стив бланк кастомер девелопмент
Чего хочет потребитель: объясняем Customer Development
Чтобы создавать успешные продукты, стартапы используют модель «развития потребителя», или Customer Development. Объясняем, как она помогает в работе.
Создатель модели CustDev — американский предприниматель Стив Бланк. Customer Development помогает создавать продукты, которые будут покупать.
Как работает модель Customer Development
Это процесс из четырех этапов, который проходит одновременно с разработкой продукта.
Пишет про управление в Skillbox. Работала координатором проектов в Русском музее, писала для блога агентства CRM-маркетинга Out of Cloud.
Customer discovery: выявить потребителей
На этом этапе нужно собрать информацию, которая поможет лучше узнать потенциальных пользователей и проверить первые гипотезы.
Нужно понять, кто потенциальные клиенты, и проверить, есть ли у них реальная потребность в продукте, то есть проблема, которую вы собираетесь решать. Для этого команды используют концепцию Jobs To Be Done.
Ответить на вопрос:
«Для кого продукт?».
Customer validation: верифицировать потребителей
Тут нужно проверить всю собранную информацию и создать MVP.
MVP, или Minimum Viable Product — это первая рабочая версия продукта. То есть тот минимум функций, которого хватит для решения проблем пользователя. На этом этапе клиент уже должен захотеть купить продукт.
Вот как это происходит. Вы делаете первую версию продукта, показываете ее пользователям и собираете обратную связь. Потом вносите исправления, снова показываете пользователям и спрашиваете их мнение. И так до тех пор, пока не получите готовый работающий продукт.
Ответить на вопросы: «Соответствует ли
продукт потребностям потребителей? Почему его должны купить?».
Customer creation: расширить клиентскую базу
На этом этапе вся нужная информация уже собрана и проверена, у продукта появились первые пользователи. Теперь нужно увеличить аудиторию и начать продавать.
Для этого нужно показать продукт целевой аудитории, которая с ним еще не знакома. Например, рассказать о нем с помощью публикаций в медиа, которые читают потенциальные потребители.
Ответить на вопрос:
«Как добиться, чтобы продукт покупало больше людей?».
Company building: выстроить компанию
Завершающий этап модели Customer Development, на котором продукт из идеи превращается в бизнес. Уже понятно, кто потребители, какая у них проблема и как ее решать. У продукта есть постоянные пользователи, которые готовы за него платить. Теперь нужно использовать все полученные знания и учесть ошибки, чтобы закрепить положительный результат.
Ответить на вопрос:
«Как не потерять то, чего мы уже достигли, и улучшить результат?».
Каждый этап модели Customer Development — это циклический процесс. Вопросы, которые задает команда, и ответы на них меняются в зависимости от реакции пользователей. Поэтому прежде, чем общаться с пользователями, нужно понять цели — что хотите выяснить, продумать вопросы — как и о чем будете спрашивать, аудиторию — с кем конкретно будете общаться.
Если используете CustDev, важно не бояться ошибок и не переходить к следующему этапу, пока не получите положительный результат от предыдущего.
Чтобы узнать больше о модели Customer Development и как ее используют продуктовые команды, советуем посмотреть эти видео:
Заключение
Если вы начинающий менеджер или только хотите им стать, приходите на курс Skillbox по управлению продуктом — учиться проводить исследования, проверять гипотезы и общаться с пользователями.
Steve Blank
Email Subscription
Entrepreneurship is a Calling
See more how to Startup videos hereCategories
Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed
Recent Posts
Archives
Other Stuff
Reminder
Share this:
Like this:
Innovators podcast @ Stanford
Share this:
Like this:
Lean Startup In Japanese Companies
Implementing the Lean Startup in any company is hard. All the culture and incentives are designed for execution. Innovation at times seems like you’re swimming up hill. Now compound that level of effort with trying to put a Lean Startup culture in place in Japan.
According to Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino, Japanese companies tend to be technology centric, obsess over quality and have weak leadership. Technology centric leads to companies ignoring their customers and the challenge is that they don’t do customer interviews. The obsession with quality leads to a silo mentality and a mania for procedure, the challenge is a lack of flexibility. And weak leadership leads to a reluctance to change and the inability to mandate Lean as an innovation process.
