Do you know more examples?
Feel to share your feedback. We’ll update this deck in the coming weeks.

The full slide deck can be downloaded as PDF (reduced to 6MB, thx @marklightfoot). Sharing is appreciated.

I’ve seen brilliant entrepreneurs failing in enterprises (corporates) almost as often as I’ve seen great managers hitting rock bottom in start-ups. So what makes an entrepreneur succeed in an enterprise? Is it just random or is there a science behind the madness?

My personal checklist for being a successful intrapreneur includes the following items:

1. Know and understand your internal environment. Everyone knows that understanding the economy’s driving forces is essential in creating a successful business but what is equally important for an intrapreneur is to have a sound knowledge of the internal environment. Bottom line is that, as intrapreneur, you need to figure out stuff like: employees’ status, corporate culture, management structure, employees’ behavior; in order to run successful endeavors.
2. Networking, networking, networking. Both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs must master this skill, the only difference being that in the intraprenur’s environment ‘office politics’ play a bigger part. Bottom-line, in the corporate environment, you can’t get somewhere without a powerful support network.
3. Data before rhetoric. Decisions need to be taken by both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs: kill a project, ask for another $1M, hire talent, stop collaborations, etc. The best way to do it in an ‘office politics’ heavy environment, is to go the lean entrepreneur’s way: data before rhetoric – every decision should be based on concrete and transparent data.
4. Validate before full execution. A successful intrapreneur runs successful projects – it’s as simple as that. From the lean start-up method, an intrapreneur should learn how to test and validate assumptions before diving into execution.
5. Foster a learning culture. This one might sound really abstract and is also rooted into the lean start-up: foster a culture in which learning is highly valued and rewarded.

As you can see I haven’t mentioned anything about vision, drive to chance the status quo, and resilience, because I personally think that, unless you score off the charts in these, you can’t even pass the first job interview for a position of intrapreneur.

Since I’m no expert here and I’ve barely scratched the surface with this post, I’m really keen on learning from your experience: what other skills and strategies prove to be successful in the relentless pursuit of becoming a better intrapreneur and which one of the 5 above, you consider being the most relevant skill? Drop me a comment.

What is Prototyping On Paper?

POP (Prototyping On Paper), by Woomoo, is a (currently free) app to make on-screen links between several paper prototype images. While the list of wireframing tools is growing day by day, most of them focus on designing in your browser. These tools often require software and design expertise. The POP app is different. POP loves paper! During workshops we don’t have time to teach people how to use software, so making drawings/sketches for new app ideas is the fastest way to go. POP helps you to bring your sketches come to life and to make them interactive! Simply sketch out your idea, take some pictures, and link the screens to each other by assigning buttons. But the best feature is that you can easily share your mock-up in seconds via Email, Twitter, Facebook,… to get early feedback and test assumptions. As I said, just awesome!

How to start if you’re not a designer?

When organizing innovation bootcamps and lean sprints, we challenge people to overcome their “I can’t draw” attitude and motivate them to start making something. Less PPT, more MVP! Of course not everyone can express their ideas in the same way, but I’m a strong believer that everyone is a maker; you just have to provide the right tools and a proper maker environment. With Paper Prototyping you have to do the same. Few people can design or draw from scratch.

Here are some tools and tips I provide during bootcamps:

• Templates, Templates, Templates!
  There are many templates that get you started with designing app screens. One of my favorites is the set of templates by UI Stencils. You can find them here. Just download, print, and use them. They’re awesome.
• Get inspired by existing apps
  Good artists copy, great artists steal. I have a folder on my iPhone with a selection of apps I use to get inspiration from. Because they’re beautifully designed, have some great UX elements, or just because they’re smooth. My latest discoveries: Spro, Istid, Moodswings
• Paper, Scissors, and Glue are your friends!
  Having an offline library of sample buttons, icons, screens, … to glue on your templates, makes screen design even possible with children! You can find a lot of printable examples online, just google “GUI elements” (Graphical User Interface). Lazy? DesignsMix already did a great job for you!
• Make use of stencils
  Oh yes they exist, iPhone stencils! I ordered them a couple of weeks ago and now I’m addicted to them. UI Stencils also provides other ones; for websites, android phones, tablets, … They’re not cheap, but a great help!

Tips and tricks for #awesome use

• Use an image designed in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop instead of sketches. Open it (e.g. via DropBox) on your iPhone and off you go. Demos in seconds!
• I recently installed AirServer on my Mac. This way I can send my iPhone screens to my computer: excellent for presentations. To quote a client after our last magical app presentation moment: “I didn’t know this was even possible!”
• As mentioned earlier, you can easily combine it with UI iPhone Stencils. Free your inner child!

