Day |
Daily tip |
Central question |
One-sentence answer |
1 |
Start Before You Need To |
How do I know it is time to innovate? |
Watch for early warning signs, because the urgency of innovation and the ability to innovate are inversely related. |
2 |
Remember, the Consumer Is Boss |
How do I spot opportunities for innovation? |
Take a consumer-is-boss perspective. |
3 |
Get the Job Done |
What indicates an opportunity for innovation? |
Look for an important, unsatisfied job to be done, or a problem the customer can’t adequately address today. |
4 |
Compete Against Nonconsumption |
Which customers should I target? |
Look for “nonconsumers” that face a barrier inhibiting their ability to get a job done. |
5 |
Find Compensating Behaviors |
How can I find nonobvious opportunities? |
Consider targeting the compensating behavior that an individual follows to cover the inadequacy of existing solutions. |
6 |
Get as Close to Context as Possible |
How should I investigate potential opportunities? |
Start with deep observational or ethnographic research; avoid focus groups like the plague. |
7 |
Don’t Innovate Blind |
How can I confirm that the opportunity I have spotted is real? |
Invest the time to understand the market you hope to target—always ask why smart people haven’t seized an opportunity that looks obvious to you. |
8 |
Go to the Intersections |
How can I get inspiration for an idea? |
Go to the intersections, and borrow liberally from other contexts. |
9 |
Seek Ideas from Everywhere |
Where should I look for inspiration? |
Rapidly explore as many avenues as possible when searching for new ideas. |
10 |
Remember: Quality Is Relative |
Is my idea high quality? |
Quality is a relative term that can only be determined by understanding what matters to the target customer. |
11 |
Avoid Overshooting |
Is there such a thing as too good? |
It is possible to overshoot your target market by introducing features that the customer will take, but not value enough to pay for. |
12 |
Do It Differently |
What is a disruptive innovation? |
Disruptive innovations create new markets and transform existing ones through simplicity, convenience, affordability, or accessibility. |
13 |
Embrace Business Model Innovation |
What is a business model, and how do I innovate it? |
A business model describes how a company creates, captures, and delivers value; systematically considering a wide range of business model options can help enable business model innovation. |
14 |
Bring It Together |
How can I translate my work into a concrete blueprint? |
“Don’t just do something—stand there”; step back and summarize your work in a comprehensive plan. |
15 |
Let Patterns Guide and Actions Decide |
How can I separate good ideas from bad ideas? |
Use patterns to get a directional sense as to whether an idea is any good, and then run experiments to confirm that directional sense. |
16 |
Calculate Your Idea’s Four P’s |
What is a quick way to estimate my idea’s financial potential? |
Multiply population, penetration, price, and purchase frequency to gain quick insight into an idea’s potential. |
17 |
Reverse-Engineer Success |
How can I identify an idea’s most critical assumptions? |
Determine what success looks like, and then identify the two most critical things that would have to happen for success to be obtainable. |
18 |
Test Critical Assumptions |
How can I learn more about my idea? |
Tests are the best ways to learn about existing critical assumptions and to identify new ones. |
19 |
Bring Ideas to Life |
How can I get people behind my idea? |
Find creative ways to bring ideas to life in order to build buy-in and motivate action. |
20 |
Embrace Everyday Experimentation |
How can I get good at experimenting? |
Be on constant lookout for ways to run everyday experiments. |
21 |
Savor Surprises |
How can I learn the right things from my experiments? |
Experience the raw data, and focus on the findings you did not expect. |
22 |
Embrace Selective Scarcity |
How much should I invest in innovation? |
Embrace selective scarcity with tight timelines, single decision makers, and constrained strategic choices. |
23 |
Amplify Your Resources |
Where can I find resources for innovation? |
Leverage external resources, and redirect currently committed resources. |
24 |
Break the Sucking Sound of the Core |
How can I avoid the sucking sound of the core? |
Active leadership, new voices, safe spaces, and smart borrowing can help protect innovators from the sucking sound of the core. |
25 |
Manage the Interfaces |
How do I manage interfaces between a new business and the core business? |
Use a range of techniques to make sure you don’t accidentally remember what you are trying to forget. |
26 |
Reward Behaviors, Not Outcomes |
How can I motivate and reward innovation? |
Shift from basing rewards on innovation outcomes to rewarding the right behaviors, even if the outcome is unsuccessful. |
27 |
Get Quick Wins |
How can I build momentum? |
Get quick wins to ensure that efforts don’t get killed when the ticking clock strikes midnight. |
28 |
Practice Makes Perfect |
How can I become systematically better at innovation? |
Put yourself in circumstances where you have to practice core innovation skills. |