Conditions Make Or Break Innovation Projects
Reporting from the UK, as we’ve docked our boat for hurricane season
Lately, I’ve been thinking about how certain conditions influence the sailing routes my husband and I choose and how the same is true for innovation projects.
By necessity, the ideas that marketers and designers develop are shaped by current business and market conditions.
Why am I connecting these very different environments?
For 15 years, I’ve worked in brand management, customer experience and creative direction. Through my work with clients in the US and EU and my travels around the world, my experience has been multi-cultural, allowing me to offer clients a deeper, more well-rounded perspective.
Let’s jump into it
Any time we talk to people about how we spend nine months per year sailing from place to place, we are often asked, “Where are you going next?” Most of the time, our answer is, “We’ll see.”
With a huge blue ocean all around us, the possibilities seem endless as we consider steering course for Brasil, Mexico or Portugal. But it’s not our decision to make – the weather, wind, tides, repairs, maintenance and time all shape our next destination.
In other words, conditions guide our choices.
Ignoring existing conditions while sailing can be dangerous, even fatal. Our determination can’t overcome storm force winds. An exhausted crew will make irreversible mistakes.
No, not sailing in that
When working on innovation projects for a brand, the situation is similar. The team and I first go wide with blue sky ideas - the more Post-Its, the better. Then we consider the market and business conditions, narrowing down ideas to ones suitable to those conditions.
I’ve worked on teams that were trying to do new, big things: launch a product creation team in Europe, relaunch Clinique in China, build a B2B business from B2C brands.
The projects that succeeded never ignored existing conditions.
A helpful resource
In sailing, we rely on the Beaufort scale, which describes wind strength and corresponding sea conditions. What if we had an equivalent for brand innovation projects?
I created this “Beaufort Scale for Innovation Projects” to make it easier for our teams to align on what conditions we would face and what that means to our strategy and project planning.
Beaufort Scale for Innovation Projects
When working with a last-mile B2B delivery start-up on their delivery user experience, we knew the conditions were a Gentle Breeze, as expectations for B2B digital experience were being impacted by B2C. This informed and focused our approach.
With every project, we can refer to the scale and ask ourselves:
- What type of conditions do we have?
- Can our team handle these conditions?
- If they can, what resources do we need to help?
- If they can’t, what conditions do we need to move forward?
- Is there someone we can talk to who’s dealt with these conditions?
I’ve seen companies who overlooked both their conditions and ability to handle such conditions. In the end, they either delayed a project or canceled it completely. Both outcomes affect team morale.
Conditions can work with us or against us. To successfully work within existing parameters, it’s critical that we acknowledge the current conditions and ensure our teams are set up to handle the ride.
We can’t always change our conditions, but we can change how we prep for them.
And there’s more
✏️ Join: I’ll be presenting “Amplify CX through Branding” on a LinkedIn Live July/August, in English and Spanish. Stay tuned!
📚 Read: Move by Patty Azzarello is a whole lot of logic on taking strategy to reality.
🎧 Listen: Innovation 2.0: Do Less by Hidden Brain looks at the value of subtraction in innovation.
📍Visit: We love Bath, UK (underground chambers or caves) for its architecture and roman baths. It’s an easy and fun weekend trip from London.