Introduction

There are three universal truths inherent in nearly every organization; and this first truth also serves as a primary, fundamental goal of most organizations, regardless of whether the organization is for profit or nonprofit, and it can be expressed in one word: growth. Most organizations desire growth more than anything else, and because organizations are not content with providing the same product and/or services to their same customers with the same sales, revenue, or grant funding year over year, leveraging this knowledge, coupled with what you will learn throughout this text, will provide you with a distinct advantage during an interview or product proposal.

The second truth manifests as a commonly shared experience within all organizations; again, it is true, regardless if the organization is for profit or nonprofit, and it can also be summarized in one word: pain. The third truth is that whenever someone is experiencing pain, he or she is undergoing an emotional experience to a problem. The interplay of these three truths (growth, pain, and problems) is that problems are what prevent organizations from growing, especially as problems prevent the organizations from designing and developing the most innovative products that consumers will appreciate, and in the middle of it all is pain. Therefore, as you think, learn, and practice how to design and develop new products, we urge you to consistently consider your product in the context of consumer pain.

If you interview consumers about the products they appreciate most, the root of their answers will reveal how their favorite products either reduce or eliminate pain, or conversely, increase or create joy. In other words, products that consumers appreciate most are ones that most effectively satisfy their wants or needs, and this is a key purpose of this text: to help you identify new opportunities and introduce you to the concepts and methods that designers and developers use to create and launch new products that consumers appreciate and love so that your organization can continually grow. The way this text accomplishes this is through demystifying the product innovation process and by presenting a new framework we call the Go-To Market Aura Plan, or GT-MAP, which we will introduce in the next chapter.

As we begin this journey together, there are a few other realities to keep in mind. In the world of product innovation, there are only two kinds of problems: those that you know exist and those that you don’t. (We will expound on this concept later in this chapter.) Additionally, when you’re attempting to solve difficult or “wicked” problems, be wary of easy answers. If you and your team arrive at an answer too easily, it’s probably not a viable solution as someone else would have likely implemented it already if it was. Lastly, innovators are not born, they are grown, and starting with this chapter, you will begin learning about and practicing some of the very habits of the world’s most innovative people who are responsible for creating some of the most important innovations of today and tomorrow.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter students will learn about the following:

• How to define what a product is
• The importance of value in regard to an innovation
• The difference between an innovation and an invention
• The most positive and negative ways to communicate during an ideation phase
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in eight stages and how they relate to the human condition
• The structure of the human brain and how it correlates to Simon Sinek’s golden circle
• Different methods used by industry, such as 5W2H and the five why’s to learn more about the wants and needs of consumers
• The importance of problem statements when trying to understand, empathize, and solve consumer problems

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this chapter students will be able to do the following:

• Explain the difference between an innovation and an invention
• Explain why the metric of adoption is critical to the success of a product
• Explain how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs can be used as a product design and development tool
• Describe the necessary steps to take in order to understand a consumer problem
• Write an effective and succinct problem statement

Key Terms

Product: A thing produced by labor, which includes things that are grown or raised through farming and are not limited to something physical; products can also be virtual or in “cyber form” such as software or a website

Value: Something of worth that uniquely satisfies a consumer’s want and/or need

Innovation: A product, service, or process that provides new value to a group of people, and because it provides new value, it is adopted

Invention: Something that has never been made before; not all inventions are major advances as many are simply alterations to older technologies

Adoption: A way of measuring success of an innovation by the number of consumers who are using the product because of the value that the new product is providing (real or perceived) to its users

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Provides designers and product developers with a valuable tool that depicts a spectrum of user needs, from survival to fulfillment

WIIFM or “What’s in it for me”: Widely regarded as the most important acronym in marketing and sales as it relates to how customers feel about whether they will purchase or use a product

5W2H: A popular method used to learn more about a consumer’s problem by asking who, why, what, where, when, and how

Five why’s: A method used to ask various stakeholders “why” several times over as that is the usual number of times required for a stakeholder to answer in a way that provides meaningful, actionable insights

Empathy: The ability to understand how someone else feels

Problem statement: A method defining who is experiencing a problem, then describing what the problem is and why it is a problem for the user

Design Charette: Common way of referring to a formal brainstorming session

The Ubiquity of Products

Before this day ends, every human alive on Earth will receive a positive benefit from using at least one product, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, education, geographic location, socioeconomic condition, political affiliation, or physical or mental health (including any human with a disability or even those who are completely incapacitated, e.g., in a coma). And it happens every day, without fail. Each of us benefits from using products every single day. It happened yesterday, and as long as there is at least one human alive by tomorrow, it will happen each and every day henceforth, guaranteed.

Why? Because humans and products are inseparable and have been, not just for thousands of years, but for millions and millions of years. In other words, humans are as inseparable from products as we are from our wants and needs, and that is why we have products.

