Define where to compete / Innovation roadmap

Often companies are not clear about their main targets / segments / industries or geographies. This leads to a general “business as usual” or “he have been and will be successful with what we are doing” mentality. This is the enemy of innovation in any company and requires to be constantly challenged. Consulting4Growth can help our clients in doing that.

The best framework to help clients understand is the customer / need / solution one. For a solution to be sold, three things are necessary: a customer that has a need that this solution can meet. Often clients develop new technologies / platforms / software and after they develop or before testing they start to look for beta customers. Often then the friendly customers accept testing the solution even if they don’t have a need for it and it becomes a pre-programmed failure. Another pitfall is finding a customer with a need, promising the customer a solution that does not exist yet and then either under-delivering or postponing the delivery. The third mode of failure is when a solution is addressed to a customer that does not really have a problem. This happens when for example a technology is trying to solve a no-problem. Here is where a lot of investment is often wasted because the need is not there.

Consulting4Growth offers its clients making sure that none of these three failure traps  occur. This is done through a clear plan, where testing the main assumptions become the gate for the next stage of development. These are defined in conjunction with the business and R&D people reviewing and expanding the areas for future developments. These are then tested in the market to check the potential and the degree of “pain” this solution area is addressing. Then an internal assessment about the feasibility of developing that solution is performed. At the end a workshop with the steering committee is conducted where all areas of strategic opportunity are laid down and evaluated by the individuals by impact and feasibility. The results are presented on the spot and the top areas to follow up on are selected by the committee. After that plans are developed with capabilities required and time needed to get the solution developed and tested.

The duration of such an engagement is about 4-6 weeks with some engagement of R&D and business development executives. The steering committee needs to be the one authorized to take the business decision on what to pursue and what not.

Interested? Please contact Consulting4Growth using the contact form.