – these
constraints will make it harder for us to stumble upon a novel idea. We can also ask the
question “How else could someone possibly achieve the goal?” For this question, answers are
allowed to re-use existing use cases or ignore them completely.

While finding a better alternative approach could be a nice surprise, our primary goal is to
explore the standing solution approach from all angles, in hopes of finding and strengthening
it’s weaknesses.

Summary

Validating the completeness of a market requirement can be accomplished by reviewing that

goal and the use cases that are designed to enabled it. If the use cases are neccessary and
sufficient, then the requirement is complete. Brainstorming about alternatives can help us
discover issues with completeness that are not obvious from traditional, top-down review.
Brainstorming may also uncover a novel and more valuable solution.
ROLE OF CONSULTANT:

What is Innovation Consulting?

A recent addition to the world of consulting, innovation consultancy has become a service
required typically by larger firms that understand that they need to stay ahead of the curve
in their sector or industry. This is especially true for technology companies, but many more
smaller and diverse companies are now outsourcing their innovation to consultancies such as
ourselves.

It is no longer seen that companies such as Apple, Tesla, the all-new Microsoft, are the only
businesses that should be pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in products,
services and experiences. Examples of fallen giants, such as Kodak and Nokia, are
commonplace and many business leaders are aware that such devastation can affect small
and large companies alike, if innovation isn't something that the business places emphasis on.

Innovation consulting is offered by the large management consultancies, from boutique

innovation agencies like ourselves, and in a different form (usually product design, or
technology and software) from companies that innovate, but do not call themselves an
innovation company.

Innovation consultancies such as our own company, offer help in areas such as identifying
new products or markets, ideation (we do this by using our HiveMind platform), creating
innovative behaviours across a business, which can change the culture of an entire company,
in the recruitment of new employees - and indeed the changing of how people are recruited,
and setting goals for the business to achieve. which often takes a business (and its leadership
team) out of its comfort zone.

What is an Innovation Consultant?

An innovation consultant can help a company in many disciplines, including helping to create
new services, products, identification of new markets, and maximising output of departments
or staff among others. We like to think that a consultant in the discipline of innovations helps
companies to either become relevant again - which is often something that companies think
they are, but is seldom the case - or to stay relevant for the future.

We help business leaders to fight the future, help clients to use storytelling, both internally
and externally, and create a new channel, maybe even a culture, for innovation to flourish.
We build cultures through process changes, through empowering, and through the
egalitarianism of ideas. All businesses have a responsibility to operate efficiently, and this is
where innovation and innovative cultures help.

In many cases, an innovation consultant's role is to make a company that says that they are
innovative to actually become so. Talking about and actually being an innovative company
are two very different things. Much of this happens with the application of innovative
behaviours across a business, which leads to innovation becoming successful, no matter what
the words of a CEO may be. In fact, we believe that the true goal of an innovation consultant
is to ensure innovative behaviours happen no matter who the CEO is, or whether the person
in this role changes in the future.
Innovation Consulting: The Approach

Innovation consultants have various ways of approaching innovation consulting. We have

identified three primary approaches to innovation consulting:

1. Some larger firms offer innovation consulting as a part of management consulting.

2. Some boutique firms choose innovation consulting as their sole focus, offering expertise in
this very niche but necessary area.

3. Still other innovation consultants concentrate on technology and product design, making
sure offerings are presented in innovative ways.

Despite the diversified approaches, innovation consulting has faced some backlash. Some
have argued that that innovation consulting is unnecessary or can even be detrimental to
innovation. Historically, organizations that have championed their innovation strategy
capabilities have struggled with innovation itself. Moreover, consultants, who are not
embedded in the client organization’s industry, may have a somewhat limited perspective
around innovation in a client’s particular industry.

The backlash notwithstanding, innovation consultants today are proving that they certainly
have a place in the consulting world. There are a number of ways in which innovation
consultants aid organizations in fostering an environment that is conducive to innovation.
The role of the innovation consultant is not to create innovation, but to teach an organization
how to be more innovative, so that innovation becomes organic.

Culture

Having a culture that supports innovation is key. An organization that is bogged down by
politics or old-school methods has little chance of becoming innovative. Innovation
consultants can look at an organization from an outside perspective to better identify where
the problem areas are and apply their expertise to help eliminate those areas.

Hiring

Innovation relies heavily on creative thinkers, and so hiring the right people is critical to
creating an innovative organization. Innovation consultants can identify the type of talent
needed and facilitate the hiring process to cultivate the right kind of talent pool.

Innovation Goals

Businesses that start out as innovative ventures often scale to the extent that they lose their
innovative edge. As they expand and focus on many offerings at once, they often reach the
point where they must pour their resources into keeping the current business alive, rather
than into creating innovative new offerings. Innovation consultants can help businesses
construct a business plan and strategy that realigns goals around innovation.

Ideation
Oftentimes, R&D and L&D departments in an organization are blocked from truly innovating
because of the organization’s processes. Silos and bureaucracy will prevent good ideas from
being heard and acted upon. Innovation consultants can help organizations create processes
that make it easy for new ideas to be heard and adopted and channels for better
communication and collaboration around those ideas.

Identify New Markets

In order to stay even with competition, organizations struggling with innovation frequently
attempt to imitate their competitors, going after the same target markets that their
competitors do. Innovation consultants can help organizations identify new markets that are
being underserved, targeting those instead to create an innovative product for a new
customer base.

Which of the top innovation consultancies are independent?

The best of the best in innovation worldwide.

INNOVATION CELL:
WORKFLOW:

ORGANISATION STRUCTURE:

AWARENESS AMONG EMPLOYEES:

vii
https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/types-of-innovation/
viii
https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/types-of-innovation/
ix
https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-4-types-of-innovation-and-the-problems-they-solve
IDEATION:
Ideation is the process where you generate ideas and solutions through sessions such
as Sketching, Prototyping, Brainstorming, Brainwriting, Worst Possible Idea, and a wealth of
other ideation techniques. Ideation is also the third stage in the Design Thinking process.

“Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation.
Mentally it represents a process of ‘going wide’ in terms of concepts and outcomes. Ideation
provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting
innovative solutions into the hands of your users.”

Ideation Will Help You:

• Ask the right questions and innovate with a strong focus on your users, their needs,
and your insights about them.
• Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation potential of
your solution.
• Bring together perspectives and strengths of your team members.
• Uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
• Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
• Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them.

“You ideate in order to transition from identifying problems to creating solutions for your
users. Ideation is your chance to combine the understanding you have of the problem space
and people you are designing for with your imagination to generate solution concepts.
Particularly early in a design project, ideation is about pushing for a widest possible range of
ideas from which you can select, not simply finding a single, best solution.”