Products Exist to Fulfill Our Wants and Needs

Look around. You are surrounded by products. (Even if you are consuming this text in a remarkably desolate place, you are most likely wearing some form of clothing; therefore, you are quite literally covered in products.) The most remote tribes on this planet also benefit from products every day, including the uncontacted tribe of the Sentinelese located on the North Sentinel Island of India’s Andaman Islands, arguably the most isolated tribe in the world. Even they use products as part of their daily life, but let’s not forget another very small, remote tribe of people who are currently living 200 miles above the Earth’s surface on the International Space Station; they would not survive without a plethora of products allowing them to simply do what many people take for granted, like breathe, much less all of the other products that they use to conduct research while circling the globe every 90 minutes at roughly 17,500 mph.

Extreme circumstances aside, you have benefited from a wide array of products ever since the very moment you were born, and you have never known life without products. As conveyed in this text’s title, the subject of products is a primary topic in this book, coupled with how to design and develop products that will be successful in the marketplace. And while there are several definitions associated with the noun, product, our working definition for this text is a product is “a thing produced by labor,”^[1] which includes things that are grown or raised through farming.^[2] What’s more, we also want to specify that a thing produced by labor is not limited to something physical; products can also be virtual or in “cyber form,” such as software or a website, respectively.^[3]

Lastly, in relation to our physical bodies, products are not limited to external uses. Have you ever received a vaccine or taken medicine of any kind? How about a multi-vitamin? How about the most recent meal you ate? In each of these instances, by definition, you have literally consumed a variety of products. Consider Ötzi, the mummified Similaun man who was discovered in the Alps in 1991. The ibex meat and wheat grains discovered in his stomach did not appear there on their own; either he or someone he knew provided him with a meal, which we will, from now on in this text, regard as another form of product. What about the arrow that scientists found that had cracked Ötzi’s scapula and likely led to his death? That is another product. What about the 61 tattoos that were found all over his body? Those are also products, as they were made by labor, not to mention his clothing, shoes, quiver, his axe that was smelted from copper, or any number of his other belongings, each made by labor.

Now that we’ve identified what was in Özti’s stomach at the time of his death, let’s return our focus to posit what is likely in yours, right now. Can you be certain everything you’ve consumed today was 100-percent free of GMOs, hormones, herbicides, pesticides, or any other type of chemical (you know, all the ones that were made by labor)? Ötzi could, but can you? Each of those things, whether you like it or not, are coursing through your body right now, and each are different and unique human-made products.

What about the air you’ve breathed today? Have you breathed in any toxins, noxious particulate matter, fumes, or pollutants made by labor? Of course you have, and you’ve likely breathed an assortment of those things all day, just like yesterday, just like you will tomorrow. We all have, do, and will continue to. And it is these types of questions that expose a whole other level in which humans are inseparable from products and that will hopefully inspire you to join the growing ranks of product designers, developers, and innovators who are deeply concerned about the moral and ethical consequences intrinsically associated with this work: to be more responsible about the products we make and apply a systems thinking approach to better understand the implications as well as the short-term and long-term adverse effects many of these products impose on living organisms and our environment, great and small.

Products are Not Only Ubiquitous Outside of Us, But Inside Us Too

Now that we have a better understanding of how pervasive, and in some cases, unwantedly intrusive, products are in our lives, we need to question the intended longevity of these products, which certainly seem to have a way of lasting a very long time, certainly long after a consumer’s wants and needs are satisfied. In the case of Özti, that timeframe is around 5,300 years. In the case of products unearthed from the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya, those products (specifically manifest as stone tools) are 3.3 million years old. Think about this in terms of the amount of plastic we currently produce every year, and that each year we make more plastic than the year before. How much plastic will be in our environment in fifty to one hundred years, notwithstanding 5,300 years? What will be the outcome of continuously increasing the amount of carbon we are emitting into the air in fifty to one hundred years, notwithstanding 5,300 years or even 3.3 million years?

Considering issues such as these, we must work harder to design, develop, and manufacture products that not only benefit consumers when they want and need them, but that ensure that the products do not cause harm from the labor of sourcing the materials, or from the making of the product, or while the consumer is using it, or especially after the consumer no longer wants or needs it. May this tenet serve as a guiding principle throughout this text and inform your future work, in whatever capacity.

There is powerful information in this text, and we hope that you will use it to benefit others rather than cause harm, however unintentional, and hopefully one day this viewpoint will not be considered “contemporary,” as it is in reference to the title of this book. Instead, may it be adopted as the new normal and forever improved on by new thinking, practices, and technology. Be responsible for the impact you have when designing, developing, manufacturing, or marketing the products made through your labor, and hold others accountable for the impact of their practices as well.

Imagine if ancient cultures had produced the kinds of products we are manufacturing today, at the rate at which we are making them, and disposed of them in same way that we are today. What would the world be like, keeping in mind that plastic was only invented just over 150 years ago, interestingly around the same time as the world’s oldest oil refineries came into being?^[4] And while the road to mass-produced, cheap plastic was paved with the good intention of saving elephants from being killed for the sake of producing billiard balls (thankfully elephants did not become extinct due to human want for ivory billiard balls as the New York Times posited would likely happen back in the 1880s), instead we now have a different crisis of unintended consequences in the twenty-first century as swimming in the ocean in many places around the world is to swim in a sea of garbage, much of it plastic.

