Last Sunday I presented
my Innovation Opportunities Map, and described the process we have
recently been using with an entrepreneurial client using this map to
help them become a much more innovative company. Several readers have
asked me how this process would change if the client were a Public
Sector Organization (PSO) -- either a governmental or non-governmental
not-for-profit organization focused on the provision of public services
(education, health care, social services, advocacy etc.). I've given
this some thought, and I came up with a revised Innovation
Opportunities Map for PSOs, above.
The principal differences between this map and the one for private sector companies are:
- Some
of the mega-processes for PSOs, while analogous, are modestly
different: PSOs generally have New Program Development instead of
R&D, Program Awareness and Access instead of Sales & Marketing,
and Program Implementation instead of Production.
- The
'business' of most PSOs is the delivery of services, through programs
and deployment of information, tools and technologies, to those in
need, rather than the sale of products to those who can afford them.
- Because
of the close interface with customers (students, patients, and
citizens) that most PSOs enjoy, there is even more opportunity for, and
even more reliance on, the use of cultural
anthropology to identify customers' needs than there is in for-profit organizations (new innovation type A8 on the chart).
- Because
PSOs are often networked with other PSOs providing similar programs and
services in other jurisdictions around the world, an additional
innovation opportunity arises from sharing successes and failures and
otherwise collaborating with other PSOs (new innovation type B9 on the
chart).
- Unlike for-profit organizations, PSOs can employ
volunteers both for customer outreach activities (new innovation type
C3 on the chart) and to supply time and other resources to the PSO
(amended innovation type D4 on the chart).
- Because of the
personal nature of many PSO services (like education and health care)
there are opportunities for PSOs to deploy some of their services and
programs directly to (and in) customers' homes, instead of or in
addition to using external facilities (amended innovation type E2 on
the chart)
- Because the services they provide are so essential
and continuous, there are expanded opportunities for PSOs to forge
innovative partnerships with customers to provide extended life cycle
services (e.g. continuous education, chronic care, recurring monthly
service visits) in ways not usually available to companies selling
one-off products (new innovation type H4 on the chart)
- Some
innovation opportunities (e.g. vertical integration, new market
creation) open to for-profit companies are generally not available or
not applicable to PSOs as these are normally beyond their scope or
mandate (omitted innovation types B1, B3, B4, C1, H2, J1, J4, listed on
the for-profit chart, from this chart
While the mega-processes and innovation opportunities for PSOs are
slightly different from those of for-profit companies, the process I
would use to help a PSO assess these opportunities would be essentially
the same that we have used with our private sector entrepreneur:
- Help the organization understand the urgency for, and set criteria for
assessing, innovations, and create a cross-functional
Innovation Team.
- Help them learn, through research, training sessions and by
visiting
highly innovative PSOs, what organizational innovation really is, how
it
helps organizations meet their customers' needs sustainably and
effectively, and the process the Team will use to make the organization
more
innovative.
- Help them understand, through comparative analysis and benchmarking, and
through
'cultural anthropology' visits with selected customers, how customers
experience the organization's programs and
services, what those customers' needs are, and
what needs are currently not being met.
- Drawing on steps 2 and 3, create a database of
Learnings and Ideas.
- Using the Learnings and Ideas in the
database, the
Innovation Opportunities Map, and an intensive process that draws on
both the creative and the critical thinking skills of the entire
Innovation Team, and team-members' program knowledge, service knowledge and customer knowledge, identify Innovation
Opportunities that the organization could deploy to improve customer
satisfaction and hence improve organizational effectiveness.
- Aggregate these Innovation Opportunities into a
series of
Innovative Offerings, and tell a Vision or Story about how each
Offering would be experienced from the customer's perspective. For each Offering, identify:
- A ten-word Name for the Innovative Offering.
- A Tagline and/or statement of the Value Proposition
("how
is this different from and more valuable than what the organization offers now?") for the Offering.
- A listing of which of the identified Innovation
Opportunities this Offering aggregates, listed in order by innovation
type (A1 through J7) using the Innovation Opportunities Map above.
- A 200-500 word Story, told from the perspective of
the
customer in the future, explaining how the customer experience will
have changed as a result of implementing the Innovative Offering.
- A list of New Capabilities the organization would need to
acquire in order to provide the Innovative Offering.
- A Strategy
Canvas
showing
the different attributes, effectiveness and strengths of the
organization's programs and services both before and
after implementing the Innovative Offering. Although the strategy
canvas was designed for competitive analysis purposes, there is no
reason why PSOs cannot use them to assess improvements to
organizational effectiveness that innovative offerings could realize.
Effectiveness criteria might include: value-for-money, quality and
timeliness of service, customer awareness, customer satisfaction,
employee satisfaction and retention etc. both 'before' and 'after' the
innovation has been implemented, and perhaps also against expectations
or benchmarks of the organization's board.
- Assess the pros
and cons of the different Innovative Offerings against the criteria
established in step 1. Evaluate the feasibility, fit with the
organization's mandate etc. of each Offering, and, for those deemed
feasible, test them using small-scale
experiments and pilot programs with selected customers. Reassess/tweak
offerings based on tests and pilots and, for those that are successful,
scale up to full implementation across the organization. [This is a bit
of an oversimplification -- we actually recommend a fairly
sophisticated and rigorous, but forgiving,
'stage-gating' process to move Offerings through to successful
implementation; I'll describe this further in a future article].
My partners and I would, of course, be pleased to help facilitate
your organization, for-profit or not, through this process, or, if
you're a consultant yourself, co-facilitate the process with you for
your client. If your client is still skeptical, buy them a copy of Blue Ocean Strategy or The Innovator's Solution
and let them read for themselves about the power of innovation, and why
so many organizations just aren't able to generate significant
innovation without outside help. |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
