Continuous discovery

Succeeding with corporate innovation means investing in a portfolio of ideas, big and small, incremental and radical. Incremental ideas build the innovation muscle, develop the capabilities, and position you for future moves. Radical ideas develop frontier insight, even if they ultimately fail, and, when successful, pay off for the rest of portfolio and then some. They usually either create a new or resegment an existing market.

The underlying principle is that a generous quantity of ideas must be continuously flowing through the system so we have the greatest chance to achieve our innovation ambitions. Quality ideas, at the very minimum, have clear answers to who are they for, how do they make the difference, and what makes them a good fit for the company. Best ideas are about capitalising on identified opportunities.

That's why the discovery should be a continuous process: always listening in on the market, paying attention to signals, connecting the dots, identifying patterns, interacting with customers, suppliers, vendors—everyone in the ecosystem, so on and so forth. This will ensure our idea generation process is targeting relevant opportunities, enabling us to create true possibilities.