They list four actionable steps for implementing Lean in Japanese corporations. I think they’re relevant for all companies.
If you can’t see the presentation click here
Share this:
Like this:
How Investors Make Better Decisions: The Investment Readiness Level
Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it”, there’s no formal way for an investor to assess project maturity or quantify risks. Other than measuring engineering progress, there’s no standard language to communicate progress.
What’s been missing for everyone is:
Teams can prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. While it doesn’t eliminate great investor judgment, pattern recognition skills and mentoring, we’ve developed an Investment Readiness Level tool that fills in these missing pieces. Background about the Investment Readiness Level here and here.
While the posts were theory I was a bit surprised when John Selep, an early-stage investor, approached me and said he was actually using the Investment Readiness Level (IRL) in practice.
As Selections Committee chair for our Sacramento Angels investor group, I review applications from dozens of startup entrepreneurs looking for investment. I also mentor at our local university, and guest-lecture at a number of Entrepreneurship courses on how to pitch to investors, so the task of helping students and entrepreneurs visualize the process of investor decision-making has often been a challenge.
Prior to having the Investment Readiness Level framework, this “how to get ready for an investor” discussion had been a “soft” conceptual discussion. The Investment Readiness Level makes the stages of development for the business very tangible. Achieving company milestones associated with the next level on the Investment Readiness Level framework is directly relevant to the capital-raising process.
I use the Investment Readiness Level as part of my sessions to help the students understand that being ready for investment means that besides having a pretty PowerPoint, they need to do real work and show Customer Development progress.
Since I began incorporating the Investment Readiness Level framework I’ve made three observations. The Investment Readiness Level (IRL):
Tying Fundraising to the Lean Startup
The premise of the Lean Startup is that a startup’s initial vision is really just a series of untested hypotheses, and that the Customer Development process is a systematic approach to ‘getting out of the building’ and testing and validating each of those hypotheses to discover a repeatable, scalable business model. The Investment Readiness Level adds to this methodology by tying each phase of this discovery process or ‘hypothesis-validation’ to milestones representing a startup’s increasing readiness for investor support and capital investment. For investors this is a big idea.
I remind entrepreneurs that investors are implicitly seeking evidence of progress and milestones (but until the Investment Readiness Level never knew how to ask for it). Entrepreneurs should always communicate their business’ very latest stage of customer development as part of their investor presentation. Given that a startup is continually learning weekly, the entrepreneur’s investor presentation will evolve on a weekly basis as well, reflecting their latest progress.
In our Angel investor group, our Applicant Selections process ranks applicant companies relative to the other applicants. In the past, the ranking process relied on our Selection Committee members having an intuitive “feel” for whether a startup was worth considering for investment.
As part of our screening process, I’ve embraced the Investment Readiness Level (IRL) framework as a more-precise way to think through where applicant companies would rank. (BTW, this does not mean that the IRL framework has been embraced by rest of our Selections committee – organizational adoption is a lot more complicated than an individual adopting a framework.) I believe the IRL framework offers a more-precise method to discuss and describe ‘maturity’, and will likely become a more explicit part of our selections discussion in the year ahead.
Investment Readiness Level is Prescriptive
At first blush the Investment Readiness Level framework is a diagnostic tool – it can be used to gauge how far a business has progressed in its Customer Development process. A supposition is that startups that have validated hypotheses about key elements of their business have reduced the risks in launching their new business and are more ready for investment.
This means the IRL is also a Prescriptive tool. No matter where a startup is in its stage of development, the immediate next stage milestone – where the entrepreneurs should focus their attention next – is immediately clear. Although every business is unique, and every business model emerges and evolves in its own unique way, the logical sequencing of incremental discovery and validation implicit in the IRL framework is very clear. No ambiguity. Clarity is good.
Investment Readiness Level Enables Better Mentoring
As you might imagine, our Angel group receives applications for funding from a wide, wide variety of businesses, with highly variable quality of the businesses and their applications, and highly variable levels of maturity of those businesses. Some of our applicants are not scalable, high-growth businesses, and we tell them quickly if they don’t fit our profile. Others have the potential to be scalable, high-growth businesses, but simply aren’t as compelling or as mature as better candidates in our funnel. During every Selections cycle, as we refine our applicant funnel to select the entrepreneurs to present to our membership, I obviously have to say “No” to far more entrepreneurs than those to whom I can say “Yes”.
