COOi Studios at the World Economic Forum on Africa
August 28, 2019
Moonshot Sprint
March 2, 2020
When asked the question how might we measure innovation? I found myself scratching my head, not so much because we don’t have measurements, but rather there are so many different opinions, dimensions and observations to measure this intellection. Inspired by one of the articles, the late Clayton Christensen contributed to, titled ‘How Will You Measure Your Life?’ It shaped my thinking around the measurement of innovation. The article basically frames three measurements for your life; (i) Are you successful in your career? (ii) Do you find happiness in the personal relationships you build? (iii) Have you lived with integrity- and managed to stay out of jail? When learning about these three measurements, to my surprise I found all three to be quite relevant for the measurement of innovation. And I will tell you why.
i) Are you successful in your career?
In the world we live in today, one is not short of ideas, and initiatives to execute, but what sets innovations that strive apart from those that don’t is a team focused on the right priorities. And did the team balance their plans and opportunities? How disciplined is your team in saying what you will do and doing what you have said? Along with focusing on the right priorities, is also allocating resources to what needs to be done. Therefore, measure your executed tasks against your priorities and be super disciplined with allocation of resources.
(ii) Do you find happiness in the personal relationships you build?
People and culture are integral to any innovation agenda. The biggest take away I got from reading the book ‘Lean Start-up’ was the discipline to put a time on executing an idea and testing it in the market. If your customers are not adopting your innovation, find out why and reiterate or even squash the idea. Speed to market is paramount in innovation, therefore measure and keep honest to the time you have set out for an activity. Put empathy at the center, if we are not empathizing with our customers, building products that help our customers be better, then what are doing? Customer customer customer, is at the centre of any innovation, spend time with those you want to help. Give people experiences, one of the things we focus on at COOi Studios is giving people a great experience, whether they visit our studio or work with us on a project, we always want to give them a good experience and by showing them love, our biggest commodity is LOVE. Build a great culture with your team and it will exude towards your customers, be different, show up differently. At COOi Studios, we work out of a garage, we sing in our garage, we basically hang on a couch whilst working, we sometimes don’t work on Fridays, our work environment has become a fun outlet. What is your culture?
(iii) Have you lived with integrity- and managed to stay out of jail?
I’m being serious, stay out of jail, operate with integrity at all times, do the hard things, say no. A clear conscious is a happy heart. The easiest way to measure your integrity is to ask yourself the question, how far are you from being a Facebook?
When figuring out whether or not your innovation is successful, these three questions will help you navigate to indicate how successful your innovation is. There are obviously many mathematical or scientific matrices one could use, and don’t throw them away, use them too. What will matter most at the end of the day, is are people using your innovation and do they love it? That’s the true measurement of innovation, ADOPTION.
