Many of us remember the story of The 3 little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. The story always fascinated me as a little girl. As a little girl who was intrigued with many foreign folk tales, my take of the story was that the first two foolish pigs were quite dumb to think their choice of material for building a house will protect and save them from being eaten by the wolf.
I suppose it’s safe to assume that some of us have, at some point in our personal or professional lives, had to make poor judgments that led to difficulties, much like the first two foolish pigs who chose not to go the extra mile and instead opted for options that did not protect them.
Many start-up businesses and organizations operate in a setting that, to put it mildly, could be compared to the “Big Bad Wolf”; it’s hostile, demanding, and nerve racking!
Regardless of the hostile environment, it is critical that businesses have the right information about the area in which they operate in order to choose the most creative solutions that are most appropriate at any given time.
Making better decisions as an organization requires an understanding of your market. It’s just as simple for a corporation to “strike the bull’s eye” in a market as it was for the first pig in the parable to build his home out of straws. When you have to consider the effects of your choices and the immediate gains that will be made, it gets more complicated. Sometimes there are no winnings at all; instead, the big scary wolf consumes you.
It is therefore crucial to comprehend the terrain being navigated and understand how to deal with the tough conditions that persist until one’s business fades into oblivion, especially as socioeconomic situations make decisions more challenging.
Like the foolish pigs- who had plans as to how they were going to protect themselves from the wolf- most large businesses have an innovation process in place. Feeding the innovation funnel takes detailed devotion- a task companies never really pay attention to. Why? Low or Zero Budget is the common excuse to why their innovation process is faulty…
Having the right knowledge is like building your house with bricks, knowing what to do whenever the wolf comes calling is another advantage. Most organizations are unable to build an innovation process that translates into commercial success because their ideation processes are more internal than external. An effective innovation funnel is one that successfully takes latent insights and generates them into commercially viable products or service.
I dare say that generating the right kind of insights with the ability to ideate a winning product or service doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. There’s a lot of research you can do on your own and without much budget. What’s important is knowing the exact information required and where and how to look. Sometimes the information you need may be within what you already know about your product/service, your competitors and the market. All that is needed is for your to drill further to find the patterns.
Whatever the reason, failing to produce the appropriate insights to feed your innovation funnel is the equivalent of putting your product or service out of business before it even gets off the ground.