How Can We Develop Products with a “Focus on Innovation”?

Innovation is probably one of the most overly misused words of the twenty-first century, so let’s first provide some clarity regarding what innovation actually means, as well as the process by which you can make it real. Unfortunately, dictionaries and encyclopedias are not as helpful as one would hope when defining what an innovation is, and we will defend a strong opinion about how innovation should be defined, which thankfully aligns well with how many other thought leaders define innovation. In short, there are four explicit qualities that must be true in order for something to be called an innovation.

1. An innovation must be a product, service, and/or process.
2. The innovation must be new. (We understand the word new may be problematic, but we will provide more clarity on this.)
3. In addition to the innovation’s “newness,” it must provide unique value to a group of people, regardless of the group’s size or whether the group is an intended or unintended market for the innovation, and this group must never have had access to this particular type of value before the innovation became available. In the context of innovation, value is something of worth that uniquely satisfies a consumer’s want and/or need.
4. The innovation must be adopted and used by a group of people, again, regardless of the group’s size or whether the group is an intended or unintended market for the innovation.

That’s it. Or, more succinctly, an innovation is a product, service, or process that provides new value to a group of people, and because it provides new value, it is adopted. Moreover, the success of the innovation has less to do with what it is and more to do with the amount of value it provides, coupled with the size of the group or market who is using it. This is worth repeating because so many companies miss the mark on this and waste precious resources focusing on the product, service, or process itself. And that is a huge mistake, but oh how companies love to fawn over their nifty, clever, beautiful, sheik designs, or fascinate themselves over some marvel of complexity or intricacy of a service they’ve developed, or some new whizbang process.

Do not fall into this trap. Your product, service, or process needs to only meet one criterion, and that is this: be the ideal vehicle for providing new value to your user. Remember, new value is what is most deserving of your focus and efforts, and it must be of the highest priority to maximize success, rather than the product, service, or process.

The Importance of Providing New Value

If you’d like to carve out a successful career as an innovation consultant, help companies focus their efforts and resources on providing new, substantial value rather than the result of creating a product. This is an area where many companies are in need of desperate guidance, which will prevent them from losing millions of dollars, simply by refocusing their efforts on the new value they are providing to a group of users while secondarily designing the ideal vehicle (product, service, or process) to deliver that new value, rather than what usually happens: Most or all of the firm’s attention is focused on some neato-whatever that doesn’t deliver any new measurable or perceivable value for anybody. Another way to think about this is to help teams focus on the value the consumer experience rather than the product’s gadgetry.

The Innovation Process, Simplified

Now that we have defined what an innovation is, let’s identify the three steps required for any product, service, or process to reach the hallowed status of an innovation, along with a few additional, unique criteria that are true of all innovations. We choose to take this approach because developing innovations are not usually simple or straightforward, so we believe there is a great advantage to understanding how an innovation is developed by outlining the process first through simplicity rather than its usual complexity. The following chapters will address the inherent complexity of innovation.

First, every innovation begins with a process that engages creativity. It is impossible to release a new product, service, or process to the market without someone, somewhere being creative, yet it is astounding how leadership of some firms seem to believe that innovations are sourced from somewhere other than creativity. Therefore, in order to ensure that you and your team produce as many highly valuable ideas as possible, you must practice being creative and playful with solving problems through idea creation. Without creativity, there is no innovation. Ideally, a firm should nurture an environment in which employees feel inspired to create and explore all kinds of ideas; tinker with all kinds of notions regarding materials, processes, functions, and new consumer groups; but most of all, create value that a group of consumers will care about and adopt.

One of the most powerful ways innovation and design teams can begin this work is to preface their questions with “How might we … ?” How might we create new value? How might we provide new value to a different consumer group or demographic? How might we reduce the cost associated with making this product while increasing consumer value simultaneously?^[5]

A few examples of the worst kinds of statements that can harm any potential innovation during an early stage of creativity are “That will never happen”; “Prove it”; or anything that is typically prefaced with “Not to be the devil’s advocate, but … ” In order to nurture a new mind-set amongst your team, consider practicing the “Yes, and” exercise, which is often used to highlight how much more productive positivity is when generating great ideas and creating community among innovation and design teams, especially when there are new members on the team who may not have experience being charged with creating a new innovation.^[6] Ironically, in order to capitalize on the power of the “Yes, and” method, it is recommended to begin by demonstrating the opposite through negativity: “No, but.”

To begin, choose two people from the team and pick a topic of conversation between the two of them; one person’s role will be to support the original idea being discussed while the other’s role will be to relentlessly negate the idea and criticize it from as many different angles as possible by using logic. For instance, the first person could start with saying, “I’m thinking about taking my first cruise this year. What do you think?” Then the second person’s response must begin with “That’s a horrible idea, and here’s why … ” followed by a logical reason. Then the first person’s response must begin with “But … ” followed by the second person responding with, “No … ” and coupled with another negative reason. Let this exercise play out for a few minutes. Take note of how uncomfortable it may feel, not just for the two people role-playing the negative conversation, but for everyone else on the team. Hopefully your team will experience some humor in this tragedy of an exercise while also noting how little to no progress is made in helping the first person determine how he or she should spend his or her vacation.