How to Prepare Before You Start Ideating

Even though Design Thinking is not a linear process, it is crucial to take into account the first
two stages or modes in Design Thinking before you start ideating. If you neglect to take these
two modes and their guidelines into account before an Ideation session, you risk becoming
lost. The Empathize and Define guidelines will help you develop the sufficient background
knowledge and set a clear goal for your ideation sessions.

1.EMPATHISE
“Empathy is the centerpiece of a human-centered design process. The Empathize mode is the
work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge. It is your
effort to understand the way they do things and why, their physical and emotional needs,
how they think about the world, and what is meaningful to them.”

2. DEFINE
“The Define mode of the design process is all about bringing clarity and focus to the design
space. It is your chance, and responsibility, as a design thinker to define the challenge you are
taking on, based on what you have learned about your user and about the context.” You will
often want to use methods such as Affinity Diagrams, and Sharing Inspiring User
Stories and Personas. By the end of the Define mode, your goal is to construct a meaningful
and actionable problem statement, also known as a Point Of View (POV). In the ideation
process, POV should be your guiding statement that focusses on your insights about
your users and their needs.

How do you define your Point Of View?

Step 1

• You define the type of person you are designing for – your user. For instance, you can
develop one or more personas, use affinity diagrams, empathy maps and other
methods, which help you understand and crystallize your research results –
observations, interviews, fieldwork, etc.
• You extract and synthesize your users’ most essential needs, which are the most
important to fulfill. Remember that needs should be verbs.
• You work to express insights you developed through the synthesis of information that
you gathered during your initial empathize mode. The insight should typically not
simply be a reason for the need, but rather a synthesized statement that you can
leverage in your design solution.
Step 2
Write your definitions into a Point Of View template like this one:

Step 3 – POV Madlib

You can articulate a POV by combining these three elements – user, need, and insight – as an
actionable problem statement that will drive the rest of your design work. It’s surprisingly
easy when you insert your findings in the POV Madlib below. You can articulate your POV by
inserting your information about your user, the needs and your insights in the following
sentence:
Step 4 – Make Sure That Your Point Of View is One That:

• Provides a narrow focus.

• Frames the problem as a problem statement.
• Inspires your team.
• Guides your innovation efforts.
• Informs criteria for evaluating competing ideas.
• Is sexy and captures people’s attention.
• Is valid, insightful, actionable, unique, narrow, meaningful, and exciting.

3.IDEATE
When you’ve developed your POV it’s time to start ideating. Begin with your Point Of View or
problem statement. Break that larger challenge up into smaller actionable pieces. Look for
aspects of the statement to complete the sentence, “How might we…?”

“How Might We?” Questions Frame and Open Up Your Design Challenge

You start using your POV by reframing the POV into a question: Instead of saying, we need to
design X or Y, Design Thinking explores new ideas and solutions to a specific design challenge.
It’s time to start using the Ideation method that involves asking, “How Might We…?”

Key ideation techniques

Now you have everything in place for your ideation session, there’s just one thing left to do:
Choose which ideation techniques you’re going to use. Here are some of the most common
ideation techniques used by designers:

Analogies

By definition, analogy is “a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a

particular subject to another.” An analogy provides a comparison between one thing and
another, serving as a means of explanation or clarification. What does this have to do with
ideation and design? The analogy technique compares your situation—or design challenge—
to something you are familiar with, enabling you to look at the problem in a new light and
consider possible solutions.
Bodystorming

The bodystorming technique gets you to physically experience a situation in order to spark
new ideas. If you’re struggling to get close to the problem, bodystorming is a great way to
generate genuine user empathy. How does it work? You set up a physical experience
resembling the problem you are trying to solve, using people, props, or a digital prototype.
Based on your own interactions with, and reactions to, this environment, it may be easier to
come up with ideas.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is one of the oldest tricks in the book when it comes to generating new ideas
as a group. In a brainstorming session, you verbally bounce ideas off of each other in the
hopes of finding a blended solution.

Brainwriting

An alternative to traditional brainstorming is brainwriting. Instead of verbally sharing ideas,

participants write down their ideas before passing them on to someone else. The next person
reads these ideas and adds their own, and so the process continues until each person’s ideas
have done a full rotation. All ideas are then collected and placed in front of the group for
discussion.

Brain walking

This is the more dynamic, physical version of brainwriting. Instead of passing pieces of paper
around the room, the designers themselves move between different “ideation stations”. Just
like brainwriting, they’ll add their own ideas before moving on to the next station.

Challenging Assumptions

As we know, challenging assumptions is crucial to breaking conventional thought patterns

and coming up with new ideas. A popular ideation technique is to come up with a number of
assumptions that are inherent to your design challenge. As a group, you’ll then go through
these assumptions and discuss whether they are really true, or if they’re simply there because
they’ve never been questioned. In putting these assumptions to the test, you can determine
what characteristics are really necessary, or which solutions could be used instead.
Game storming

Game storming is the gamification of brainstorming, and a popular technique for both
ideation and problem-solving. Gamifying classic ideation methods adds an extra element of
engagement and interactivity—and helps to suspend some of the normal “rules” of everyday
life.

Mind mapping

Developed by Tony Buzan in 1972, mind mapping is a visual ideation technique that
encourages you to draw connections between different sets of ideas or information. You’ll
start by writing a keyword in the middle of the page (normally related to your problem
statement). On the same piece of paper, you then surround this word with any and all ideas
that come to mind. Finally, you’ll think about how these ideas are connected, depicting said
connections with lines and curves—resulting in a visual map.

Reverse Thinking

Reverse thinking can be a fun way to flip the problem on its head and come up with new ideas.
The question “how might we make our online courses more accessible?” could be changed to
“how can we make it as difficult as possible for users to take our online courses?” The
solutions you come up with for the reverse challenge can help you to envision what the
opposite might be, leading you closer to the solution you really need.

Scamper

SCAMPER is an action-packed checklist that helps you to come up with new ideas for a
particular product or design challenge. SCAMPER prompts the designer to substitute the
topic with an equivalent or similar topic; to combine the original topic with additional
information; to adjust the problem by coming up with alternative ways of constructing it; to
creatively modify the topic; to put it to other uses by identifying possible scenarios where
this topic can be used; to eliminate any ideas or characteristics that are not valuable; and
to reverse and rearrange the problem in order to come up with a brand new concept.

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is an excellent technique for bringing a design challenge to life and exploring
different avenues in a visual way. Start by drawing out your user personas—as defined in the
empathise and research stages—using images and quotes to paint a vivid picture. From there,
you can draw out various storylines and outcomes, visualizing how the user feels throughout.

