The Four Lenses of Innovation: A Power Tool for Creative Thinking

How powerful are your insights?

“But wait,” you might say. “Our company already puts a great deal of effort into generating insights. We do a lot of market research and conduct focus groups. We go to industry conferences to keep our finger on the pulse of change. We work with trend forecasters and scenario planners to help us manage our way to the future. Who says we don’t have enough insights?”

All of the above might be true. However, ask yourself: How fresh and inspiring are the insights you are generating? How deep and meaningful are they? How differentiated are they from the insights your competitors are using in their own innovation efforts? Would they surprise your competitors? Are they novel and unique? Are they proprietary? Are they powerful enough to open up significant new opportunities for innovation? Are they shared across the firm so everyone can use them to trigger their creative thinking? Or do your insights get stuck on the desks—or in the heads—of just a few of your people, like your marketing executives or R&D staff? Do you have a robust and continually updated portfolio of strategic insights that is truly driving your innovation efforts? Are you using those insights as the essential basis for imagining new offerings, marketing strategies, processes, customer experiences, and business models? Or is there a disconnect somewhere between the insights you generate ...