Now, ask the same two people to behave the opposite through the “Yes, and” exercise while using the same topic. After the first person says something like, “I’m thinking about taking my first cruise this year. What do you think?” the second person’s response must be “I think that’s a great idea, and … ” followed by a helpful, positive suggestion. Then the first person must respond with, “Yes, and … ” while building on the second person’s statement. Again, let this exercise play out for a few minutes. Take note of the enthusiasm, not just for the two people who are role-playing, but for the entire team. Also note how the original idea morphed into something else entirely from where the two team members started their conversation. While criticism is a crucial part of creating an innovation, this is not the appropriate stage to practice it as criticism often prevents new ideas from being generated, except for the weakest, most conservative milquetoast ideas.

Second, every innovation must manifest as an invention, no matter if it is a product, service, or process. The earliest stage of this, especially as the purpose of this text is to focus on developing products, is to create at least one physical prototype. Teams should purposely facilitate “Yes, and” conversations regarding the prototype in order to uncover and explore new uses or purposes for the product, as well as identify a new market that might want to use the product, all while focusing on the new value the product will or could provide.

The purpose of this second stage is to arrive at an invention, which means that what your team has created must be considered “something that has never been made before^[7] while also remembering that “not all new inventions are major advances; many are simply alterations to older technologies.”^[8] Ideally, your team should create many different prototypes, recognizing all of their advantages and disadvantages and varying levels of value they provide to their target markets.

The last part of the invention stage is when the product is made available to the market via a launch event, which is the primary purpose and value of this text: to help you and your team launch your new product with great success, made possible by using the GT-MAP, the Go To Market Aura Plan that is outlined in chapter 2.

While the overwhelming majority of this book focuses on the intricacies of these first two stages of the simplified innovation process (creativity through invention to launch), it is important to identify the third and final stage that your new product must reach in order to achieve the status of an innovation, and that is adoption. The adoption stage begins immediately after a launch event and is a way of measuring success, not through typical metrics such as units sold, but by the number of consumers who are using the product and the value that the new product is providing (real or perceived) to its users. The formula for success is this: The greater value the product provides, the greater likelihood more people will adopt the product to benefit from its increased value over any other product of its kind in the market.

May this formula serve as a target for your team as you create new ideas and uncover new value, as well as develop a variety of prototypes. Again, focus on maximizing the value that the product will provide rather than the product itself. Remember, anything else is likely a trap that will capture and squander your firm’s time and resources without providing a meaningful return on investment.

Adoption is the most critical stage as it determines the impact of your product’s success, but the ever-important, underlying reason for adoption is none other than value. Simply put, no value, no adoption. Therefore, no adoption, no innovation, no matter how unique or spectacular. If people are not adopting the product, the product cannot be referred to as an innovation. And this concept leads to another unique and important aspect of innovation: Your product is not for you to call an innovation.

Customers Decide Which Products are Innovations

The only people who truly have the right to call your product an innovation are your customers. Imagine if your favorite artist repeatedly announced to the world, “I’m the most talented, unique, and successful artist!”—that’s not likely to sit well with that artist’s audience. Remember, the reason why that person is your favorite artist is because of how you feel about his or her art, not how he or she feels about his or her own art. A product is determined an innovation because of how its users feel or measure the value the product provides, not how you or your company feel or measure the value it provides. There is an enormous difference between the two.

Metrics for Measuring an Innovation’s Success

What’s more, we want to be abundantly clear about how measuring the value that the product provides its users and its adoption in the market are the only metrics that are applicable in determining an innovation’s success. Economic terms such as money, profit, revenue, returns, or the like have no bearing on how successful an innovation is. This is one of the greatest and most problematic myths associated with innovation. Innovations are not required to make money, and how much money the product or service makes for a company doesn’t matter in the least in determining the success of an innovation.

This will be difficult for many of your managers and peers to understand as they will want to use any number of other metrics, such as number of units sold, to determine the success of your firm’s new product, and that is all well and good, just as long as they are not using that data to gauge the success of an innovation. Using the common metric of number of units sold as an example, the metric should be associated with real-time analytics of usage, which is far more valuable a metric than number of units sold. Why? Because real-time analytics of usage ensures that after consumers have presumably exchanged money for your product, they are still receiving value from using it, rather than it being shelved next to all sorts of other products associated with extraordinary number of units sold, like Kodak or Polaroid cameras, tape cassettes, VCRs, rotary phones, and the list goes on.