Worst Possible Idea

Similar to reverse thinking, the worst possible idea technique is great for putting the group at
ease and removing creative blocks. Even if the ideation session has been declared a
judgement-free zone, there is inevitably a certain amount of pressure to find a viable solution
that your peers will like. Going in search of the worst possible idea takes away this pressure.
Not only that: Reflecting on what’s so terrible about these ideas can reveal valuable insights
into what a good idea might look like.

These techniques are just the tip of the ideation iceberg. Here are some further ideation
methods you might like to explore:

• Creative pause
• Cheat storming
• Crowd storming
• Daydreaming
• Provocation
• Forced relationships
• Roleplay
• Visualization
• Wishing
• Sketching and sketch storming
• Synectics

When deciding which ideation techniques to use, think about the nature of your design
problem, as well as the people taking part in the ideation session. It’s important to choose
techniques which are suitable for the group size. At the same time, consider which methods
are most likely to put your participants at ease and elicit the best response among this
particular group of people.

HACKATHONS:
Hackathon is a tool to drive sustained innovation and crowdsource solutions to address
pressing real-life business problems and social issues. A hackathon is typically a time-bound
competitive event where participants collaborate to build proofs of concept and minimum
viable products for a specific pre-defined problem or to innovate.
Hackathons have some clear advantages over traditional innovation management
processes. They are inclusive, agile, promote multidisciplinary collaboration, and have
shorter innovation cycles that are better suited to addressing fast-changing consumer
demands.

How can you organize a hackathon?

The entire process of organizing a hackathon, marketing the event, driving registrations,
ideating, and creating prototypes typically takes 30 to 40 days. An innovation program cannot
get more agile than this.

Once you have decided why you want to conduct a hackathon, the next steps include deciding
whom you want to engage and how you want to engage. Depending on their objective,
companies may thus opt for either an,

1. Internal hackathon

or

2. External hackathon.

What is an internal hackathon?

Conducted only for employees, internal hackathons give them the freedom to forget about
everyday responsibilities and restrictions and build something innovative. Teams collaborate
to develop a proposal, build a prototype, and pitch ideas to senior management to secure
funding or win recognition. These events promote a maker culture that’s important in today’s
tech companies.

Companies such as Google, Whirlpool, and Facebook hold internal hackathons to encourage
new product innovation by their employees. For example, the Like button, chat button, and
timeline of Facebook were created during its company-internal hackathons. Companies keep
a closer watch on their data as well while employees “flex their creative muscles” at low risk.

What are the benefits of internal hackathons?

• Establish a process of creative ideation

The only way you can be consistently innovative is when the pace at which you are
generating creative ideas and testing prototypes is higher than the pace at which your
external factors are changing.

• Rapid prototyping
 More experiments allow you to test out a large set of hypotheses and conducting not-
so-perfect experiments also means that the cost of failure is low while giving you many
insights. Internal hackathons are the perfect environment for rapidly prototype and
test validity and feasibility before full implementation.

• Jump start product roadmap

Hackathons help to quickly check the feasibility of some of the ideas that can be taken
up in the immediate roadmap. The dedicated time that one gets during the hackathon
along with the competitive spirit and adrenaline rush can accelerate product
development.

• Come up with a future roadmap list

Even though all ideas generated at a hackathon don’t get implemented, they can
become a good reference list for future road-map discussions.

• Promote cross-functional collaboration across engineering and non-engineering

teams

This can facilitate collaboration between different teams but also give engineering
teams a better perspective on the customer and make the non-engineering teams
more vested in the product.

What are the typical objectives of an internal hackathon?

• Crowdsource ideas from a company’s existing talent

• Reinforce company values
• Help assess the company’s existing employee pool based on the presentation skills,
team collaboration ability, etc.
• Drive engagement by focusing on self-directed and dynamic learning
• Develop a diverse and flexible work environment by encouraging empowered teams
• Promote transparency in the management by facilitating talent mobility and ensuring
a culture of recognition
• Identify people with the right skills and attitudes

What are the basic steps of an internal hackathon?

Companies need to find themes that are fun for the employees yet in line with business goals.

Following are the basic steps of an internal hackathon, but there are a lot of details that need
to be ironed out:
 • Decide the purpose: Define the goal of organizing a hackathon, which is generally one
of these—crowdsource ideas or solutions for innovation, increase product API
adoption, testing, internal engagement, and marketing or employer branding.
• Define the problem statement: What is the exact problem you are trying to solve or
what are the opportunities that you want to exploit via innovation?
• Set the theme: Based on your avenue and problem statement, you define the specific
theme that you want the participants to work with. Provide as much context and
insights as possible for the participants.
• Keep enough time to plan: Depending on the scale of the event, you need anywhere
from four to eight weeks to properly plan for the event.
• Engage people from across: Ensure your teams have people with different skills and
from all levels to avoid groupthink and encourage networking and teamwork; diverse
ideas spell quality.
• Make time for good breaks in between: Some engaging games or good food keep up
the motivation levels and make sure that a good result is achieved. Robert J. Moore
from RJmetrics says that if the times of these breaks be defined, hackers take them as
milestones and are inspired to hack through each of them.
• Have a deployment process in place: An important metric to measure the success of
a hackathon is that it gets deployed in working projects. It is a motivation factor for
teams that their projects will be deployed and will be accessible for people. Judge
ideas based on novelty, feasibility, simplicity, design, and business value.
• Decide on prizes or opportunities: Although the idea is to embed an innovation-
driven culture in the organization, prizes (reward points, gift vouchers, incubation)
always help.
• Wrap-up: After the hackathon is over, showcase your work to the world. Share
pictures and videos on your website; do a blog post with the winners; and get the story
out in the media.

What are the stages of an internal hackathon?

As with any hackathon, the first step will be idea submission. The event which could be a
hackfest for 24 to 48 days or a two-phase hackathon where employees across all levels of the
organization and its branches world over submit their ideas via an idea management
platform. This phase could last between 2 and 4 weeks. In the second phase, an offline event
could be held on Day 15 or 30 of the campaign where chosen ideas are translated into
prototypes. Following the presentation and judging, the winners are announced and feted.

Who owns the IP rights in an internal hackathon?

In case of an internal hackathon, all rights are owned by the organization conducting it. The
company has the full ownership of the inventions made by its employees.
* Companies need to ensure that employee agreements have provision for hackathon
participation; when employees go for external hackathons make sure those are not related
to the employer’s business interests to avoid conflict. Companies should provide IP counsel
about IP risks and opportunities before the event; it doesn’t pay to prohibit participation and
alienate them.

What factors indicate the success of an internal hackathon?

• High participation
• High cross-functional collaboration
• High ideation rate
• Relevant and quality ideas
• Top-quality proofs of concepts and prototypes
• Positive feedback from the employees

What are external hackathons?