Why do we love it?

Download Free PDF

It’s an easy, simple app with an extremely short learning curve! It is great tool to visualize app ideas, start the conversation when testing with possible customers, and last but not least, it’s free! I believe even my mother would love to work with POP :)

What to do as a retailer?

A. Make the Experience worse: Ask a 5 dollar ‘showrooming fee’
The gaming industry lost control of its clients already a while ago. Gamers are pirating as never before. Again, the old business model of this industry has been put to the test. Game publisher Electronic Arts believed it had the answer with the latest launch of their blockbuster title: Sim City. While the game looked great they integrated all sorts of anti-pirating measures. E.g.: Only playable when connected to the internet and their servers. But when their own servers failed, nobody could play. They p*ssed of their paying clients as never before. Smart… very smart.

The following retailer in Australia is trying more or less the same strategy. In an attempt to stop change this retailer asks a 5 dollar ‘showrooming fee’ for people that only pass by to browse but shop somewhere else. Not. That. Smart.

B. Make the experience better than digital.
Zalando.com sees online return rates spiking to 80% of soled itmes. E-shoppers need to wait a day or two for their pants and shoes to arrive. When not satisfied they need to take several actions to return these goods and get their money back. And so on. Hointer, a brick-and-mortar clothing retailer, believes it has the answer by embracing digital technology and not fighting it. As a shopper you scan your clothes in the store with your mobile. Within 30 sec the correct sizes will be waiting for you in the fitting room. Combined with personal advice by their staff Hointer believes it can combine the best of both worlds.

The retail industry has to evolve. Personally it’s one my favourite domains to watch. I just love the continous experimentation (both successes and failures). What’s your favorite experiment you stumbled upon lately?

Study after study confirms that culture is the main roadblock for innovation in corporate organizations. Much more than a lack of ideas, lack of processes, and so on. We have experienced the same when working with many of our corporate clients. Yet it’s so incredibly hard to change your culture, and get your colleagues to adopt a more innovative mindset: accepting failure, rewarding risk-taking, more doing, acting small, etc.

We’ve designed 6 innovation posters to inspire and tease your team and colleagues. Our overall goal is to make corporates innovate like startups. Of course executive buy-in, alignment, processes, are all important too. But nothing tops a grass-roots innovation campaign, right?

Roger Bloem working at NS – the Dutch railway company – was the first today to cheer up their office with two posters, and share a picture via twitter. Many thanks Roger!

Are you ready to start your own innovation propaganda? Download and print any of these innovation posters. We’re grateful if you share a picture via twitter (@boardofinno, #innovationpropaganda) or via email (info@boardofinnovation.com). We have some big size posters ready to be shipped. Ping us to convince us of your cause, and we might send you some. Let’s all make corporates a bit more innovative and entrepreneurial!

I’ve recently discovered the power of forming daily habits to reach my goals, and I’m keen to share my experience and thoughts to get some discussion going. As a person active in innovation – as innovation manager, consultant, R&D manager, business developer, product manager, or C-level leader – you’ve most likely set yourself personal goals around being more inspiring, up-to-date, convincing or creative. Have you also considered which daily habits you could form to reach those goals?

Why daily habits?

For better or for worse our habits shape us. Good or bad eating habits, exercising habits, working habits such as single-tasking, email habits, and so on. They have a profound impact on our performance, health, and happiness. A lot of high performers have developed very specific habits. Have a look at top tennis players when they’re about to serve: they have a very detailed habit including the amount of balls they check and steps they take, before aiming for that next ace.

Studies in this relatively new science show that on average you have to repeat new behavior (let’s say: no emails between 9PM and 9AM) 21 days in a row for the new behavior to become a habit. I’m by no means a routine person myself, but I have to admit habit thinking has had a great effect for me (from enjoying a healthy breakfast each morning to better email habits, single tasking, and regular running). I’m now translating this experience to developing innovation habits. If you want to read more about habits in general, you can check out The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg’s bestseller in this field. Or read people’s stories about forming a morning habit, hacking your sleep habit, and habits to stop now.

6 daily habits for innovation professionals

I’m sharing work in progress here, so please share you comments and suggestions! Which habits do great innovation managers have? Which do I have myself, perhaps without being aware of it? After review and analysis, I’ve gathered the following 6 habits for innovation professionals. I’ve learned that you don’t have to perfect in your habits. Starting and doing it is actually the goal in itself. Why don’t you pick just one of these, and start today?