While companies should still care about metrics, such as number of units sold, they should realize that those data are not nearly as valuable as data regarding real-time analytics of usage, and here’s why: Speed matters, and we emphasize this concept throughout the text. For example, if Google wants to learn how successful their Nest thermostats are right now, or Amazon with Alexa, or FitBit with one of their fitness watches, they can leverage data regarding real-time analytics of usage much more than units sold because it allows those firms to detect a drop-off in actual usage of their products, which in turn often serves as a warning for an imminent drop-off in units sold. This provides an important and unique opportunity to use that information to quickly to make adjustments, which will allow the firm to address whatever issues its active customers are encountering, rather than learning after its consumers have begun abandoning the product, spreading word to other consumers that the product is not as valuable as once perceived.

It is worth noting that when a product is designed well and consumers continue to experience increased value from using the device, this information will be reflected in data associated with real-time analytics of usage, which allows the firm to communicate to its manufacturers and distribution channels to anticipate a continued rise in orders and sales. In short, measurements associated with consumer value and adoption allow firms and all of their partners to be much more responsive to fluctuations in consumer demand.

Innovation Exists in All Economies, for All Reasons, Not Just For-Profit

Another myth about innovation is that it must be associated with capitalistic mechanisms and/or capitalistic motivations, such as the buying or selling of a product in a for-profit context, and this is not true. Many innovations are developed in socialist economies, just as many innovations are designed and developed as highly valuable products or services by nonprofit organizations, and every year in the US there are awards ceremonies to specifically recognize the innovations that nonprofits contribute annually, including the Drucker Prize, named after one of the most prominent thought leaders on innovation, Peter Drucker. For instance, the State of Minnesota has declared that they have nearly ended homelessness due to implementing a series of innovations across multiple agencies across the state.^[9]

The Innovation Clock is Always Ticking

Another important quality to an innovation is that it has a timestamp. In other words, an innovation will not to be considered an innovation forever. Think of it this way: In the 1980s, the personal computer was widely regarded by the market as an innovation, and rightly so. Moreover, PCs were held in such high regard as an innovation that even PC users were regarded as “innovative” by non-users. But who today would regard a PC as a current innovation? And who would regard a PC user as someone who is innovative just because he or she uses a PC? While the PC once was an innovation, and the people who used PCs when they were new were innovative for using them, neither of these things are true anymore. Today, the PC is just an invention, and PC users are nearly as common as employees.

The same holds true for planes, trains, and automobiles. Each of those modes of transportation, when they were new and unique, were considered innovations by the people who used them, yet while there are some caveats today, this is overwhelmingly no longer true. For instance, one could argue that electric vehicles are still new enough that they could be considered an innovation and the people who own them are perhaps being somewhat innovative by driving them (even though we’ve had electric-powered cars since mid-1800s); however, it is the advent of autonomous vehicles that are very likely to become a disruptive innovation (as they have yet to be made widely available to the average consumer), and when they do, autonomous vehicles will be considered an innovation until they become the normal, everyday expectation of how all vehicles navigate from point A to point B. Then autonomous vehicles will simply be regarded as an invention, and this highlights a significant difference between innovation and invention, which is while innovations have a timestamp, inventions are timeless.

Consider the millions of filings at the US Patent Office, many of which were deemed worthy of a patent because it represented something that had not been invented before. Yet, how many of them became innovations? The answer is hardly any, even though every single one of them is by definition an invention, will remain so until the end of time.

Timing an Innovation

The next important difference between an invention versus an innovation, which is also related to time, is the timing of the product launch and its availability to the market. Again, inventions are allowed a great deal of latitude; the only criterion an invention must meet is to be first. While that may be easier said than done, it is nothing in comparison to the criteria an innovation must satisfy. Not only must the innovation be first, but it must be perfectly timed and targeted to a market that is ready and willing to adopt it, and that market must experience the increased value it receives from using it. This is no small feat.

The last important differentiator that we will discuss regarding inventions versus innovations focuses on the fundamental requirement of an innovation’s purpose. While an invention is only required to be first and be different (or at least different enough) from anything else preceding it, an invention is not required to solve a problem, whereas all innovations, without exception, must solve a problem (the more problems solved, the better, and the more significant the problem that is solved, the better) for a group of people, however large or small, regardless if the group of people recognizes that they have a problem or not.

For instance, prior to the launch of the iPhone in 2007, smartphone users did not recognize that they had a problem that only the iPhone could solve by integrating a logical keyboard into the screen instead of including a physical QWERTY keyboard. Conversely, a few years ago Apple introduced a butterfly-mechanism keyboard in their MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air models, which was intended to improve the user’s typing experience. Instead, this unnecessary, over-engineered butterfly mechanism has caused enormous problems for users, and rather than solving a problem, which we would argue never existed in the first place, it is now causing such significant issues that people are now avoiding the purchase any of those three models from Apple.