In this type of hackathons, a company engages people within and outside the organization.
The invites are often influenced by the themes and goals that are set.

According to Gartner, “CIOs can use external hackathons to change culture, improve customer
experience, find new revenue opportunities, reduce costs, engage new ecosystems, and
improve talent management.”

External Audience – External Hackathon

External hackathons help companies engage with external audience. The external audience
can be a developer community, data scientist community, or even the general public.

What are the benefits of external hackathons?

• Exploring new technologies

• Driving business innovation
• Sourcing incubation programs
• Creating potential startups
• Branding of products or an organization
• Creating solutions for social causes
• Analyzing data to make predictions
• Rewarding innovative thinking

*If the focus is on the output, the objective could be IP development, branding, or innovation
Onsite hackathon
At onsite hackathon, participants work collaboratively to innovate at a physical location. In
this format, organizers will need to consider time, geographical, and logistical constraints
while designing the event. In onsite hackathon, organizing workshops, hosting knowledge-
sharing sessions, and getting the venue, tools, and other aspects of the working environment
ready are important.

Online hackathon
Companies use online hackathons to engage their employees simultaneously across different
geographies and time zones to solve a problem or drive innovation and used to engage with
external audience of wider geography. They are also used for narrowly-defined coding
challenges, which test participants’ experience and expertise.

Hackathon sponsors
This is could well be the hardest task. Getting people to part with their money is never easy.
How can you raise funds for a student or non-profit hackathon? First, you need to come up
with a budget. Once you have your estimates, you devise a plan for sponsorship. Whom do
you target and how? Sponsors will buy in when they want to boost the brand’s visibility,
recruit skilled workers or interns, or get real-time feedback on application programming
interfaces or some product or service.

Create a budget

• Know everything you need to about the revenues, costs, and how much you intend to
spend on each attendee. You need to appear credible to your investors/sponsors.
• Have your budget estimates include food, drinks, travel, security, facilities, hardware,
staff, branding, and swag packs. Set aside an emergency fund.
• Watch this video for extra information about budgeting for your hackathon.
• Here’s a sample budget.

Create value for your sponsors

• Be ready to offer custom packages if you can and negotiate. Sponsors can help by also
giving you judges or mentors, if not money.
• Make sure your sponsors are happy so that they are likely to back more events in the
future. Regular professional communication is key to convincing them they got their
money’s worth and more.
• Watch this webinar for extra information about raising sponsorship.
• Once the event is done, remember to thank your sponsors publicly on your website
and via social media, if they allow it.
• If your sponsors are popular brands, exploit the fact by displaying logos.

Potential hackathon sponsors

• Corporates can easily fund their internal hackathons to drive innovation to give ideas
from enthusiastic, bright employees a fighting chance to add to the commercial
success or to support social responsibility.
• Developer tool companies, such as Mashery and Mailchimp, and organizations, such
as Kauffman and Ford, will sponsor your event for various reasons—say, social cause,
entrepreneurship, recruiting, and branding. Sponsors can help by extending cash for
services, co-branding, adding believability, promotion, or contributing in kind.
• Students can also approach entrepreneurship or technology or innovation
organizations within universities; they can also broker deals with local companies,
such as restaurants, who want some free advertising, or with trade associations, other
education institutions, local and provincial governments, and IT vendors and firms.
• If you don’t want to buy your way in, try developing relevant collaborations with
companies such as SendGrid and Twilio to make inroads into the developer
community and co-host hackathons.
Hackathon code of conduct
Create a pleasant, safe, and non-discriminatory event for a diverse set of participants. Having
a well-defined set of rules helps in case of any issues cropping up during the event.

• To maintain a welcoming environment, formulate policies to deal with all kinds of

harassment and lack of respect for others’ opinions, and remind all attendees that it
is up to them to make the experience amazing.
• Communicate the code of conduct via the website, posters, and any other published
material sent to sponsors, participants, speakers, hosting team members, and make
people acknowledge their agreement to the terms and conditions.
• All attendees need to understand what behavior is expected of them.
• Have a proper reporting policy or channel by mentioning in the document whom to
contact and how. Train your team before the event and designate some people
specifically to deal with any kind of crisis and escalate.
• All violations should be kept private, if possible, and handled impartially by following
a clearly defined chain of custody.
• Decide what the outcome of the breach of conduct will entail for the person.
• Most important tip of all: Don’t judge the victim. Once the details have been noted,
offer support, arrange escort, or contact law enforcement if required.
• Although this blog has been written in relation to conferences, it can work just as well
with physical hackathons.

Judges and Speakers

• Naturally, your judges must have the aptitude required to make knowledgeable
decisions about the hacks.
• You can invite people from companies you would like as sponsors.
• Network with the movers and shakers in the field and have a few names to pull out of
the hat once the basic details of the hackathon have been locked down.
• Developer evangelists, university deans, celebrated subject matter experts, and local
bigwigs of top organizations can also be excellent choices.
• Tell your judges what the winning criteria (such as business potential, relevance to the
theme, practicality, technical complexity, etc.) are before the event. Prep them about
what features the hacks or deliverables must have, talk about the scoring system, and
encourage them to jot down notes during demos.
• Emphasize the importance of fair judging.
• Letting the judges meet the hackers before the presentation is a good idea because it
gives them a better chance to impress the judges with a more comprehensive
explanation and demonstration than is possible in a 5-minute demo.
 • You can either let your judges pick winners or you could have a voting system where
others (employees, public, sponsors, consumers, etc.) can also help select the best
projects.
• Don’t have too many finalists because your judges most likely won’t have the
bandwidth to test and evaluate so many submissions.
• Select speakers just like you would choose judges.

Hackathon promotion

• You can say that letting the world know about it is perhaps the best way to get the
right mix of attendees. You need to be very clear about what skill sets you are looking
for.
• Promote your event using low-cost channels—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Google Groups, Map, Mailing lists, Websites, and ask attendees, your employees, and
community honchos to spread the word. (Tip: Try not to spam.)
• Outreach campaigns must target developer groups, universities, and startups.
• Use PR measures, such as a press release, to let media know about your event,
including all the relevant details (theme, vision, timeline, prizes, and sponsors).
• Co-working spaces, incubators, and accelerators can help you with startups.
• Contact university admins and campus ambassadors to get your foot into the
academic sphere.
• For internal hackathons, use emails, posters, social media, and intranet to get the
employees interested; involved the management, asking them to become mentors or
judges to show that everyone is working toward the same goal.
• Your community managers can maximize participation using email campaigns, radio
ads, and other media channels.
• If you don’t have enough resources to manage the promotional campaign, employ
partners—advertising agencies can bring in innovative ideas, PR agencies can help
with visibility, call centers can help to interact directly, and specialized networks can
help with more accurate targeting and outreach. However, measuring ROI can be
tough.
• Encourage challenging and inspiring discussions on the “wall.”
• Your social interface has to be lively and up-to-date.
• Compelling copy goes a long way in capturing people’s interest.