1. Discover 1 pattern. Associative thinking, or the ability to recognize and combine patterns, is key to innovating. Try to discover one pattern per day. For example, you read about a new start-up in car sharing today, and your company is introducing a open office / flexdesk environment: there’s a pattern of people collaborative using things – cars and desks – without owning just one, and with an overall reduction of the amount of things in the network. Get good at it making associations, and write down or draw one pattern per day!
2. Always be pitching. As an innovator you will have to “sell” your ideas – to executives, client or external investors. Make it a habit: pitch at least one idea per day to someone. At the coffee machine, during lunch, at home, plenty of opportunities. Get out of the building, validate a key assumption about your idea with people on the street. You only have a silly idea today? Get out of your comfort zone, just do it.
3. Daily inspiration & ideas. Intellectual curiosity is proven to be a key trait of successful innovators. Find daily inspiration in blogs, twitter streams, going to events, LinkedIn groups, and totally new experiences. I prefer a mix of 90% strongly selected information sources, and 10% really random information sources that can surprise you. Keep a note book: write down any idea that pops in your mind. Make creativity a habit.
4. Turn one problem into an opportunity. Innovators are almost always positive. During each day you come across tons of problems – from a broken coffee machine to a technology bottleneck for your next project. Make it a habit to turn any problem into an opportunity. Broken coffee machine? Make it an opportunity to go out to a startup coffee bar with one of your colleagues; an opportunity to discover tea; an opportunity to learn how to fix a coffee machine; or any other opportunity you can think of.
5. Fail. And learn. It might be a strange habit but truly innovative people aren’t afraid to fail – like most people are – so you have to exercise and experiment. You need to have a stomach for uncertainty. Take some risks today, fail at something, and learn from it. I personally had some difficulties with this one. Last year I set it as one of my objectives. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone a lot, but I have learned even more and haven’t regretted it for a second. If you have difficulty to fail at something because you’re insanely awesome, than make it a habit to do something new each day (new route to work, talk to a stranger,…). This will give you a large opportunity to fail and learn something. Also, scientific research shows diversifying your experiences has a significant impact on your creativity.
6. Make 1 thing. We all spend too much time analyzing, meeting, and documenting. We are all Makers though! Our making skills and habits are just underdeveloped – thanks to a management-focused company system and a thinking-focused education system. Try to actually make something each day. Working on an innovative idea? Try to make it: discover paper prototypes, collages, coding, mock-ups, 3D printing, and so on. Yes, it’s uncomfortable, I know. But fun and productive too. Some companies like Facebook aim to have all Makers instead of Managers: read more about how everyone at Facebook is encouraged to learn by making, even those in C-suites. What could you make today?

How to develop your personal innovation habits

Forming habits is not easy. Not at all. Just think about trying to exercise or eat healthier. You have to stick to it long enough for your new behavior to become a habit. You can read more about the 4 habits that form other habits or the definitive guide to sticking to a habit, but here are the ground rules that I found most useful:

1. Start extremely small. Make sure you can’t fail your first habit. When I started some of my habits, I also had the tendency to start with very ambitious habit goals. That doesn’t work. Don’t start with setting a goal of 10 creative ideas per day (or similar: running 60 minutes per day), rather start with 1 idea per day (or similar: exercises just 5 minutes per day). Do it as long as needed for it to become a habit – on average this is 21 days in a row. Never miss 2 consecutive days. Than build on it and expand your habit. The frequency is way more important than the size.
2. Write them down. I’ve found it very helpful to write down the habit you want to adopt so someone else would be able to follow it. Making your habit very concrete (f.e. each day at 10.00 AM, the amount you aim for, where you will be,…) will boost your chances of success. You have less to think about before doing it. Or in other words: you
3. Share with others. Make yourself accountable by sharing your new habits with 1-5 people. These could be your colleagues, your team, your friends, your family, or any other person. Ask them to check in on your progress, or even more fun, make it a collaborative effort of forming the new habit.
4. Enjoy your habits. A lot of people start habits because they want to reach a goal, like loosing weight, but don’t like the habit in itself. This decreases your chances of actually succeeding. Keep a positive mind and enjoy your habit each time. I guess for innovation habits this might be a bit easier than following a strange diet!
5. Track with Lift. Of course there are apps to help you. My big time personal favorite is: Lift. Lift is an intuitive, social app that let’s you check and track your daily habits. You also have the opportunity to join habits with colleagues, so you can make it a combined team effort to be more innovative.

What do you think?

I’ve experienced the benefits and the power of forming daily habits, so I really wanted to share these thoughts. I’m very much looking forward to your experiences and views on this! Which innovation habits do you have? Consciously or unconsciously? Which habits would you plan to form? Which habits do great innovation leaders have? Many thanks for sharing in the comments section or via philippe@boardofinnovation.com. ps: Being Grateful is one of my daily habits so I’ll make sure to thank you personally! :)

What is the Validation Board?

