4 steps to set up the Innovation Lab 2.0
A few years ago I was at an IAB event in Mexico City. After the usual suspects about new software from Microsoft, LinkedIn and Adobe, the closing of the event started: A speech by Carlitos Paez, one of the survivors of the Andean plane crash June 1972, known for the movie “Alive”. The speaker told an impressive story about 72 days in harsh conditions, and I remember one detail specifically: Carlos spoke about the difference between "surviving" during the first 10 days and "living" after the 10th day of the crash.
He explained this in the following way: The first days after the crash, when there was still hope for rescue, people were “surviving”. Only when the reality came that this salvation did not come, people switched to “living” again. A subtle difference in wording, with a huge impact: namely the acceptance that this was their new normal and that they had to organize their lives accordingly. They innovated towards a new way of thinking and acting and looked forward instead of back; eventually rewarded with the fact that they managed to save themselves and found their way back to civilization.
Let’s live instead of survive
The parallel with the corona crisis is easy to draw: where a few works ago society still hoped that everything would return to normal, it has now become apparent that the old is normally gone, and that we will have to move to a new normal in the near future. It is therefore high time that we switched from “survive” mode to “live” mode. And that means only one thing: innovation.
A new role for the innovation lab
Although innovation has been driven by disruptive technology and business models in recent years, the real need has been limited to a number of industries, such as automotive and retail. Now that we are accelerating towards a new normal, innovation is no longer optional; the old society simply no longer exists. There are new standards for supply chain, hygiene, elderly care, shopping, and so on. New niches, such as online shopping, social hangouts like Houseparty, and online collaboration will grow faster than ever before, while other industries will have to look for major adjustments in their services to provide customer value in the new reality.
Innovation will therefore have to be accelerated and the innovation lab is entering a new phase in my opinion. Designing, testing and scaling up new solutions must be done faster than ever before, all reasons for using the innovation lab to the maximum. But it will have to be an innovation lab 2.0, because the non-commitment that was present in some labs will disappear permanently. Welcome innovation lab 2.0, in which a new set of rules will have to be used. The most important.
Very tight alignment between parent company and innovation lab
The ideas factory with free creativity no longer exists. More than ever it must be clear what is being asked of the innovation lab and more than ever the lab must ask for it. The so-called innovation thesis must be determined to the maximum and relevant questions such as “which niches are we going to focus on?” “Are we going to redesign the existing or completely new service provision”, which new business models do we see in the future? Nor should ”be determined before individual innovation paths are taken.
Empathy and the customer first
Even more emphasis will be placed on recognizing new needs of customers: what are the new needs in this new normal and how do we deal with the one and a half meter economy? Empathy will be a great asset, and digitization will go hand in hand with providing more emotional factors such as security, safety and hospitality. A robust method and knowledge of design thinking, lean startup and customer experience will therefore be fundamental.
Evidence-driven funnels and tighter KPIs
Budgets will be very tight in the near future and the adage "we failed but learned" will not be accepted just like that. More than ever, it will have to be made clear more quickly that a need is relevant or not and that a proposition will catch on, for example by testing in one of the shops, living labs or via digital prototypes. In addition, more will be charged on KPIs such as costs per experiment, progress and decisiveness of the lab.
Speed boats with impact, not party boats
While some innovation labs were already delivering seriously good results, others were on the way to a party boat from the idea of a speedboat. The ideas that do well in the media and the no-obligation experimentation with technologies will be put aside in the near future and the need for hard results requires perseverance to become the number 1 soft skill in the labs. Creativity has always been seen as the core characteristic of innovators; however, reality has shown that perseverance is far more important.
Applied correctly, the innovation lab 2.0 can play an essential role in the interpretation of the new “living-mode” idea towards a new normal in today's reality.