Getting ready for the event

(1 month to 1 week before the event)

• To stay on top, try using organizing tools to track all aspects— technical, logistics,
participation, etc.
 • Choose the finalists from the idea submissions; get the best projects ready for the day
of the hackathon.
• Arrange for workshops or information-sharing sessions for potential participants.
• Start sending reminders to attendees 7 to 10 days before the event.
• Finalize your speakers.
• Contact and sign on food caterers and miscellaneous vendors such as T-shirt suppliers.
• Get the travel itinerary of attendees and arrange for cost-effective and efficient
transportation. In case of travel reimbursements, tell the participants how they can
claim it and when. For participants who live in other countries, send an official
invitation which makes apply for the visa easier.
• Get the final headcount. Confirm attendance a day prior to the event. Sometimes, half
the people won’t turn up. Although you may be happy with the number of
registrations, close to 30% do not submit a hack.

Putting it all together on D-Day (Day Zero)

After months of planning and worrying about the hackathon, you don’t want to leave anything
to chance. Make a checklist. Get to your venue early or the night before and set up everything
you can possibly.

SETTING UP
Get the venue ready

• Set up the chairs, beanbags, and tables.

• Get the premises, including the dedicated hacking, sleeping, snacking, and
recreational areas and restrooms, clean and ready.
• Place proper signs to guide attendees.

Check for possible power and hardware issues

• Make sure the hardware toolkit is good to go—enough power bars, extension cords,
and network cables; uninterrupted secure wi-fi; top-quality wi-fi routers; a projector;
a couple of extra laptops; audio/PA equipment; open and accessible ports with few
firewalls; traffic monitoring; IP whitelisting; and DHCP/subnet capacity (Tip: You can
outsource networking requirements as well!).
• Let attendees know they are responsible for the security of their devices.

Kicking off the hackathon

• Get your registration/help desk ready to check participants’ IDs, liability waivers,
forms for minors.
• Give the participants any promotional pamphlets you need to, name tags, login
credentials.
 • Welcome attendees with a formal/informal presentation going over the hackathon
objectives, the schedule (like the one above), and the rules.
• Introduce the organizers, volunteers, speakers, and hackers.
• Get the first meal ready.
• Remember to update social media to help maintain the exciting atmosphere.
• Be sure to take questions if any.

Post-hackathon activities

• Thank your participants, sponsors, hosts, speakers, judges, mentors, data providers,
press, and volunteers.
• In your concluding talk, talk about the community, the website, mailing lists, and
mention any upcoming events.
• Arranging a cocktail party or a trip to the local can be a great way to conclude your
hackathon.
• Get nice videos and photos of the event for future marketing purposes.
• Do a thorough analysis of the participant data and any other relevant statistics,
channels used for outreach, quality of the hackers and their submissions, and get
“like–dislike” feedback from the attendees.
• Follow-up blogs, tweets, emails, and demo videos or presentations are great after-
event tools to maintain the “connect.”
• For internal hackathons too, communicating details about the events, hacks, and
winners plays a big part in boosting a company’s image, be it in terms of employee.
satisfaction, collaboration, or innovation; companies can recruit the best talent or roll
out feasible projects after the hackathon or fund/incubate the winning idea.

• For online hackathons, once qualifying submissions have been judged and winners
declared, ensure that you publish the results and let them know.
• Turn interviews into blog posts or case studies.
• Work with them to nurture their ideas or develop their prototypes if possible.

Choosing your hackathon management platform

• Dedicated platforms to conduct hackathons are available in the market. These

customized tools publish your hackathons, and they manage them. They ensure
optimum integration with internal social networks, IT systems, and other existing
tools.
• From an organizer’s perspective, the platforms give easy access to participant data
and submissions, allow external voting, offer a forum for discussion, let mentors easily
help the hackers online, offer customization of platform design, allow export of
projects, and offer a real-time stats dashboard.
• Judges and mentors must be given login credentials.
A hackathon management software solution — Sprint
HackerEarth provides enterprise software that helps organization’s with their technical
recruitment needs. HackerEarth has conducted 1000+ hackathons and 10,000+ programming
challenges to date. Since its inception, HackerEarth has built a developer base of over 4
million. HackerEarth has raised close to $5 million in funding over three rounds]. Today, more
than 750 customers worldwide use its Assessments platform, including Amazon, Walmart
Labs, Thoughtworks, Societe Generale, HP, VMware, DBS, HCL, GE, Wipro, Barclays, Pitney
Bowes, Intel, and HackerEarth is backed by GSF Global and Angelprime.

HackerEarth’s hackathon management software allows you to host a hackathon and manage
it end-to-end with ease.

The steps of the hackathon workflow are as follows:

• Create a hackathon
• Market the hackathon
• Build registrations
• Manage teams
• Evaluate submissions
• Publish leaderboard

Sprint confers the following advantages:

• Ability to conduct hackathons from anywhere

• Targeted brand visibility
• Solutions to real-world problems
• Extension and promotion of an organization’s work and culture
• Crowdsourcing and collating ideas and picking the best
• Online collaborative development environment
WORKSHOPS/TRAININGS:

Training people to be innovative is not just about teaching a specific range of skills. It is far
more complicated. Managers looking to create a high-performance and innovative team will
also face several cultural challenges. Fortunately, there are also some strategies to overcome
the obstacles and get some results in the midterm.

Is not just about training individuals

Perhaps the first question to ask about this topic is whether people can be trained in
innovation or not. Some recent research on this topic suggests that innovation requires
certain personal traits that every individual already has to a varying degree. Therefore,
training people in this field means helping people to “awaken” this traits in order to unleash
their innovative genius. Some of these characteristics include the ability to think abstractly,
having deep and broad knowledge, curiosity, openness to take risks, and dissatisfaction with
status quo.