What’s even more troubling is that Apple has not been able to solved the issue, even with its third-generation keyboard redesign because they will not abandon their faulty butterfly mechanism, which is the original root of the problem.^[10]

The obvious questions is, “Did MacBook users have a problem with their keyboards prior to the introduction of the butterfly mechanism?” From our vantage point, they didn’t seem to; however, they certainly do now. (And how is it that in the twenty-first century, any computer user should harbor concern about the reliability of their computer’s keyboard?) Moreover, while the butterfly mechanism is an invention, it is the antithesis of innovation, especially as Apple’s invention is actively driving customers away, whereas the purpose of an innovation is to inspire increased adoption through the way in which it uniquely solves a real problem and provides significant value.^[11] In this outlandish example, Apple has attempted to fix a problem that wasn’t there, and has attempted to accomplish this bizarre exercise, of their own making, three times over, unsuccessfully. This is the very type of brazen behavior that sinks newer companies, albeit with much less capital in their coffers.

In a World of Problems, Innovators Only See Opportunity

While there are thousands of ways to solve problems and thousands of proven methods and tools from which to choose, we will focus on a select few that we believe will be most effective in introducing you to design and innovation work, as we also want to build your confidence, efficacy, and agency, so that in the future, you will likely feel more comfortable and well positioned to join or lead other teams, experience personal and professional growth by adopting other methods and practices of problem solving, and explore new tools.

As the famed psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote, “[I]t is tempting, if the only tool you ever have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail,”^[12] yet our world and its problems are far more complex and nuanced than how many people act, as if one method, system, philosophy or political viewpoint is capable of solving all problems. If only that were true. Instead, let’s introduce a few different methods, practices, and tools in an effort to begin developing your fluency in using them.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in Relation to Innovation

Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who noticed a failing within his profession: Most of his colleagues were intensely focused on studying the negative manifestations of human psychology, so he purposefully set forth to identify and study positive, healthy qualities from a psychological perspective, and after his paper, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” was published in the Psychological Review in 1943, he set forth to solidify a new framework of understanding our wants and needs. Despite the ongoing criticism his work receives in academia, Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs provides designers and product developers with a valuable tool.^[13]

Maslow’s original framework was presented as a five-stage pyramid but was later updated in the 1970s to portray eight stages, which is the model we prefer when designing and developing new products. The eight stages are as follows:

1. Biological and physiological needs: Air, food, drink, shelter, warmth, sex, sleep, etc.
2. Safety needs: Protection from elements, security, order, law, stability, etc.
3. Love and belongingness needs: Friendship, intimacy, trust, and acceptance, receiving and giving affection and love. Affiliating, being part of a group (family, friends, work)
4. Esteem needs: Maslow classified into two categories: (i) esteem for oneself (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and (ii) the desire for reputation or respect from others (e.g., status, prestige)
5. Cognitive needs: Knowledge and understanding, curiosity, exploration, need for meaning and predictability
6. Aesthetic needs: Appreciation and search for beauty, balance, form, etc.
7. Self-actualization needs: Realizing personal potential, self-fulfillment, seeking personal growth and peak experiences
8. Transcendence needs: A person is motivated by values that transcend beyond the personal self (e.g., mystical experiences and certain experiences with nature, aesthetic experiences, sexual experiences, service to others, the pursuit of science, religious faith, etc.)^[14]

Leveraging Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Ensure a Product’s Future Success

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a valuable foil when designing and developing a product as it can help inform and, in some instances, even reveal new value that the product could or should provide. What’s more, it can also serve to determine a product’s success in the market. Let’s explore how.

First, write down the names of five of your favorite products and compare the value that each provides you against Maslow’s eight-stage list. Take the time to note how each of your favorite products is likely providing either enormous value from one stage or value from multiple stages. Now consider five other products you use, but those for which you do not hold any particular affinity. Again, take the time to note how most or all of these products are providing some limited value to you, and likely only from one stage.

In first-world countries, the sweet spot for products is often found in the middle stages as the lower stages tend to be commoditized since an average citizen’s basic needs are typically being met. However, in third-world countries, the lower stages are some of the most important with the most immediate needs as citizens in these parts of the world have basic needs that are not being met. In both cases, the market for the upper stages of the list tends to be dominated by religious institutions, graduate schools, and doctoral programs. Will this always be the case?

Leveraging the Structure of the Human Brain

Humans are creatures of emotions and feelings much more than we are creatures of cognition or thinking, and the anatomy of our brains is responsible for this. All attempts to negate or remove our emotions from how we approach problems, design and develop products, and communicate the new value our products to prospective customers is an enormous mistake. Instead, we should accept that humans are emotion-based, feeling creatures—you, everyone on your team, your fellow employees, all of the stakeholders who you strive to satisfy, and especially your customers—and you should leverage this reality to your advantage in order to increase your product’s success in providing new value, which will propel your product forward in the market toward the great goal of adoption.