The Validation Board, by the Lean Startup Machine, is a free tool to test remaining assumptions for your (start-up) idea, product or service. Coming up with new ideas is not the hardest part of true innovation. The hard part is to check if someone is waiting for it in the market. The Validation Board is based on Eric Ries’s Lean Startup methodology. Testing business cases is about getting out of your comfort zone, testing assumptions, learn from the testing, and design a better/improved value proposition; again and again and again.

For more information, explanation on how to use it, and downloads, visit their website.

What are good assumptions to test?

The Validation Board only works well if you test your idea or concept with proper assumptions. Finding a customer and problem hypothesis that fits with your vision is often not that hard. Clients within our innovation projects often have more problems to find the proper assumptions. So what are (good) assumptions? I define assumptions as: the things you know you don’t know, and if not validated, make your current business idea impossible to sell or even launch.

For the validationboard, we define 2 different assumptions: “the leap-of-faith“ assumptions and the product-assumptions. The leap-of-faith assumptions are the riskiest elements of the business idea, the parts on which everything depends. The product assumptions are the ones that will come up if we start building our idea into a product/service.

Let me give you an example of a bad and better leap-of-faith assumption:

(-) Bad: People are interested in our current product/service.
Of course this is an assumption, but not the proper one we want to use as a leap-of-faith one. If you had already a full working prototype that you could sell (we call it a Minimum Viable Product) you could test this assumption. But in the first phase you have nothing. Customers don’t know what they want so of course they would say they’re willing to use it or not. I always assume that people are liars (or don’t tell the truth because they don’t want to be rude). This is the best way to understand that with such an assumption, even after testing, it will remain an assumption.

(+) Better: People are willing to pay for a service within domain X.
Our (business) concept is not final, so we can’t ask something in the first phase about our product itself. The leap-of-faith assumptions often are value hypothesis (are people willing to pay for the value we offer) and growth hypothesizes (can we grow our market, ….) One of the first assumptions Steve Jobs had for the iPod: Are people willing to pay for online music? They did… if not the iPod would have never became a success.

Of course good assumptions can be tested right here, right now. Assumptions of which the answers are part of the future are not good for the validationboard. The assumption “One day people will be able to fly like birds” is an assumption of course, but you can’t test it now so please leave it out.

Tips and tricks for #awesome use

• Write 1 assumption/solution/customer/… on 1 post-it note. This makes everything clear and understandable.
• Within a business model, different stakeholders can be involved. You can use different validation boards at the same time to test different “customer hypothesis” eg. One for B2B, one for B2C, …
• Print the Validation Board as a big A1-poster. If you can laminate it, you even can write on it with whiteboard markers!

Why do we love it?

It helps our clients to get out of the building, talk to – and understand – their (potential) customers, and gives them structure when making pivots around their ideas or concepts. Make corporates innovate like start-ups is not that easy. The good thing about the Validation Board is that it combines the structure & methodology that corporate people are used to with the agile way of working of a start-up.

It’s the best of both worlds combined in one template!

Tips for first-time corporate innovators

In this series of posts we help corporates that soon will make the big jump to start their first big innovation project. You might feel uncomfortable. Don’t worry… we’re here to help. ;)

Idea generation session are hard to set up. Many corporate people see brainstorms as 1h meetings where people can play with post-it notes. A quick brainstorm can be nice of course but when you look for a new market to venture in a 60 min break will not make any difference.

1. Invest time
When we bring a corporate team together we aim for at least 2-3 day sessions. You’ll need the time to get people in the right mindset. Preferable we start with a dinner where everybody comes together. A very informal meetup without stiff presentations or formal guidelines. It’s up to you if you would go for pizza delivery or a hipster sushi palace. Anyhow it is important that the setting is clearly unrelated to the normal day-to-day business context. Everybody should feel that exciting times are coming up!

The next morning you need to start with energisers and warm-up brainstorm exercises. Several good examples of exercise can be found in this book: GameStorming. (Free samples online)

During the first idea rounds I don’t expect good ideas at all. I just want people to get comfortable to share their opinions. It takes time for people to get in right mood.

Only by the first afternoon I expect to hear the first useful or clever ideas. You might have spend 6 hours already!

2. Balancing between crazy- & seriousness.
Regardless of the company, industry, nationality or age of the participants we see that a strange pendulum effect that takes place during the day. The day starts slow, people get excited and strange ideas are being shared. The first out-of-the-box ideas are being presented. In the early afternoon people dare to go a little bit further and after the first really crazy ideas the first serious topics are being discussed. People need this crazy ideas first to get to the real stuff it seems.

