Applying Frameworks to the Innovation Process
Students in the Innovation Processes and Tools course share how frameworks learned in the course can be applied to their current roles and intended career paths.
By Kaitlyn Stossel
The Innovation Processes and Tools course in the MIIPS Online program covers the early stages of a product innovation process. Students navigate the course with the goal of implementing an innovation process leading to the final deliverable of a product concept. As a part of the Methods and Tools for Product Innovation certificate, this course gives students the tools to make ideas more concrete via visual communication techniques.
We asked two of our online students, CJ Kraft and Youliang Weng, for their perspective on the course.
iii: What methods did you learn in this course?
CJ Kraft: In the Innovation Tools course, I learned about the wide variety of research methods that are available to learn more about groups of people and develop products to meet their needs. Even more valuable, I learned how to sequence those methods to get the most important insights at each stage of the product development process.
Youliang Weng: I acquired a systematic approach to carry out product innovation with appropriate methods in various stages of the innovation process as a team. Specifically, hands-on skill sets to:
- Conduct macro environment study via PESTLE analysis
- Generate customer insights through survey
- Sort out market segmentation and target customer selection
- Delineate customer experience journey map to reframe problem statement
- Identify product opportunity gap and value opportunity statement
- Use SCAMPER technique to develop or improve product or services concept,
- Sketch out prototype design and re-test with end user to ensure product-market fit
- Work as a team to plan for weekly sprints to develop new products or solutions from scratch towards completion of prototype
- Develop business model and key financial assumption to mimic real word business environment
- Build out a business case with story-telling flows to pitch to business sponsor or external investor for start-up fund
iii: Were the methods learned in this course applicable to your current role or intended career path? If so, how?
CJ Kraft: These methods were very relevant in expanding my current skill set as an A/B testing specialist, which is often the last step in the research process for new features on our website - putting a hypothesis developed by qualitative research to the test. Thanks to this course, I can now more effectively conduct and understand qualitative research earlier in the product development process, which will be helpful as I grow into a broader product role.
Youliang Weng: Yes. One of the key benefits from this course is that I can apply the methods learned to my current role as technical program manager in Intel. The learnings equipped me with the right tools to enable the mindset change of my cross-functional product development team to transition from building product “Complete” to building product “Right”. Our product development team is now caring more about solving end user problems and improving user experience, rather than only focusing on developing technically sound solutions that largely solve internal problems.
iii: Working in teams with fellow students, was there ever an ‘aha’ moment when discussing experience using these methods in different companies, roles, and projects?
CJ Kraft: What I loved about this class is that each of our research projects was based on our expertise. In class, the professor facilitated some great conversations where we could all learn from each others’ methods and share feedback from our own experiences.
Youliang Weng: When working in our team on a Meal Planning group assignment, I was so impressed by my fellow students as to clarity by using a visual representation method to sketch a product prototype, specifically, visualizing the mobile application interface of all usage steps of our online meal preparation delivery solution.
iii: What method stood out to you the most as an important framework to utilize in the innovation process?
CJ Kraft: Because I came into the class with more experience in end-stage research (like usability testing and prototyping), the most effective frameworks were the generative methods meant to identify the right idea early in the design process. The PESTLE analysis, Value Opportunity Analysis, and Jobs-to-be-done frameworks all opened my team up to a better understanding of the problem we were trying to solve.
Youliang Weng: Design sprints-based planning stood out to me as the most important framework to utilize in the innovation process. This framework facilitates fast proto-typing and is a structured approach to build up design momentum. Instead of focusing on designing and developing products in line with schedule, short or long, the design sprints approach enables self-governance across product development teams, so that they can really focus on the utmost important features being built with real time feedback to meet end user needs and wants.