What is the best way to train these traits? Basically, by doing them. Obviously, we can use a
wide range of tools, such as those created by design thinking, to design and run an innovation
process. But learning the recipe is not the same as actually cooking it. It is through a hands-
on approach, applying the toolset we have gained, that we will learn how to drive an
innovation process.
Staying Agile Drives Innovation
For Anthony Sandonato, Vice President of Learning and Development at Wyndham
Destinations, agility is the key to success in executing professional development for the
organization’s 25,000 employees in over 110 countries. Sandonato finds that an L&D strategy
should be, “[…] built upon that flexible framework, and designed to remain nimble and adjust
to continuous organizational changes without compromising either the speed or quality of
our talent development strategies.”
But, agility is a two-way street. Employees can be trained on adapting to business needs, but
adapting your L&D strategy to their present and future needs will help employees materialize
how innovation is, or can become, a regular part of how your company conducts business.
Martin Hayter, Global Assurance Learning Leader at Ernst and Young recognizes that, “That
personalization can come either from our professionals accessing required content at the
right time for them, or from choosing specific content relevant for their role and the clients
they’re working on.” Markets and technologies move quickly, and by implementing an agile
L&D strategy you can train employees on how to adapt to the fast-changing priorities of your
organization and your industry, and implement new innovations on the fly.

Experimentation Requires Recalibration

Delving into innovation will require a degree of experimentation, as you figure out what
training strategy shows itself best in your metrics, and has the most positive impact on
employee satisfaction and performance. Findcourses.com.uk’s 2019 L&D report reported that
42% of employees valued professional development as their most important employee perk,
so making sure you implement the right fit will be an ongoing process.
Take the time to do a post-mortem on your training strategies, evaluate the needs of your
organization, and the current trends of your industry to re-strategize how you implement
innovation through L&D. Be flexible, but also stay reflexive. The report found that companies
with executives highly engaged in L&D were 3x more likely to say their company had a culture
of innovation. Recalibrate your L&D strategy with trainee feedback to understand how to
implement innovation applicable to them.
Shifting organizational culture from the training room will allow you to build a culture of
innovation from the ground up, or transform your existing culture to be more applicable to
the needs of your industry. Recognizing that innovation is a learnable skill, not an inherent
quality makes training employees into innovation an ongoing organizational process,
simultaneously fostering a culture of learning and a culture of innovation. Take the plunge to
ensure your organization’s success for the long term.
Running Effective Innovation Workshops
The strongest teams are characterized by functional, gender, and cultural diversity among its
members. And, teams that are successful at innovation are committed to ongoing growth via
avenues such as innovation workshops.
When it comes to running effective innovation workshops, here are some things to keep in
mind:
First, decide where to hold the workshop. Now don’t get carried away here. Any room will do.
You don’t need a so-called innovation room with bean bag chairs and frisbees. I’m not a big
fan of these rooms because I don’t think they do anything to boost creativity. Just find a room
with comfortable chairs and flip charts.
When you begin your workshop, start by identifying the constraints around the problem.
Constraints might include budget issues, timing, or legal and regulatory boundaries. List them
all. Without constraints, the ideation will lack focus. You’re likely to generate ideas that are
too wild to be viable.
Next, make sure you and the participants define the closed world around the problem. Where
you define this imaginary space around the problem will have a big impact on how you apply
each technique.

Now decide which of the five techniques to apply.

Once you select the techniques, create a list of the components and attributes by writing
them down on a whiteboard, a flip chart, or a pad of paper. Make sure you number the list.
That helps keep the workshop more organized as you work through the lists.
When you apply a technique, be sure to work in smaller teams of two or three people, not as
one large group. Working in pairs is also more efficient.
As you apply a technique, assign each pair a different component from the list. That forces
them to really focus, and it increases their chance of coming up with a creative idea. Be sure
to set a specific time limit, say 3 minutes. This further constrains their brain to think inside
the box.
When ideas are generated, try not to identify them with a specific person. Otherwise, people
may bias the idea depending on who generated it. A simple way to do this is to have people
write down their ideas. When giving credit for the source of an idea, make sure it’s from the
pair of colleagues, not just one person. You have to find ways to strip ideas of their identity.
This will make sure ideas don’t get thrown out prematurely.
A typical workshop can be anywhere from an hour in length to several days. Innovating is hard
work, so be sure to manage the group’s energy level. Take a lot of breaks during the workshop,
and mix up the activities to keep people engaged.
Using good facilitation techniques will make sure you get the most out of your creativity
workshop.
Tailor Innovation Training to the Role of the Employees Completing It

Just like a sales department has to tweak their elevator pitch to the person they’re making it
to, leaders have to tweak the training of their employees. Training programs that make sense
to and engage an accountant might not work so well with a design engineer or sales clerk,
and vice-versa.
Training programs need to take into account who is being trained, how many people are being
trained at once, and the outcomes that are being sought.
So, before sitting a group of employees down to do innovation training, review the training
program and make sure it has been optimized for the intended audience. This rule, naturally,
can be applied to almost any kind of training program and not just innovation training.
Tailoring training might mean using a specific format, such as online training, roundtable
discussions, lectures, or one-on-one roleplay sessions with employees, in which you pose a
problem and ask them to come up with a solution on the spot.
By tailoring training to the audience, you can maximize the effects of the training so it has
more impact on efficiency afterward.

Keep Scalability of Training in Mind When Fashioning a Training Program

In a perfect world, we’d all have unlimited time and money to craft perfect training programs
that would help each and every employee achieve their maximum potential. However, in the
real world, we all have strict deadlines and budgets that have to be adhered to.
So, when crafting an innovation training program, you need to focus on what the goals of the
program are, which elements of training are most critical for achieving those goals, and how
the training can be most efficiently delivered to employees.
Setting goals may mean taking some time to establish appropriate success metrics for the
training. For example, attendance rates and session scores from employees could be
appropriate metrics to track during the training, and the rate that innovations occur or other
business outcomes can be good metrics to track after the training. This helps businesses
gauge the return on investment that the training provides.
Additionally, when creating the training, compare your training budget to the number of
people that need training and the estimated time it’ll take to complete the training. This can
help you establish the most economically-efficient training method for your innovation
training so you can train more of your employees at once.
Get started on making your workplace more efficient by using our Big Think Edge-exclusive
training course right now! Our online innovation program features short-form, easy-to-
implement training videos hosted by industry experts to engage your employees and
maximize results.
SOFTWARE TOOLS FOR IDEA GENERATION:
IDEA SCREENING:

With your list of potential new product ideas, you now need to decide which ideas to pursue
and which to discard. Consider your competition, your existing products, their shortcomings,
and the needs of your market. Draw on the customer needs list you have developed, and the
areas for product improvement you have identified.

Develop a set of criteria to evaluate your ideas against. Your criteria might include:

• most prominently identified customer needs

• product improvements most needed
• the benefits to your target market
• the technical feasibility of the idea
• the level and scope of research and development required
• the profitability of the idea. What is its potential appeal to the market? How would
you price it? What are the costs in bringing it to market — overall and per unit?
• where the product fits in the market. Is there a gap? How close is it to competitor
products?
• the resources it will require in development
• the marketing potential of the idea
• the fit with your business profile and business objectives.
• the risks associated with the idea

Screening Techniques
Decision Matrix
To ensure all new product ideas generated are screened against a level of objective
measurement, a structured concept selection of screening and scoring should be adopted. A
useful way of doing this is by setting up a matrix table. Below is an example of how this can
be implemented, with the list of ideas being rated against key metrics that are weighted to
allow for a feasibility score to be generated which can be ranked.

