Master the Innovation Cycle

How to get from now to next.

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.

Outcomes

Common language, frameworks, processes, tools, and skills that equip your innovation team to:

  • Navigate the innovation development cycle

  • Avoid capital leakage—waste of financial, human, intellectual, reputational, and political capital

  • Improve your innovation readiness

  • Achieve innovation productivity and satisfaction

Frameworks & Tools

  • Deflection Point

  • Certainty Map

  • Opportunity Horizons

  • Next Cycle

  • Next System

  • Challenge Finder

  • Super Seven (Decision Making Criteria)

  • Think Wrong Problem-Solving SystemThink Wrong Lab

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 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. 

Outcomes

Challenge statements that focus the innovation efforts of your team through the Next Cycle.

Validated and prioritized pain hypotheses for strategic challenges and opportunities.

Outcomes

Solution hypothesis storyboards for customer interviews

Solution interview guides

Solution validation and prioritization

Reverse impact statements for validated solutions

  • Impact goals

  • TAM/SAM/MLB

  • Revenue projections

  • Cost projections

Value validation and prioritization

  • Completed customer canvases for each constituent

Option value assessments and prioritization

Frameworks & Tools

  • Opportunity Horizons

  • Next Portfolios

  • Next Board

  • Next Advocates

  • Next Cycle

  • Deflection Point

  • Challenge Finder Tool

  • Matters Most Drill

  • Moments That Matter Drill

  • Deflection Point Drill

  • Anchors & Rockets Drill

  • Pain Tree Drill

  • 5 Whys Drill

  • Matters Most Redux Drill

  • Stack It x Horizon Drill

  • Strategic x Urgent Drill

  • Certainty Map Framework

  • Who You Gonna Call Drill

  • When Drill (Formulate)

Frameworks & Tools

  • Opportunity Horizons

  • Next Cycle

  • Next Stack

  • Next Portfolio & Option Value

  • Next Board

  • Next Advocates

  • GOD

  • Assumptions Canvas 

  • Customer Canvas

  • Matters Most Redux Drill

  • Moonshot Drill

  • Systemspotting Drill

  • Brand Takeover Drill

  • System Hack Drill

  • Rockets to Anchors Drill

  • Impact x Adjacency Drill

  • La Machine Drill

  • Name It + Scenario

  • Pecha 3 x 3 Drill

  • MLB (Most Likely Buyer)

  • Brandscape Drill

  • Reverse Impact Statement Drill

  • Pain Cycle Drill

  • PAK Lab Drill

  • New Rules Drill

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.

Outcomes

  • Minimum Viable Solution (MVS) prototypes

  • Market-specific insights and validation

  • MVS launch and execution plan

  • Next advocacy

  • Transition rules

  • New operating princples

Frameworks & Tools

  • Next Cycle

  • Next Stack

  • Next Portfolio & Option Value

  • Next Board

  • Next Advocates

  • GOD

  • Assumptions Canvas 

  • Customer Canvas

  • MLB (Most Likely Buyer)

  • Brandscape Drill

  • Reverse Impact Statement Drill

  • PAK Lab Drill

  • New Rules Drill