How do you structure an innovation project?

Innovation is such abroad term, and comes in so many different flavours, that it can feel overwhelming knowing where to get started.

But whether you're exploring new features for existing products, building out new platforms and capabilities, or creating head-turning campaign activations - they’re all essentially about doing the same thing.

They’re about turning:

"We have this problem / opportunity / crazy idea and we're not sure what to do about it"

Into:

"This is what we're going to try to do, and why we think it will work".

Starting with something vague, and turning it into concrete plans - that's innovation in a nutshell. And as a structured project, digital innovation has two key phases that will help us get from A to B:

Strategy and Discovery

These are iterative, non-linear chunks of work that may need to be looped several times before there’s enough clarity and alignment to move on.

And depending on the brief, the process will start somewhere along the curve:

Strategy

A strategy phase is about exploring the problem (or opportunity or idea) enough to figure out if it is indeed the right problem to be solving (the what), and if solving it is likely to deliver enough value to make it worthwhile (the why).

Discovery

The discovery phase is about exploring solutions to the problem, testing if they resonate with users and are feasible for the business. Out the end should pop a solution you can be confident about, a rough idea of complexity, and a plan for how you’re going to deliver it within whatever business boundaries exist (the how).

Side note

In an agency-client environment things can end up getting briefed in at various stages along that journey. Accordingly it's important to jump in at the right point.

Briefs can be clear, or vague, or open ended, and that's fine. They reflect what, as the client, you do and don't know and where help is needed. And as the agency, sometimes those briefs need to be gently challenged or interpreted, other times they’ll have everything needed to jump straight into discovery.

Whatever the case, a brief doesn't need to be perfect. But a good agency partner will help figure out how and where to get started.