Part 1 of Tanya’s article can be found here
STAGE TWO
Once you have used these initial basic filters to find the strongest ideas, the next stage is to use a more in-depth filter to make decisions on the remaining ideas. Day (2007) recommends using a risk matrix. The R-W-W matrix is based to three key questions:
- Is it Real?
- Can we Win?
- Is it Worth doing?
This is expanded into the following set of questions:
| Is it real? | Is the market real? | Is there a need or desire for the product? Can the customer buy it? Is the size of the potential market adequate? Will the customer buy the product? |
| Is the product real? | Is there a clear concept? Can the product be made? Will the final product satisfy the market? | |
| Can we win? | Can the product be competitive? | Does it have a competitive advantage? Can the advantage be sustainable? How will competitors respond? |
| Can our company be competitive? | Do we have superior resources? Do we have appropriate management? Can we understand and respond to the market? | |
| Is it worth doing? | Will the product be profitable at an acceptable risk? | Are forecasted returns greater than costs? Are the risks acceptable? |
| Does launching the product make strategic sense? | Does the product fit our overall growth strategy? Will top management support it? |
STAGE THREE
Once a few viable marketing innovation ideas remain, the next stage is to consider the risks even further. This is where conducting a pre-mortem is a useful tool. This helps organisations identify the possible failures of a project before they happen and mitigate risk by pre-planning so that those failures don’t occur.
The following pre-mortem exercise has been adapted from Gray et al. (2010).
| Activity | |
| Step 1 | Imagine we are two years in the future. Things have gone completely wrong. What could have caused this? Generate a list of all the reassons failure occurred. |
| Step 2 | List all concerns and rank them to deterimine priority |
| Step 3 | Address the 2 or 3 items of greatest concern and list what actions you would need to take to stop the issues happening. |
The list of risks and actions that need to be taken to mitigate the risk can be used as Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for an innovation or project launch.
Hopefully, this article has helped you think about the different types of innovation you can potentially pursue and how to evaluate the best route forward, using a systematic filtering process.
References
Day, G. (2007) Is it real? Can we win? Is it worth doing? Managing Risk and Reward in an Innovation Portfolio. [Online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2007/12/is-it-real-can-we-win-is-it-worth-doing-managing-risk-and-reward-in-an-innovation-portfolio (Accessed 11 February 2021).
Fisk, P. (2017). Gamechangers: Are you ready to change the World? Creating Innovative Strategies for Business and Brands. West Sussex: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
Gower, L. (2015) The Innovation Workout. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.
Gray, D., Brown, S. & Macanufo, J. (2010) Game Storming: A Playbook for Inovators, Rulebreakers, an Changemakers. Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Keeley, L., Pikkel, R., Quinn, B. and Walters, H. (2013). Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.