Each of the sample innovation models and tools included below supports one or more aspects of innovation's essential creative structure of hypotheses.
Again, innovation's two types of hypotheses speak to:
- "What could be as new change-catalyzing value to customers."
- "How the value might become an offering and actual change catalyst."
The models/tools are arranged within two different frameworks according to nature of support:
- Framework #1 divides a sample set of "big picture" models/tools according to:
- those that assume effective hypotheses as input (e.g., model of disruption)
- those that guide development of effective hypotheses (e.g., tool of design thinking).
- Framework #2 clusters a different set of sample models/tools based on their support for components of innovation hypotheses: purpose, knowledge, and creative processing.
Following the two frameworks, there is a brief description of the models/tools from Framework #1.
Sample models and tools are clustered by integral components of innovation hypotheses: purpose, knowledge, and creative processing.
A set of brief comments follows the charting.
Of note:
For the thematic strands of knowledge pertinent to innovation -- category knowledge; customer knowledge; general human and social dynamics; and anything and everything -- most of the sample models and tools address "customer knowledge." The strand of "general human and social dynamics," vis-a-vis innovation, seems particularly under-addressed at this time, even as pertinent models may exist outside of the realm of resources associated directly, or primarily, with "innovation."
As just one such example of a model:
From Martin Seligman's theory of "well being" within the field of positive psychology:
Free people will choose each of the following "for its own sake": positive emotions; engagement; positive relations; meaning; accomplishment. Seligman calls it a theory of "uncoerced choice."These elements of well being may serve to classify a set of common denominators of "value," with fundamental pertinence to offerings within both the commercial and social production systems.
From Framework #1 above:
i. Models for which effective innovation hypotheses are assumed as an input
- Clayton Christensen explicates principles of "disruptive" (versus "sustaining") innovation within the context of competitive business strategy and also for societal goals, or social innovation. Specialized practices in support of this variety of innovation, including organizational structures, follow from the model's "disruption" principles. However, disruption depends fundamentally on -- it assumes the inclusion of -- an effective hypothesis for new customer value and effective hypotheses for "how the value can become" throughout the specialized business model framework. [28]
- In The New Age of Innovation, Prahalad and co-author M.S. Krishnan not only reinforce the enduring principle of customer determination of utility within the commercial production system, they extend it to the degree of “N=1.” Within this overall model, the variable “N” represents the customer, and “N=1” means that generating maximal new value (and leverage) involves aiming to customize offerings to the level of every individual customer, along with the full set of global resources as the relevant set of resources. (Prahalad and Krishnan noted that this seeming extreme standard for customization represents change that is underway.) The model relies on a particular approach to analytics to "amplify market signals." Like disruption, the model's principles for commercial competitiveness assume translating the market signals into effective hypotheses for new customer value and its delivery. [33]
- David Cohen and Susan Moffitt provide a framework associated with social system goals, including the multiple types of change that can be required among an offering's users for progress. The policy-oriented framework, in which both policies and their instruments serve as offerings, speaks to dynamics of the social system context (or marketplace) in which hypotheses for change are situated. [28-1]
- A framework developed by Jeff DeGraff and Shawn Quinn, customized for large organizations, begins with the point of reference of a classification of innovation by the type of leverage desired (e.g., incremental change versus breakthrough change) and addresses activities conducive to innovation hypotheses for different qualities of leverage and scale. [31]
- From the Startup Genome, metrics drawn from thousands of internet startups provide a tool of intelligence and proposed framework. A startup is viewed as "a product centric organism that interacts with its environment, the market," where: "the core dimensions that define this organism are customer, product, team, business model and financials" and "the key challenge for a startup is to keep those five dimensions in sync with the actual customer response."[30] The metrics offer guidelines and insights for "assessing startups more effectively by measuring the thresholds and milestones of development that Internet startups move through." Effective hypotheses are assumed.
ii. Models that establish frameworks for the development of effective innovation hypotheses, with varying starting points
- Models such as IDEO’s “design thinking” and Roger Martin’s “integrated thinking” begin with initial reference to customers and/or the market or system and proceed to development of an offering that embodies a hypothesis for compelling new customer value.[30-1] (Design thinking begins more specifically from a "brief" that describes a problem or category of opportunity, situated within a set of constraints.) The models provide a framework and process for generating effective hypotheses.
- From entrepreneurship educator, Steve Blank, a model for scalable startup businesses begins with the point of reference of technical capability (newly existent or newly applied). The model guides practitioners from the technical domain to “customer development,” including product-market fit, and the active search for a scalable business model. The model draws upon other tools and frameworks such as Geoffrey Moore's model for customer adoption of new technology and the "business model canvas" noted above. Throughout, Blank emphasizes the structural unit of hypotheses for leverage, guiding practitioners to establish and test a hypothesis for each element of the canvas toward a scalable business model.[29]
- The framework within Stephen Goldsmith’s Power of Social Innovation focuses on a civic context and includes a set of primary pathways to discovery (hypothesis) of a “catalytic ingredient” that can spark social progress when “translated into a new product, intervention, or means of delivery.”[32]
- Eric Ries introduced the "lean startup" model, which links Blank's customer development with principles of lean manufacturing and which explicitly broadens the notion of a "startup" to "an organization creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty." The model's core feedback loop of "build-measure-learn" emphasizes efficient iterations of the loop toward a tested value proposition and business model: beginning with a "minimum viable product"; testing the product and associated hypotheses for strategic viability "using the scientific method"; and if appropriate "pivoting" to a new strategic direction, which may include a new value proposition.[33-1]
- In A New Culture of Learning, Cultivating Imagination for a World of Constant Change, Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown provide a framework in which passion is an explicit starting point for the process of generating innovation. Hypotheses are characterized as "leaps" within a non-linear process that fits within the tension between a massive information network and "a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment" within those boundaries. (This overall framework is broader than innovation and involves much more than this abbreviated description, but innovation is fundamental, as is passion.)[33-2]