The Investment Readiness Level adds a new dimension to those conversations, providing a vocabulary and framework for shifting the conversation from simply ‘No’, to the much-more-helpful “Not yet – but here’s what you can do…”. It has completely changed the nature of the conversations I have with applicants. The prescriptive nature of the IRL means that wherever a business is in its current state of development, the next step on the ladder is nearly always pretty obvious. Of course, there should always be a little latitude for the unique nature of each business, but the IRL framework is a good guidepost. So the “here’s what you can do…” recommendations are clear, logical, and situationally-relevant to the entrepreneur’s business.
I would estimate that perhaps half of the applicants we see have heard of and use some form of Lean Startup or Customer Development methodology. The idea of a “Minimum Viable Product” is something that has entered the general vernacular, but I’m sure that not all of the businesses tossing the term around truly understand the Lean Startup teachings.
So when I’m providing feedback to an entrepreneur applying to our group for funding, I leverage the IRL framework to guide the feedback that I give. I don’t refer to the framework explicitly, but I provide feedback based on where I assess the company to be in their development, and what steps they’d need to pursue to get another rung or two up the ladder.
For example, I might say “The Sacramento Angels have decided that your firm isn’t quite ready for us to consider for potential investment at this point, but if you were able to discuss your prototype with 50-to-100 potential customers and get their feedback, this might help you identify the specific segments that care most-deeply about the advantages you’re offering over the existing alternative. We’d like to stay in touch with you and hear more from you once you’ve identified your initial target segment and how you are going to reach and service them …”
I’ve almost universally found that the entrepreneurs I’m discussing these recommendations with are pleased to have the feedback, even if they’re disappointed that we may not be funding them. For an entrepreneur, receiving guidance of “Not now, but here’s what you can do…” is better than getting a flat, directionless “No”. For me, the ability to articulate the concept of maturity, and investment readiness as a continuum, is extremely helpful. Being able to articulate that an applicant’s current stage of development, along that continuum, is not aligned with our group’s investment goals but that with further progress on their part, there may be alignment – this is a fundamentally superior message.
The Investment Readiness Level has given me the tools to engage in a consultative, coaching and mentoring conversation that provides much more value to entrepreneurs, resulting in a much more-enjoyable conversation for all involved.
Steve Blank
Email Subscription
Entrepreneurship is a Calling
See more how to Startup videos hereCategories
Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed
Recent Posts
Archives
Other Stuff
How to Find a Market? Use Jobs-To-Be-Done as the Front End of Customer Discovery
Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures:
These tools tell you how to rapidly find product/market fit inside a market, and how to pivot when your hypotheses are incorrect. However, they don’t help you figure out where to start the search for your new business.
Anthony Ulwick and Ted Thayer of Strategyn have a set of unique and valuable insights:
Problem – Lean Doesn’t Have a Market Definition Step
The Lean Startup methodology asks innovators to interview potential customers within their “market” to discover the customer’s unmet needs and establish a product/market fit. Given the number of interviews to get meaningful data, this can take months.
As innovators deepen their understanding of the customer, they may pivot their product concept, target a different vertical, demographic, or customer activity, or incorporate a different technology into their solution.
Some innovators define markets around a product, e.g. the vacuum cleaner market or the espresso maker market. Others define markets around verticals, e.g. the financial services market or the healthcare market. Or defined around demographics (the people over 45 market), technologies (the brain sensor market), customer activities (the fitness market), and product portfolios (the heavy equipment market).
Here’s the consequence: Depending on how founders originally define their market, making one or more of these changes can inadvertently alter the original market definition, which in turn changes the “market” they are targeting and invalidates the customer needs they have captured.
This creates a recursive process in which the team is simultaneously iterating on the market definition, customer needs, and the value proposition, with no logical way to exit. This circular loop can cause them to churn, pivot, and fail.
Startups would have a greater chance of success if founders could avoid iterating the market they are targeting while at the same time trying to establish product/market fit.
