Master the Innovation Cycle

To achieve your goals, you must repeatedly execute a portfolio of strategic innovation and change projects using a discovery-driven development process.

The steps of the innovation journey—from assumptions and uncertainty to knowledge and certainty—can be daunting. But it doesn’t need to be.

The route is known, clear stages define it, and critical moments ensure you stay on track.

We call it The Next Cycle. And you can learn to master it through our Leaders of Next Intensive and coaching through the following discovery-driven development sprints.

Foundation

Our Leaders of Next Intensive and Think Wrong Facilitators Intensive equip your innovation executives, managers, and teams with the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to conceive of and execute your innovation strategies. These foundational programs introduce the shared language, frameworks, and competencies your innovators will use to respond to your challenges and move from validated pain hypotheses to fully operating, scalable solutions that produce value and impact in the real world.

Sprint 1.
From Formulate to Incubate

This sprint equips your innovators to quickly acquire and apply the practical know-how to seek, frame, and prioritize challenges and opportunities to address strategic imperatives and generate the most value for your organization, while simultaneously managing risk (because solving the wrong problem well is counterproductive, at best).

Your team will produce a prioritized portfolio of validated pain/need hypotheses for challenges that support your goals and strategies. 

Your innovators will learn how to apply a simple question-driven approach to quickly discover real pains/ needs/ opportunities/ challenges that can lead to strategically-aligned innovations that:

• Optimize operational performance; 

• Grow markets and revenue;

• Renew your organization for the future;

• Maximize the value realized from operations and practices you might exit.

Sprint 2.
From Incubate to Accelerate

The sprint equips your innovators with the ability to apply the paradoxical skills of trying to kill new ideas by getting to “No, because…” while conceiving of the next solutions that can drive growth and impact. Solutions that survive this stage have demonstrated reason to have high confidence in their need, doability, and value.

Through this sprint your innovators will produce validated solution and value hypotheses for the pain/need hypotheses that your Next Board promotes from your Formulate Stage. 

Sprint 3.
From Accelerate to Operate

This sprint equips your innovators to produce data from live pilots of minimum viable solutions to inform the adjustments, improvements, and investments that must be made before launch.

Sprint 4.
From Operate to Grow

This sprint equips your innovators to take two parallel paths. One to monitor leading indicators that produce foresight for your growth strategy. The other to produce opportunities to grow your solutions to new actors and expand into new markets.

The route map to Next.

The Next Cycle is not a series of one-way trips. It is a continuous innovation journey. Sprinting through this journey is the best way to learn a rigorous, disciplined system for innovation productivity.