As Simon Sinek wrote in his New York Times bestselling book, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, the most advantageous way to communicate with anyone is to do so at an emotional level first, then at the behavioral level, and finally at a cognitive level.^[15] He describes this as the golden circle, which “correspond[s] precisely with the three major levels of the brain,” and he recommends this as a way of understanding effective communication.^[16] When you communicate why first, then how, you are speaking directly to the oldest, most central part of the human brain, otherwise known as the limbic brain, which Sinek writes, “is responsible for all our feelings, such as trust and loyalty. It is also responsible for all human behavior and all our decision-making.”^[17] And this is why those who ignore human emotions and feelings, especially when communicating with others, do so to their own detriment. Facts and figures, or as Sinek labels the what part of our communication, actually garners the least amount of our attention and consideration. It’s all about how we feel, including how we feel about all those facts and figures. And if something doesn’t feel right, no matter what data we are presented, we are likely to go with our “gut” or our “heart,” which is actually our limbic brain.

Invariably, we predict there are a few readers who are disputing this right now. Some of those readers are likely saying to themselves, “That’s not right. That’s not what I do. I use cold hard data; nothing but facts and figures influence my decisions.” And where is that response coming from? It’s coming from your limbic brain as your dispute is an emotional response—Hey, that doesn’t feel right—which, ironically, just further supports the point. Remember, all of your behavior and decisions are made in your limbic brain, and this is based in biology. Later the in the book we will further discuss this concept in the chapter that describes the importance of being “intuitive-wise” and “data-informed.”

Everything Communicates

When you listen to a song for the first time, how long does it take for you to determine if you like it and if you will continue listening? How about when you visit a website for the first time? How long does it take for you to determine if you will continue spending time on the site? According to the Nielson Norman Group, “[U]sers often leave Web pages in 10-20 seconds.” And why? It has everything to do with whether the user receives communication of a “clear value proposition within 10 seconds.”^[18]

This immediate emotional-then-behavioral response is so common it has its own acronym: WIIFM, which stands for “What’s in it for me?” and it is widely regarded as the most important acronym in marketing and sales.^[19] As Sinek writes about the effect that Martin Luther King Jr. had on a pre-civil rights America, “People followed him not because of his idea of a changed America. People followed him because of their idea of a changed America.”^[20] And while Dr. King’ s “I Have A Dream” speech aligned with what so many others wanted and needed to change in America, what mattered most was that it aligned more with why they wanted it. A quarter of a million people who arrived to listen to him speak in the summer of 1963 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial didn’t show up for him; “[t]hey showed up for themselves.” As Sinek writes, “It was what they believed.”^[21] In other words, people followed him for what it meant to them, or to put it more bluntly, WIIFM.

To further highlight the importance of this structure of communication, as you design, develop, and collaborate over your new product, it is precisely how scenes are structured in any well-written story or novel. In Dwight V. Swain’s book, Techniques of the Selling Writer, he exposes how to construct a character’s response in a way that makes perfect sense to all readers, and to be successful, it must be executed in the “strict[est] chronological order”: (1) feeling, (2) action, (3) speech, which directly translates to the order that our brains process information, the why, then how in the limbic brain, followed by what in the neocortex, which correlates perfectly the order of how we experience life: first through emotions, second through behaviors, and then last, through our thoughts.^[22]

How This Text is Organized

Consequently, we have organized the first half or first three sections of this text to correlate with the structure and relationship between your limbic brain and your neocortex. The first section is called “Leveraging Emotions in Product Development,” the second section is called “Understanding the Dynamics of Consumer Behavior,” and the third section is called “Thinking through the Details Before Launch.” The second half or last three sections of the book continue with “Disciplined Preparation: Communication, Presentation, and Validation,” then “Launch,” followed by “Assessing the Product’s Performance and Applying Adjustments to Increase Success.”

The Work Begins with a Problem: Who Is Impacted and Why?

To determine how innovation begins, we must first identify the problem stakeholders face and ask who is impacted and why? The following section will identify ways to discover the root cause of the problem by gaining insights and information from the stakeholder through an empathetic lens. Next, innovators learn to use the 5W2H technique to gain a deeper appreciation for the problem, the stakeholder’s pain, and how to innovate to correct it. In addition, writing a succinct problem statement can help to define the problem in a way that is best to leverage a design charette in order to devise ways to overcome the problem. Finally, these techniques are vital to innovators as a starting point for innovation and finding ways to gain an advantage by satisfying unmet or future needs of the stakeholder.

Interview, Observe, and Empathize with Stakeholders’ Problems and Their Pain

As you identify all of the stakeholders who are experiencing what you and your team identify as a problem, interview as many of them as possible to learn how they feel, behave, and think about the problem you are attempting to solve. You must also coordinate time to observe the stakeholders as they experience the problem. Note everything possible about their emotions, behaviors, and actions. We recommend that you do this until you feel as though your stakeholders’ problem is your problem, and you come to believe that you feel as they feel, which is most likely to experience some form of pain. Then, and only then, will you be prepared to truly define the problem in a holistic sense and begin to ideate ways in which the problem may be solved.

5W2H

A popular method used to help define problem statements and develop an action plan is the 5W2H. The name is derived from the questions that you and your team will ask, and the following is the order that we believe yields the greatest results:

• Who: Who is involved or impacted by the problem?
• Why: Why is it a problem? Why do we care?
• What: What is happening that causes the problem to occur?
• Where: Where is the problem happening? Where is the problem occurring in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?
• When: When is the problem happening? When did the problem begin?
• How: How does the problem happen (in regard to process)? How do we know it’s a problem?
• How: How can the problem be defined quantitatively? How frequently does the problem occur? How much of a problem is it? How many stakeholders are affected? How many factors are involved?

