The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth, 2nd Edition

Part III

Develop the Designs

Most organizations go about refining their products and services–making them better–without first questioning their legitimacy. But if you've gotten this far in the innovation process, then you've already legitimized your new solutions by (1) making sure they're well-defined and (2) making sure they've passed through a rigorous yet expansive ideation process.

This third phase of innovation transforms your great ideas from the white board into workable models. The questions become:

• What functions will it perform and how do I design it?
• How will I assess how good it is?
• What alternatives do I have?
• Can I make my solution invincible, and manage the risk of trying?

First you formulate the design by specifying the outcome-expectation-based functions your customers want in your new solution. Use the Functional Requirements technique to accomplish this. Then use any of these techniques to generate and further refine your initial design concepts: Axiomatic Design, Function Structure, Morphological Matrix, TILMAG, and Work Cell Design.

The next task is to prioritize and select a design by filtering through a number of concepts to the point where just one is pursued for further development. Two techniques are very helpful in this regard: Paired Comparison Analysis and Pugh Matrix. You can also use both of these techniques to test how well the output of an idea session stands up to customer outcome expectations upstream in the innovation process.

Once you know ...