In most cases, innovators don’t create markets; they create products to serve markets. Thus, the market must be defined and validated in the innovation equation before moving to needs discovery and product definition.
What’s Missing?
What missing is a process for defining a market that reduces uncertainty, reduces iteration in the effort to establish a product/market fit, and aligns the team around the business objectives and the results.
We’ve spent a good number of years asking ourselves what constitutes the “perfect” market definition. What we have concluded is that a market should be defined in such a way that…
Given this set of characteristics, how should a market be defined?
How should a market be defined?
It’s worth remembering that people buy products and services to get a “job” done. A job is defined as a task people are trying to accomplish, a goal or objective they are trying to achieve, a problem they are trying to resolve, something they are trying to avoid, or anything else they are trying to accomplish. More about Jobs-to-be-Done Theory here.
When looking at a market through the Jobs-to-be-Done lens, a market is best defined as: a group of people and the job they are trying to get done.
For example, parents (a group of people) who are trying to “pass on life lessons to children” (a job-to-be-done) constitute a market. As do surgeons (a group of people) who are trying to “repair a torn rotator cuff” (a job-to-be-done), or clinicians (a group of people) who are trying to “diagnose the cause of a patient’s sleep disorder” (a job-to-be-done).
When defining markets with a jobs-to-be-done lens, thousands of unique markets exist. They are stable over time, focus on what people are trying to accomplish rather than solutions, offer a focal point for analysis, and form a foundation for deeply understanding customer needs. Learn about needs through this lens here.
Because the market is defined using “Jobs-to-be-Done” before engaging in the first step of the Lean Startup methodology, the defined market will not change as customer discovery and validation of that market unfolds. This cuts back on the number of iterations and pivots.
Big idea – Even New and Disruptive Markets can all be viewed as “Jobs-to-be-Done”
How does “Jobs-to-be-Done” work in new and disruptive markets? For example, people often talk about the cryptocurrency market as a new market, but is it really? It depends how you define “market.”
If you choose to define a market around a new product or a new technology, then, by definition, the “cryptocurrency market” would be considered new. But if you define the same market through a jobs-to-be-done lens, the story is very different, as consumers (a group of people) have for centuries been trying to intermediate the storage and exchange of value over time (the job-to-be-done).
When looking through a jobs-to-be-done lens, cryptocurrency is simply a new offering in a pre-existing market. Similarly, Uber, Netflix, electronic evidence discovery, cloud computing, smartphones, online learning, Airbnb, Spotify, Google Maps and many other products considered disruptions are in fact new offerings in pre-existing markets.
Why does this matter? When conducting needs discovery, potential customers struggle to articulate needs for a product that does not yet exist. But when you ask them about their job-to-be-done, customers can state with precision their needs associated with getting the job done better, making needs discovery faster and more effective.
To help you define your market through this lens, we have created the Jobs-to-be-Done Market Definition Canvas. We want to make this canvas available to everyone who has embraced the Lean Startup methodology and want to take it to the next level.
Instructions for using the canvas are included below, and the canvas can be downloaded here.
THE JOBS-TO-BE-DONE MARKET DEFINITION CANVAS
If you can’t see the canvas click here.
The Jobs-to-be-Done Market Definition Canvas is designed to help you define the market you are in or have chosen to serve as [a group of people] + [the job they are trying to get done].
The Market Definition Canvas works for both B2C and B2B applications. While it is optimized to define single-sided markets, it can be used twice to define both sides of a double-sided market. For component manufacturers who sell to OEMs or who are at the top of a long distribution chain, a canvas can be completed for each constituent in the distribution chain, including the end-user, as each constituent has its own unique job to get done.
8 steps to define Jobs to Be Done
1. Start with a traditional market definition
What is the product/service/idea you seek to innovate?
The exercise starts with something you’re familiar with—a product focus. We ask, “What is the product, service, or idea you’re looking to innovate around?” We use this as the grounding point, as the subsequent steps will help transition you from a product view to a jobs-to-be-done view of your market.
2. Job executor determination
Who’s using the product to get a job done? 