As each problem will have its own nuances and idiosyncrasies, you and your team should customize the most applicable and appropriate questions to learn as much as possible about the problem from your stakeholders.

The Five Why’s, and Why the Five Why’s Are Necessary

The five why’s is a common, proven method used in the design community to ask various stakeholders “why” several times over as that is the usual number of times required for a stakeholder to answer in a way that provides meaningful, actionable insights that you and your team can leverage or integrate into the design of your innovation. As Sinek’s book illustrates, your interviewee may have a difficult time putting to words what you are asking about the emotions and feelings because “[the limbic brain] has no capacity for language.”^[23]

Additionally, be prepared when asking someone about a problem he or she is having that his or her response will likely exhibit one or more self-defense mechanisms. Be empathetic in your approach. Consider how you would feel if someone asked you to explain why you experience pain in regard to a particular problem, because that is in fact what you are doing. (And if you’re tackling a problem where none of the stakeholders seem to experience significant pain or difficult obstacles, then we suggest finding a different problem to solve because solving this problem probably won’t make much difference or yield meaningful results to anyone, and one of the worst things you can do as an innovator is solve a problem to which your users respond by shrugging their shoulders. “Meh. Whatever. Who cares?”)

Be thoughtful about how you use the five why’s. Be sure to ask your series of questions in a way that conveys to your interviewee that you care about his or her pain, that you seek to better understand his or her experience through empathy, which is the ability to understand how someone else feels, and that you want to help find a unique and powerful solution that will dramatically improve his or her situation. In other words, the idea is not be like an annoying three-year old relentlessly asking “why,” which will likely cause an emotional response (as you’ve likely witnessed a three-year old pester an adult), but it will not likely be productive or act as a gateway toward a greater insight about his or her problem.

Integrating the Five Why’s with 5W2H

The technique of merging the five why’s with the process of using the 5W2H tool is a proven method toward uncovering valuable insights; however, this technique is not intended nor recommended as a substitute for pointedly asking the five why’s, but rather used in addition to asking the five why’s when it is deemed useful.

Writing a Succinct Problem Statement

Once you and your team feel that you understand the problem and fully empathize with your stakeholders, it is critical to write an effective problem statement from which your team will base all of your design and innovation efforts. While there are many approaches to writing a problem statement, we recommend that you start defining who is experiencing the problem, then describe what the problem is and why it is a problem for the user. Use the following as a template:

[Who] X is experiencing [a problem with] Y because [of] Z.

Note that your problem statement should not contain a solution to the problem, just an identification of who is having the problem, what the problem is, and why it is a problem. We recommend that any time you hear or read the word problem you immediately associate that word with pain. Whenever someone is experiencing pain, you and your team must first do everything possible to best understand, research, and empathize with the people who are experiencing pain and why.

Be prepared to revise this statement several times throughout your work. In fact, if you are not revising and tweaking this statement as you begin your work, you are likely engaging in assumptions and biases and will be more inclined to leap to presumed solutions. Unless the problem is your own, you should be learning new information, uncovering new insights, and analyzing new data, all of which should influence your problem statement.

Consider Creating a Design Charette

No innovation was ever the product of one person’s efforts. In order to leverage the passion and talent of your team, consider conducting a design charette, otherwise known as a brainstorming session. Design charettes should purposefully be inclusive and diverse. There is little to no value to a team populated with members who all feel, behave, and think more alike than different.

In the future, as objectively as you can, truly assess the strengths of each member of your design team. If they all have the similar talents, knowledge, skills, and abilities, you will likely develop product that will be similar to the products that your team developed before. This is no way to create an innovation, especially today. Small, diverse teams, inclusive of wildly different people with wildly different backgrounds, experiences, and passions are the best way to maximize creative problem solving and innovative product development.

Framing and Reframing Your Design Challenge

The way in which you “look” at your design challenge influences the way in you approach your work in a myriad of ways, most of which we are likely not even aware. This is due to all of our assumptions, biases, and presumed solutions our brains are so eager to validate, not to mention our inherent feelings about the problem. You must also take into account any design constraints that will affect how you and your team proceed with the work of solving your stakeholders’ problem. Also, be prepared to rewrite your problem statement, perhaps several times over as you and your team question its accuracy. As you do so, you should also “reframe” your design challenge.

Throughout this text, we will often refer to your product in development as an innovation, and while this may be presumptuous of us, we believe that if you follow the steps herein, your product will have the greatest opportunity to be deemed an innovation by your customers. And now that we’ve defined what products and innovations are, along with outlining a basic roadmap that must be followed in order for your product to be considered an innovation, it’s time to introduce the most significant concept of this text, the GT-MAP or Go-To Market Aura Plan in the next chapter.

Key Term Review Activity