Ratings for the decision matrix can be ranked on a scale of 1 to 10, with ratings as follows:

Size of Target Market: 1 (Smallest Size) – 10 (Largest Size)

Level of Competition: 1 (Highest Level) – 10 (Lowest Level)
Ease of Manufacture: 1 (Lowest Feasibility) – 10 (Highest Feasibility)
Time to Market (Development Time): 1 (Longest Time) – 10 (Fastest Time)
Profitability & Rate of Return: 1 (Lowest Profit) – 10 (Highest Profit)
Tangible Benefits to User: 1 (Least Benefits) – 10 (Most Benefits)
Here is an example that you can download here (source: Velaction 2012):

For example, idea 1 and idea 5 both have a base score of 43, but idea 1 is more feasible than
idea 5 so idea 1 gets the higher score.

Other techniques available

We have listed other interesting techniques below (source: Idea evaluation methods and
techniques by Prof. Dr Miroslav Rebernik). You can learn more by searching them on the
internet.

ANONYMOUS VOTING: It is based on the anonymity of participants’ choices. This is a group

technique and is ideal for selecting from many initial ideas.

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS: It is a widely used and relatively simple tool for deciding whether
to make a change or not. The quality of the decision depends on the depth of analysis of
benefits and costs connected with the idea.
DECISION TREES: It is a decision support tool that uses a graph or model of decisions and their
possible consequences, including chance event outcomes, resource costs, and utility. It is
often appropriate for complex problems solving.

FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS: It is a group technique, and is very useful for checking the feasibility
of idea implementation. It is simple to use. Its weakness is that it is subjective and opinion
based. Force field analysis is a handy technique for looking at all the forces for and against a
decision.

KANO MODEL ANALYSIS: It is the analysis of customers’ preferences. As such it is very focused
and appropriate in the product development phase. However, it could be also be used in
identifying customer needs, determining functional requirements, concept development and
analysing competitive products. It is not useful for general idea selection.

NAF ANALYSIS – Novelty, Attractiveness, and Feasibility Analysis: This method is a quick and
easy way of assessing new ideas for three issues: novelty, appeal and practicality. The method
is especially appropriate before further development of an idea. The method is applicable
individually or in a group and in many different areas. As it is simple to use, is appropriate for
early phases in idea selection process. Its main contribution is to rank ideas.

Go / No-Go
The outcome from this phase is to get one or two ideas that can be progressed in the next
stage, but before moving onto the next stage you should answer the question, can this
product or project physically move into the next phase?

Screening factors
The strong screening factors, with which the product idea must agree, arise from the project
aim and the project constraints.
The overall aims of the company always take precedence over other factors. No matter how
brilliant a product idea is in isolation, it is rejected if it does not fit with the company's business
strategy, in particular the product strategy. There may be an outstanding product idea which
may change the direction of the company's business strategy, but it has to be taken from the
project ideas and directed back into the top management area. This product idea has to be
viewed in its scale and suitability for the company, and decisions within the company must be
taken at top management level.
The constraints identified at the beginning of the project are also important screening factors.
A product may be dropped for many reasons: it does not meet the food regulations; there is
not sufficient money to develop or to produce it; the managing director does not like it! The
factors used in screening should be as objective as possible, but sometimes subjective
decisions are made.

Some product screening factors are shown in the below Table

READINESS ASSESSMENT:
Change readiness assessments help you assess how ready the company is for change. Harvard
Business Review has a slightly more elegant way of describing it:
"Change readiness is the ability to continuously initiate and respond to change in ways that
create advantage, minimize risk, and sustain performance."

Prosci provides a breakdown of what an assessment will provide:

• Scope of the change (workgroup, department, division, enterprise)

• Number of employees impacted
• Type of change (process, technology, organization, job roles, merger, strategy)
• Amount of change from where you are today
The data collected from the assessment directly informs specific change management
activities and recommendations, including your communication strategy. Also revealed are
factors in your organization that could be either risks or enablers for the change. Thus, the
recommendation report gleaned from a change readiness assessment is a must-have for
organizations during a time of high-impact change.

3 Quick Tips for Conducting a Change Readiness Assessment

Data Collection: Use Both Qualitative and Quantitative Methods
Without utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, the data you collect won’t be
representative of your entire organization. You’ll only come away with a bird’s eye view and
miss the complete picture of your organization’s readiness.
Qualitative data is collected by conducting key stakeholder interviews. Generally, anyone in
a leadership position and directly involved with the project, as well as key members of the
project development team, should be considered for an interview. Internal organizational
influencers should also be included.
Though anecdotal, these interviews reveal opinion themes at the leadership level. Some
outcomes revealed include:

• Level of understanding of the project rationale at a leadership level

• Level of understanding of the benefits and barriers the project/change will present
• Belief of whether the project vision has been appropriately disseminated to
stakeholders
• A baseline understanding of company’s appetite for change based on previous
experiences
Quantitative data is collected via distributing a change readiness survey. Because the survey
goes to a larger audience (including leadership, the project team, and end users), it reveals
areas that need specific focus and any misalignment between leadership and end users. The
survey asks questions to understand sentiments around project sponsorship, resources and
support, understanding of the change, and general feeling of readiness.
Data Analysis: Don’t Forget to Measure Across Business Functions
Recognizing the readiness of specific business units allows you to tailor communications to
those units. Data collected from the surveys and interviews has specifics outputs, like:
Heat maps, which identify areas/departments that need more focus or supportChange
Readiness Assessment

Overall response distribution, which indicates the number of respondents who either agreed
(green) with the sentiments in the questions, were neutral (grey), or disagreed (red) all
together.

Key risks (what needs work) and enablers (what’s going well) for general stakeholder groups
Analysis of the assessment data, from both quantitative and qualitative methods, will provide a
roadmap for change and communication tactics that will best serve the needs of the business.

Recommendations and Action: Prioritize, Prioritize, Prioritize!

The data, once analyzed and compared to project business objectives, will result in a report that
outlines recommendations to improve understanding, competency, and user adoption of the new
process, system, or tool. Some examples of key change management tactics that can be recommended
as an outcome of the assessment include:
Once appropriate tactics are identified, the OCM team can draft a change strategy and communication
plan not only for the general audience, but also for specific target areas.

One way to organize these tactics is by priority, like in the table below.

Prioritizing allows you to easily target which actions need the most focus, and create specific
tasks/communications to address them. Additionally, prioritizing provides a planning tool for what to
focus on next.