The focus on “jobs to be done” begins with this step. Ask, who’s using your product (or who would use your product once released) to get a job done? The goal is to reveal the diverse set of potential product users. So, list all the categories of people who use or would use the product to extract its value. Keep in mind; we are focused here on the job executors. Do not list out influencers, economic buyers, people who support the product throughout its lifecycle, or other customer types, just job executors.
For example, Bosch used this approach when trying to enter the North American circular saw market (yes, they began with a product-based market definition in mind). They concluded that finish carpenters, framers, roofers, general contractors, electricians, and plumbers use circular saws. Notice they did not use the formal job titles of the job executors; instead, they listed the categories of people who use circular saws.
3. Abstracted job executor
What overarching term can classify all the categories of people using the product to get a job done? 
Next, define the one overarching term that can be used to classify or describe all people using, or potentially using, your product these people as a single group. Remember, we are defining a market as a group of people + the job-to-be-done. When defining the group of people, try not to use an actual job title. Instead, look for an all-inclusive term that encapsulates all job executors, usually a higher-level, generic term.
The Bosch team, for example, abstracted roofers, framers, plumbers, finish carpenters, etc., into a higher-level category using the term “tradespeople.” In other words, the “group of people” using circular saws was conveniently referred to as tradespeople.
For consumer product goods, the job executors are often referred to simply as “consumers.”
4. Job executor
The group of people (job executor) is defined as: 
You may have come up with more than one way to describe the “group of people.” Choose a label that fits all types of people using the product, service, or idea you have in mind. For example, you may choose the term surgeons over cardiac surgeons, or tradespeople over tradesmen to be more inclusive. Other examples include educators over teachers, accountants over tax preparers, or consumers over adults.
It is important to define the “group of people” before defining the job-to-be-done, as you will be interviewing representatives of the group to determine, from them alone, the way they define the job they are trying to get done.
5. Function of the product
What “job” does the product/service/idea you want to innovate help the job executor accomplish? 
Products don’t have jobs-to-be-done; people do. But to uncover the targeted group’s job-to-be-done, it is often helpful to start by understanding what function/job the product you have in mind performs.
Work with your product team, or preferably use customer discovery to go directly to the “group” of people (defined in step 4) and ask: What does/will the product or service we have in mind help you accomplish from a functional perspective? Collect and cull the responses into a single statement according to this formula:
The product will help the group of people [verb] + [object of the verb] + [contextual clarifier (optional)].
For example, a kettle may be used to “heat + water + to the desired temperature,” or a dental drill may be used to “contour + the shape + of a tooth.”
Keep in mind; this isn’t the customer’s job-to-be-done—it’s the function or the job that the product gets done, which is often only part of the job the customer is trying to get done. For example, while people may use a kettle to “heat water to the desired temperature,” the overall job they are trying to get done may be to “prepare a hot beverage for consumption.”
The goal of the market definition canvas is to help innovators uncover the job-to-be-done as perceived by the customer, not the product developer.
6. Other products used and their functions
What other products do people use in conjunction with the product?
What “job” does each of the other products get done?
To get a feel for the entire job your customer is trying to get done, ask them what other products they use immediately before, while, and immediately after using your product/service.
For example, when tradespeople use a circular saw to “cut wood,” what other products are they using in conjunction with a circular saw? Perhaps they are also using a T-square, a measuring tape, sandpaper, and (or) a pencil.
List the products they use in conjunction with the one you have in mind.
Next, document the functions / jobs that each of these other products gets done for the group of people. Use the same format used previously: [verb] + [object of the verb] + [contextual clarifier (optional)].
The Bosch team, for example, determined through customer interviews that while the function of the circular saw was to “cut wood” (a job statement), that tradespeople were using a T-square to ensure they “make a cut in a straight line” (a job statement), and that they were using a pencil to “mark the cut path” (a job statement).
7. Abstracted job statement
When looking at the market through the job executor’s eyes, what core functional job do they say they are trying to get done? 
Putting all the pieces together helps reveal the customer’s ultimate job-to-be-done at the right level of abstraction. Assume your product is getting part of a job done. Assume people are using these other products to complete the entire job-to-be-done.
You want to define your customer’s job-to-be-done in a way that includes your product’s function (job) and rationalizes why customers are using all these other products as they cobble together a complete solution. The Bosch team, for example, determined that tradespeople are using a circular saw along with other products so they can “cut wood in a straight line” (the abstracted job statement).
