It’s the process, stupid!
Think we got the tips of our toes wet today.
came into the kitchen room meeting room (or KRMR, as it is called by our hosts) today to lead a discussion about innovation and how we might structure the Red Stripe project.
We laid out some of our nagging questions before he spoke. How open should we be about the project? Should we ask customers/clients what they think? Should we open up the generation of ideas? Should our creation sit within The Economist Group? Should we use The Economist name when asking for ideas? What process do we use for evaluating ideas? How do we determine what is really innovative and what is just incremental?
Gerard mentioned that in one of his previous start-ups he created an innovation support group where senior executives who were interested in the process of innovation made their time available to people who wanted to present an idea, called “Idea Champions”. When listening to one of them, the group was not allowed to make negative comments before two postitive ones were made — making people more likely to come forward with ideas. Those that made it past this stage were put in front of an evaluation group who would apply tougher criteria. Later, ideas would be prioritised and budgets allocated.
It won’t be working quite the same with us and, in some ways, we’ve done it a little backwards. We got the budget first — based on the idea that we will come up with ideas. It’s good to know that the element of trust in some way already exists.
But we have to get going quickly. Gerard suggested a way to move forward, which we thought was worth following. In the the next two weeks, we will develop a framework to generate, analyse and cluster ideas. To finetune this process we will test it using ideas already floating around and solicit outside advice. After this, we’ll get serious — and use the process to come up with the real thing. By mid-March, hopefully, we’ll be in business.