Examples of statements that can be used to rate how employees perceive the change and its impact
on them personally include:

✓ The change supports my professional career plans and goals.

✓ The change will improve my financial position.
✓ I will not have to relocate to support this change.
✓ I do not view my job at risk with this change.
✓ This change would ultimately benefit my family.
✓ I am confident that I can learn the new skills and behaviors to perform my new job.
✓ The change will not adversely affect my health.
✓ The change will result in a more enjoyable work environment.

Final Word

The change readiness assessment is a phenomenal tool for the overall change management process.
It not only informs on the level of readiness, but also provides a roadmap of recommendations for
areas of focus. Change is hard, but planning for it doesn’t have to be.
PMO – PROJECT MANAGEMENT OFFICE:
Why PMO fail.

• Not properly aligned

• More tool oriented
• Lack Governance – Steering committee is not that effective in getting work done as most of
the time they are not aware as how the work is done. Committees at the operational level
gets work done.

PMO helps in:

• Be in sync with the strategy

• Meeting Objectives
• Provide values

PMO Metrics:

• Adherence to budget
• Adherence to schedule
• Adherence to scope
• Responsiveness
• Employee satisfaction score
• Cost Performance

MEASURE SUCCESS & FAILURE:

Case Study:

https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/practical-approach-project-management-metrics-5882

TOOL FOR PMO:

https://www.odoo.com/page/project-
management?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=06_project&utm_campaign=en-
bingcpa&msclkid=2b7c0de362cd1e4ea593533b9e464ef2
CREATING AND COMMUNICATING VISION:
When you have a solid Vision Script, everything in your business can be filtered through it.
-- By MICHAEL HYATT
INSPIRING:
CONNECTING WITH PAST/FUTURE/BOTH:
TARGETS & SPECIFIC GOALS:
SOLICIT FEEDBACK:
MAP OUT THE PATH TO THE VISION:
KICK OFF EVENT:

PROTOTYPE TESTING:
PILOT MODEL:
IMPLEMENT THE CHANGE:

REWARD MECHANISM:
WHY REWARD MATTERS:

Work motivation is desired but it is not a constant phenomenon that every employee possesses.
Provide employee recognition to say thank you and you will encourage a positive, productive, and
innovative organizational climate.

Employees appreciate heartfelt, sincere, specific recognition from their managers, senior managers,
and co-workers. It makes them feel good and when they feel appreciated, their contribution leads to
better results for your business.

People who feel appreciated end up experiencing more self-worth and their ability to
contribute to the company increases as a result. You then experience a happier and more
productive employee.

Guidelines and ideas to help you effectively provide employee recognition and avoid
potential problems when you undertake acknowledging your staff.
Determine Your Goal for Your Recognition Efforts
Decide what you want to achieve through your employee recognition efforts. Many
organizations use a scatter approach to employee recognition. They implement a whole
bunch of employee recognition ideas and hope that some efforts stick. Or, conversely, they
recognize just a few employees, and not very often.
Instead, create goals and action plans for employee recognition. Recognize the actions,
behaviours, approaches, and accomplishments that you know will make your organization
more productive and efficient.
Fairness, clarity, and consistency are important in employee recognition. People need to see
that each person who makes the same or a similar contribution has an equal likelihood of
receiving recognition for their efforts.

Establish Criteria for Employee Recognition

Ensure that your organization establishes criteria for what makes a person eligible for
employee recognition.
For example, if people are recognized for exceeding a production or sales expectation,
everyone who goes over the goal shares in the glory. Recognizing only the highest
performer will demoralize all of your other contributors. Make sure the criteria for
employee recognition is clearly stated and understood by everyone.

Establish Guidelines for Leaders:

Set guidelines so leaders acknowledge equivalent and similar contributions. For example,
each employee who stays after work to contribute ideas in a departmental improvement
brainstorming session gets to have lunch with the department head. Or, recognize each
employee who contributes to a customer, even the employee who just answered the
phone—their actions set the sale in motion.

Make Employee Recognition Inconsistent—But Constant:

Approaches and content must also be inconsistent. You want to offer employee recognition
that is consistently fair, but you also want to make sure that your employee recognition
efforts do not become expectations or entitlements.
For example, if employees are invited to lunch with the boss every time they work overtime,
the lunch becomes an expectation or entitlement. It is no longer a reward. Additionally, if a
person does not receive the expected reward, it becomes a source of dissatisfaction and
negatively impacts the person’s attitude about work.

Be Specific About Why the Employee Is Receiving Recognition:

Be specific about why the individual is receiving the recognition. The purpose of feedback is
to reinforce what you’d like to see the employee do more of—the purpose of employee
recognition is the same. In fact, employee recognition is one of the most powerful forms of
feedback that you can provide.
For example, say something like, “The report had a significant impact on the committee’s
decision. You did an excellent job of highlighting the key points and information we needed
before making the final decision. Because of your work, we’ll be able to cut 6% out of our
operating budget.”
Make Recognition Timely:
Offer recognition as close to the event as possible. When a person performs positively,
provide recognition immediately. Because it's likely the employee is already feeling good
about his or her performance; your timely recognition of the employee will enhance the
positive feelings. This, in turn, positively affects the employee’s confidence in their ability to
perform well in their position.
Remember that employee recognition is personal. One person may enjoy public recognition
at a staff meeting while another prefers a private note in their personnel file. The best way
to determine what an employee finds rewarding is to ask your employees.

EFFECTIVE WAYS TO RECOGNIZE EMPLOYEES:

Employee Appreciation Events/ Days

Bonus/Treats
Employee recognition wall
Give Experiences Not Money
It does not have to be expensive rewards
Allow both managers and their peers to reward employees.
Recognize team achievements.

END NOTES:
1
https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/importance-of-innovation/
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation
1 https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2016/03/innovation-15-experts-share-innovation-definition/
1 https://www.viima.com/blog/importance-of-

innovation#:~:text=Innovation%20increases%20your%20chances%20to,and%20services%20for%20your%20customers.
1 https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/importance-of-innovation/
1 https://orleansmarketing.com/35-technology-facts-stats/

1
https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/types-of-innovation/
1
https://www.northeastern.edu/graduate/blog/types-of-innovation/
1
https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-4-types-of-innovation-and-the-problems-they-solve

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-ideation-and-how-to-prepare-for-
ideation-sessions (IDEATION)

https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/what-is-ideation-in-design-thinking/ (IDEATION)
https://www.hackerearth.com/community-hackathons/resources/e-books/guide-to-organize-
hackathon/ (HACKATHON)

https://www.carrots.ph/blog/5-tips-on-employee-rewards-recognition-by-google