Organising for Innovation

We develop bespoke innovation processes that consistently deliver wow results.

One of our key offerings at Bright Light is the innovation process that we use to deliver outstanding consumer focused innovation. We will enable your organisation to produce world class innovation on its own by adopting the principles and methodologies embodied in our process. The process is particularly appropriate for large companies looking to invigorate their product development process.

The process had been successfully implemented at one of the worlds largest car manufacturers, and has already started to deliver results. Innovation at that company has recently been made a global priority.

When deploying an innovation process we take a close look at all the obstacles and the unique challenges associated with each organisation. Building a custom made solution with foundations in the principles that have been effective in delivering great consumer focused innovation.

The process breaks down into 4 main phases,

Phase 0: Organisation, Infrastructure & Team Selection

It is critical to have in place the right infrastructure and team before proceeding down the route of innovation. Teams need to be cross-functional, with expertise from different areas of the company. They need to be sheltered from their day to day problems and moved away from their direct reporting structure. This enables the team to fully immerse themselves in the task. In addition each project requires senior level buy-in both to the process and to the project brief.

Phase 1: Insight and Understand

In this phase it is important for the whole team working on the project to immerse themselves in the target consumer, until they truly begin to empathise with their needs and desires. This is not done through a dedicated market research team, who share their findings in a presentation or report. Through a variety of tools, selected for the particular project, team members develop a visceral and fresh understanding of the problems through the eyes of the consumers.

Phase 2: Ideas and filtering

The creation of ideas is often seen as innovation itself, however, without both direction and appropriate stimulus the ideas will have little relevance to the target marketplace. Stimulus may include lead user insight, technology and user trends as well as consumer insight Through a series of structured idea generation events, hundreds of idea stubs are developed, from the mundane to the exceptional to the insane. An idea stub consists These ideas are then filtered and selected through a matrix that rates them for impact to the consumer and the complexity of implementing them.

Phase 3: Develop, Prototype, Test & Refine

This is probably the most critical phase of the project and involves making the ideas real. as the inventor of the clockwork radio, Trevor Bayliss, said 'If a picture is worth a thousand words then a prototype is worth a million'. The development of a prototype serves several purposes it allows the team to get their hands dirty encounter problems before any substantial investment is made, test with consumers and iterate, you are rarely right first time this is a low cost opportunity to iterate the solution before moving on. A prototype is also essential in providing a great platform for communicating the solution to corporate stake-holders.

Phase 4: Consumer Test, Internal Communication

Once a prototype has been built it is tested with consumers for that all important 'wow' reaction. The consumer response can then be used as part of a compelling internal sell, helping to drive the product ideas through the often difficult stages of product execution. The stronger the internal communication and clearer the consumer message, the more likely the product will make it through the full development process with the key user experiences intact.

This is a generic outline, we would be happy to discuss the process in detail with you and the benefits in can bring to your organisation.