FAST Innovation™ Consulting Services
Let Stephen Guide You Through Your Innovation Journey
When you need to truly accelerate the way you innovate, you will want to leverage Stephen’s FAST Innovation consulting services.
As you embark upon your innovation journey, you will most likely want both expert and unbiased advice to guide you through the process. But it is more than a process. Clients repeatedly tell us that Stephen can see things that no one else can. Stephen’s vast knowledge can assist you with all the aspects of innovation including these commonly requested needs.
Your organization can’t be best at everything. Therefore, you should not try to improve every aspect of your business. Instead you only want to innovate where you differentiate. This powerful process helps you uncover what sets you apart from the competition and use that to drive your innovation strategy. We look at your differentiator through five lenses:
- Distinctive – Your differentiator must help you stand out in a crowded market.
- Defensible – What you offer must be difficult for competition to replicate.
- Disruption-Proof – Tomorrow’s competition may be new entrants that make your business irrelevant.
- Desirable – Your customers determine your differentiator, and they must value what you offer.
- Disseminated – Once you have defined your differentiator, it is then used to prioritize innovation investments.
The resulting framework can help your organization massively increase the returns you receive from your innovation investments.
This is the “F” part of the FAST Innovation Model – which stands for FOCUS.
This content will be in a soon to be released book by Stephen. Expected publication date October 2023.
As you move forward with the creation of your challenge-centered innovation culture, you may struggle with challenge definition. For many organizations, this is one of the most difficult concepts to fully grasp. We work closely with you to:
- Gather challenges and opportunities from leaders, customers, vendors, 3rd parties, universities, and trend spotters
- Assess strategic relevance (“are you asking the right questions?”)
- Reframe the challenge in a way that will increase the likelihood of it being solved (“are you asking the question the right way?”)
- Document the challenge (write-up what you want in a “brief” that accelerates solution finding)
- Determine the best path for finding solutions (“are you asking the right people?”)
Although we will initially help with the challenge definition, our objective is to transfer our methodology to you so that you can effectively do this work on your own.
This is the “A” part of the FAST Innovation Model – which stands for ASK.
This is the content in Stephen’s book, Invisible Solutions®.
Sometimes the best solutions to your challenges can be found by those not tasked with finding the answer. Therefore, organizations are turning more to open innovation and crowdsourcing as methods for finding solutions to most of their challenges. This can take many forms:
- Collaborating with different departments or divisions within your organization
- Looking to the entire organization for potential solutions
- Working with trusted 3rd parties (e.g., universities or consultants)
- Leveraging external crowdsourcing as a means of finding solutions anywhere in the world
- Partnering with suppliers and customers
- Using “tech scouting” to find existing solutions
- Leveraging innovation competitions and tournaments
- Using open innovation “bounty hunting” (paying only for solutions that meet specific criteria)
You will learn how to navigate through the confusing maze of options and pick the best method for your specific challenges. When done incorrectly, open innovation and crowdsourcing can create extra work with little result. When done properly, you will find breakthrough solutions in less time, with lower cost and reduced risk.
This is the “S” part of the FAST Innovation Model – which stands for SHIFT.
We offer a number of packages that can be tailoredto meet your specific needs.
Advisory Package – With the Advisory Package, you get unlimited access to Stephen’s expertise via email and phone. As this is an advisory service, it does not include the creation of any documents or detailed reviews. It is designed to answer specific questions you may have, as they arise.
Catalyst Package – This includes all services contained within the Advisory Package plus a scheduled 2-hour mentoring call every other week. These calls are designed for regular follow-up and guidance helping Stephen to identify and address issues you might not even be aware of. This on-going and proactive support helps guide you through the process on a continual basis. This is our most popular package.
Full Support – This option provides the greatest level of support. Stephen works closely with your team to develop your innovation strategy and then helps you execute the plan. The typical engagement includes dedicated on-site support, plus all of the resources listed in the Catalyst Package. The traditional consulting model is not employed, instead, the primary role is to orchestrate the work being done and effectively transfer our knowledge and methodology to you so that you can continue the work long after we leave.