Y/our Innovation Incubator | ExperimentFirst

We are helping innovation directors* run innovation incubators for employees, which solve customer problems that drive growth We...

*innovation directors, innovation managers, heads of business development and product managers

innovate with you, as co-founders, trippling your capacity, requiring no new hiring

deliver at low-cost, innovation on subscription of £400 per person/month

create a culture of innovation at scale, accessible for the whole organisation

make innovation happen at speed, results in 40 days, we don't do reports

How...

organisati-ons face a a number of innovation problems when creating new value...

Leadership-Gap

Execution-Gap

FAILURE

UNFOCUSED

"Innovation models in global companies across diverse sectors, (shows) projects fail between 70% and 90% of the time."

Entertaining too many ideas for innovation, not focused on why - Innovation not aligned with strategy and/or without constraints

EXPENSIVE

Hiring innovation consultants, building your own incubator or innovation unit can end up being expensive, "more and more large companies have been outsourcing their intrapreneurial efforts. They pay upwards of $300K to $1 million"

NOT A HABIT

Innovation projects either end up having to be signed off by many levels or have no senior sponsors/buy-in. Formalising ideas and innovation too early can be more harmful than good in establishing an innovation-culture or habit, making it not sustainable or repeatable

LACK OF SKILLS

The often neglected part of innovation, is training for the people, at the individual level, to innovate. "Yet, it is not the direction in which most innovation-seeking firms seem to be channeling their efforts."

INACTION

LITTLE CAPACITY

There is a lot of talk about innovation, but very little gets done.

Innovation workshops are full of inspiration and frameworks, but very little tangible progress is made with ideas.

Chief Innovation Officers/Managers, Head of Business Unit

What...

Customer

Development

How...

Product

Development

Testing...

When...

Business Model

Development

Customers

Solutions

Distribution

Focus on...

- Build and test at least 2 variants of the solutions

- Sign-up early adopter customers
- Demonstrate impact on revenue margins, costs, etc) in order to decide on 1 idea to take to SCALE

Who (You?)...

Why...

Strategy

Development

A virtual team of 2 comprising frontline/customer facing staff and sponsor

A virtual team of 2/3 comprising frontline/customer facing staff and product/service developer and designer

A dedicated team depending on the solution

- Create 3 variants of the problem definitions (core, adjacent and disruptive)

- Discover job-to-done

- Test 3-5 different pretotypes with end customers/users

- Decide on 2 to take forward to SOLUTION.

- Test at least 2 variants of the pricing (revenue model)

- Test 2 go-to market strategies

- Test key partners to accelerate delivery and reach

- Signup mainstream customers

- Integrate into BUSINESS UNIT

Time/Your capacity...

Outputs...

-Identified top 10 problems to be solved, according to organisation strategy

- Build a business-model for sustained lean innovation

- Select 3 problems and teams (core, adjacent and disruptive) to go through Search

- Build a visual innovation portfolio in SharpCloud

SEED

SEARCH

SOLUTION

SCALE

Our Innovation Incubator..

(8 week sprints) solve for the problems above

Problems

Our capacity and time...

16+ hours of one to ones with your virtual chief innovation officer, 20+ hours of co-creating, 20+ hours of "getting out of the building"

16+ hours of one to ones with virtual co-founder, 20+ hours of co-creating, 15+ hours of knowledge, 50+ "getting out of the building interviews.

Depending on the solutions taken forward. We offer virtual Chief Technology Officer, Chief Design Officer.

Depending on the decision on which solutions to scale. We offer virtual Chief Marketing Officers and Commercialising Innovation experts.

Full-time staff: Depending on the solution

Part-time: Over 8 weeks requiring 50% of virtual team's time

Part-time: Over 8 weeks virtual team requiring 4-8 hours a week (10%-20% rule)

Part-time: Over 8 weeks, requiring 4 hours a week (10% rule)

Structure

Performance

Confrontation

Collective identity

We don't do ideation, workshops, conferences, one-day innovation jams, or weekend hackathons. Our professional development training is unique in that it's sustained, over a period of time, it's intense, content focused, active (they get to live it), real (something true to gain or lose), supported with regular feedback, and autonomous to inspire ground-breaking ideas.

The co-founder approach that Co.Creator brings allows us to push employees out of their comfort zone, whilst providing support from week to week. We are NOT mentors, advisors, consultants, teachers or executive coaches. We will act like what you'd expect from a co-founder, coming up with the answers together, and in the words of silicon valley "get (right) shit done".

Improvisation

Learning & Development

Support

Individual identity

Co.Creator's model is designed to balance the six tensions of leading innovation

Co.Creator challenges employees not to fall in love with the solution. We constantly push to fall in love with the problem, take the harder path of exploring multiple paths at each stage (SEARCH AND SOLUTION). 90% of product launches fail, often because they are based on faulty initial assumptions about the customer. Co.Creator challenges them to discover deep customer insights, develop ideas with strong competitive advantage and then run low-cost experiments to test underlying assumptions. Only then does it make sense to invest in developing a product or technology. Ideas not demonstrating results are killed off fast.

Innovation truly flourishes within constraints, with company strategy being one key intelligent constraint. These constraints are determined as part of SEED outputs. Individual employees feel empowered to solve problems they've self selected to solve (SEARCH), with collective spirit being evoked by knowing the why behind what they are doing (SEED)

We deliver a structured way to make innovation happen, with a combination of knowledge (how to build a lean start-up), mindsets (around fail-fast, multiple experiments), skills (customer development, business model innovation), and introductions to the right people (a senior sponsor, successful entrepreneurs, investors, customers in an international network). Co.Creator provides week by week structure, at the same time allowing individuals to kill off ideas from week to week.

Patience

Urgency

This model is designed for no new hiring until SCALE. Employees have their day jobs they still have to deliver against. As employees and ideas move through the different phases, SEED, SEARCH, SOLUTION, progressively the time allocated to working on the idea increases, thereby reducing the risk of investing too much into ideas that do not deliver. The 8 weeks is long enough, to give employees time and space to experiment, but short enough to move foward with a sense of urgency.

Bottom up

Top down

The SEED phase delivers on the need for top-down direction by becoming senior sponsors. SEARCH, is then inviting bottom up approach to solving those problems with front-line staff who are closest to customers.

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