T H E R E I S N O I N N O VAT I O N FA S T L A N E ( A N D O T H E R L E S S O N S L E A R N E D W H I L E T R Y I N G T O O V E R T A K E )

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Lizzie Shupak Innovation Director lizzie.shupak@lbi.com @lizzieshupak

1. There is no innovation fast lane

The digital marketing envelope

Client

Conversion rate

NPS Traffic

Loyalty

Sentiment Brand equity

Call centre costs

Beyond business as usual

2. Solve a real problem

I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions”

“

Albert Einstein

Digital landfill

$135m $41m

3. Connect

George De Mestral

A lot of people… haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

“

Steve Jobs

Grid of logos for community

4. Experiment

Experiment definition

An orderly procedure with the goal of verifying, refuting, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis

All hypotheses

CD&E

Hard questions

•  What don't you know about the problem you are trying to solve?

•  What has been tried before? •  What is the hardest bit? Of what are you least certain? •  What is the greatest risk?

Do the hard stuff early

Do the hard stuff early

Recipe

•  Identify a real problem you are facing •  Break the problem down into sub-problems •  Grade each one based on how confident you are of solving it •  Choose the sub-problem in which you have least confidence •  Design an experiment to help solve it •  Repeat as necessary

Mobile meter reading

Hard-to-read meter

What is the real problem you are trying to solve? Who has the problem? How will things be better when you have solved it?

Define the problem

Give  a  smartphone  app  to  our  customers  so  that  they  can  read  their  meters  accurately  just  by  pointing  their  phone  cameras  at  the  meter.  

What are the sub-problems? What smaller problems do you need to solve in order to solve the big one?

Sub-problems

Get  software  in  the  phone  to  recognise  an  electricity  meter  

Take  a  quality  photograph  of  a  meter  in  difficult  conditions  

Extract  the  numeric  meter  reading  from  the  image  of  the  meter  

Display  the  meter  reading  to  the  customer  and  send  it  to  our  billing  system  

2  

3  

2  

9  

Back to the experiment

Palm pilot

Palm pilot image

Wood block image

The value of experiments

•  Demonstrate that the problem deserves further investment (or not)

•  Use the story of your experiment to win others over •  Uncover and retain knowledge and insight regardless of

the outcome

5. Keep going

Angel investor failure/success ratio

9 failures

1 success

:

Rovio 2013

Rovio 2006

Burbn

Instagram

In summary

•  There is no fast lane •  Solve a real problem •  Connect •  Experiment •  Keep going