A financial services firm determined that accountants use tax preparation software in conjunction with other products so they can “formulate and execute a tax strategy for a client” (the abstracted job statement).
Defining the market at this level of abstraction allows you to evolve your product over time to help customers get more, and eventually all, of their job done—preferably before competitors do. It offers the innovator a built-in path and vision for growth—tied directly to what customers are trying to accomplish.
Remember, complete steps 5-8 employing customer interviews. Make sure you encapsulate the job of the product you have in mind in the abstracted job statement. If the job of the product is not represented, you have abstracted the job statement to too high a level. Preventing you from capturing customer need statements that will help inform the improvement of the product you have in mind.
8. Customer’s Job-to-be-Done
Now that you have your customer’s job, you can document that job in this box. If you have multiple versions of the job statement, work with job executors to gain consensus on the best version.
With this, the Market Definition Canvas is completed, and your market is defined for you through a jobs-to-be-done lens. Your market = Group of people (Step 4) + Job-to-be-Done (Step 8)
Now you can iterate quickly during your lean innovation process—and more reliably succeed in your market.
To learn more about Jobs Theory and Outcome-Driven Innovation, check out the following resources:
Share this:
Like this:
Lead and Disrupt
You think startups are hard? Try innovating inside a large company where 99% of the company is executing the current business model, while you’re trying to figure out and build what comes next.
Charles O’Reilly and Michael Tushman coined the term an “Ambidextrous Organization” to describe how some companies get this simultaneous execution and innovation process right. Their book Lead and Disrupt describes how others can learn how to do so.
I was honored to write the forward to their second edition. Here it is in its entirety.
What you’re holding in your hand is a revolutionary document. It answers the questions of why some companies trace a brilliant arc as a shooting star and then flame out while others continue to thrive. Why are some companies able to reinvent themselves while others, once market leaders, are disrupted?
Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter? Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups?
The short answer is no. What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. And they also recognize that simply exploiting their existing assets, capabilities, and business models is insufficient for long-term survival. So they prepare for future markets by exploring new ventures.
This radical idea of companies continuing to execute and exploit their existing business model while simultaneously exploring and creating new products, businesses, and business models is what O’Reilly and Tushman call ambidexterity. While simple at first glance, the concept is revolutionary in its ability to transform an enterprise. This book not only explains the “why does this happen” but more importantly gives you the tools for “what to do about it.”
In the 20th century, finding the successful formula for repeatable start-up success remained a black art. The idea of exploitation versus exploration was central in my own work in building the lean methodology for start-ups. The key was the realization that start-ups are not simply smaller versions of large companies, which execute/exploit known business models, and whose customers, problems, and necessary product features are all “knowns.” In sharp contrast, start-ups operate in “search/explore” mode, seeking a repeatable and profitable business model. The search for a business model requires dramatically different rules, roadmaps, skill sets, tools, and culture in order to minimize risk and optimize chances for success.
Recognizing the anomaly was just the first step. There were no standard tools, methods, or playbooks for start-ups. So we built our own tools to enable founders to rapidly translate their vision into hypotheses and then into validated facts. These tools—Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design—became the lean start-up methodology, a rigorous approach to testing hypotheses and building prototypes, and, on the basis of data and evidence, adjusting or pivoting to a variant of the original hypothesis. Today, lean is the de facto method for building new start-ups.
Fast forward two decades, and many companies have adopted these start-up tools and methods to deal with disruption. However, after watching innovators in large companies try to use the lean start-up methodology, I’m embarrassed to say that it has mostly devolved into standalone innovation activities (corporate incubators, accelerators, and so on) resulting in “innovation theater,” with nice coffee mugs and posters but little impact on the top or bottom line.
In this book O’Reilly and Tushman succinctly articulate why these tools succeed in start-ups but fail in large companies. Most R&D budgets in established companies are spent on sustaining innovations that support existing products and operating divisions and the attendant processes and procedures, rigorous measurement, and controls. These formalized structures, necessary for managing execution/exploitation, actually strangle disruptive innovation before it can start.