And then there is the 4-o-clock moment where out of the blue dirty jokes and sexual languages comes forward. It feels almost as if people need to compensate their serious ideas of the afternoon with some thong-in-cheek jokes.

If we talk about a car sharing app participants start to joke about escort services. If we have a brainstorm on a digital social platform at 4pm we know the dating jokes will pop up. And so on. Believe us, this is not something solely linked to testosteron driven engineers or IT-geeks.

3. Coffee & conclusions
People need to have a laugh. They need to be relaxed to come up with lots of (good) ideas. As a brainstorm facilitators it’s our job to steer the discussions and ask the right questions. Just make sure that there is enough coffee and things will work out just fine. Have a good laugh but don’t forget to wrap up the day with the main conclusions to show people they did a great job during the day!

Our quest has come to an end. Florence Bosco is our new Business Model Designer! This French speaking, entrepreneurial woman with Italian blood will strenghten our B2B innovation projects.

3 things made her a right fit with the innovation challenges that we tackle for our clients:

• A business background in Biotech & Pharma startups
• A passion for innovation, partnerships and technology
• A deep curiosity to understand how the world works by asking “Why?”

Welcome on board!

Team & culture at the Board of Innovation

Our team exists of so called T-shaped entrepreneurial people who can combine Design thinking principles with Strategy and economics. Business model design is what we do on a daily basis. Our mantra is to live 5 years ahead. This puts us in the perfect position to pull your corporate innovation team out of their comfort zone… straight into our world ;)

If you look at Manu, our talented Strategy Designer, he’s a perfect example of this approach. He has hands-on startup experience, a background in industrial design, has experimented with new tech and due to this background, he is perfectly equipped to challenge your business model. People like him are rare assets!

Since the end of last year we have Ren on board as well. As founders’ sidekick and Master of the Office he makes sure that all practical things are in place so we can focus on being awesome at the client work.

We’re very proud that smart people like all of them above are part of our ambitious team! #worlddomination

Hopefully you get the chance to work with them soon ;)

Nick & Philippe

Tips for first-time corporate innovators

In this series of posts we help corporates that soon will make the big jump to start their first big innovation project. You might feel uncomfortable. Don’t worry… we’re here to help. ;)

Business innovation projects need a different mindset

You want to generate extra revenue for your business, right? But where do you start? Just tweaking your existing product or service offering will not make a big difference. Business innovation projects similar to the ones we are running are focused on finding new offerings, potentially for new markets. In general we see that innovation teams or their stakeholders in bigger corporates are not used to this kind of break-through challenges. So, here’s a starter.

“The Dreamer” – An exercise to get your team involved

When your innovation team comes together for the first time you will need to discuss the scope of your business innovation project. But where do you start? Here is a basic exercise to spur the discussion. Ask everyone to bring 3 visuals each (3x 1 picture printed on A4 sheets). They should think of future “Dream” innovations for the company. By stating this very open dream question you’ll immediately step away from the down-to-earth daily business.

Most of them (not all) will bring cases that instantly will trigger a very vibrant conversation. Almost regardless of the industry you will notice that many team members will come up with the following 2 topics:

Pitfall 1: The Hype of the moment
Depending on the season people will just ‘spice up’ the current services. A couple of years back participants would make everything wireless. Today everything should be Touch. Running a car Business? Add a touchscreen! Selling soap? Make it touch-sensitive! Next year it will be something else.

Pitfall 2: Star-Trek-ovations
While Wifi & Multitouch might sound realistic, there will be other team members that will live their childhood dreams! Holograms, flying cars, self-serving fridges and robots everywhere. Cool concepts? Yes, but they don’t solve real needs and/or are often impossible to make.

Lesson for your team: align the innovation scope

Have a group discussion after everyone presented their 3 concepts. Stick all the visuals to the wall and sort them according to a realistic commercial roll-out. The goal of this session is to align the expectations regarding the scope of the innovation project that you started. Typical you’re looking for business innovations that might take 2-5 years to be launched on the market. Things that could be launched sooner are usually incremental innovations, depending on the sector. On the other hand, products that need 5+ years of development don’t bring in revenue on the short term.

One concrete output of this workshop exercise is that people realize that technology needs years, sometimes decades, to penetrate the market. On the other hand it means that the technology that you would like to integrate is already out there in labs or prototypes. Humans are very bad at predicting the future. Already for 20 years people are dreaming of leaving the shopping mall with automatic payment via their shopping cart. Ain’t gonna happen.. at least not in the coming decade.

Try to find more cases and examples like this to get the message across!