Companies built around exploitation emphasize efficiency, productivity, and the reduction of variance, whereas exploration demands searching, discovering, and accepting risk and failure. To accomplish both simultaneously—to be an ambidextrous company—requires not only separate organizations for each function, but also different business models, competencies, systems, processes, incentives, and cultures. In short, it requires a different way not only to manage a company, but a different way to organize it as well.
This is a really big idea.
To be truly successful at ambidexterity firms must master the new skills of ideation, incubation, and scaling. Firms first generate new ideas via ideation: the last twenty years have seen an explosion of corporate venture capital, open innovation, and employee involvement via hackathons and incubators. A smaller number of companies have become proficient at the next step—incubation—rigorously testing new business concepts, using the lean start-up methods of Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design. However, relatively few have successfully scaled new internal ventures to enable them to stay ahead of disruption. It is this discipline of scaling, actually building new, substantive, profitable businesses, that is critical to the success of new, highly innovative corporate ventures. It’s only when companies can scale that they truly win. Scaling is the crux of ambidexterity.
Recognizing the need for ambidexterity and building an ambidextrous organization are tests of corporate leadership.
In the end, exploitation pays your salary while exploration pays your pension. Companies that survive do both.
This book will do for companies what the lean methodology did for start-ups – give its leaders the essential playbook for transforming their organizations to meet the future.
Share this:
Like this:
Why Innovation Heroes are a Sign of a Dysfunctional Organization
A week ago I got invited to an “innovation hero” award ceremony at a government agency. I don’t know how many of these I’ve been to in the last couple years, but this one just made my head explode.
The award was for an entrepreneur who worked against all odds to buck the system to turn her insight into an application. She had realized it was possible to automate a process that was being done manually – reentering data from one spreadsheet to another and annotating it with additional data from another system. Inspired by her own work problem, she talked to her peers and other stakeholders, built multiple minimum viable products, and figured out how to get engineering, policy, legal, security and everyone else in the enterprise to actually approve it. And then she fought with the acquisition folks to buy the trivial amount of additional hardware needed to connect it. It was a development process that would’ve taken three weeks in a startup, but inside this agency took 10 months (which was considered fast.) At each step she was confronted with “we’re not budgeted for this” or “this isn’t on our schedule” and “this isn’t your job.” Most rational people would’ve given up and said “you can’t fight the system“ but yet she persisted.
I’m constantly puzzled why thoughtful and astute CEOs and Agency Directors never ask, “Why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization? Why don’t we have a repeatable process for innovation? What are the obstacles in the way of delivering needed innovation with speed and urgency in our organization? Why is it that after each one of these awards we don’t go back and fix the parts of the system that made creating something new so difficult?”
Instead, everyone at this award ceremony just went back to work like it was business as usual. I realized that innovation in this organization was going to continue to happen by heroics and exception rather than by design. As I’ve seen play out way too many times, ultimately the innovators get tired of banging their heads against the wall and leave government service or large companies. Their organizations hemorrhage the very people they need to help them compete against aggressive adversaries or competitors who have them in their sights.
An Organizational Design Problem
Sadly, this wasn’t a single act of bad management or malice. No single individual thought they weren’t doing their job. However, if anyone had taken the time to deconstruct the reason for the roadblocks to innovation, they would have uncovered they weren’t just obstinate middle managers, or a single bad process. Asking a series of “five whys,” (see this HBR article) would have discovered that:
Well-managed organizations realize that they need both innovation and execution. With execution being dominant in peacetime/competitive advantage you have managers of process. In crisis/wartime innovation is dominant. Instead of mangers of process you need innovation leaders who shepherd ideas through an innovation pipeline. (see this HBR article.) Successful organizations recognize that innovation isn’t a single activity (incubators, accelerators, hackathons); it is a strategically organized end-to-end process from idea to deployment.
While innovation and execution have different processes, people, and culture, they need to respect and depend on each other. This ambidexterity (see this HBR article) and the innovation processes that go with it require an innovation doctrine – an overall strategy and playbook for the entire organization and enterprise that includes an innovation pipeline and processes intended to drive innovation efforts, and describes the role of innovation leaders in an ambidextrous organization – all focused on rapid deployment of new capabilities.
Lessons Learned