Everyone is grappling with how to innovate in the digital economy. In every sector, organizations are looking for breakthrough ideas and new digital businesses. No matter the industry, companies are looking for new ways to resonate with, and deliver value to, their customers.
Delvinia is no different. When our CEO Adam Froman announced the firm’s evolution to become an innovation company last fall, he wanted to move the company in a new direction, with a focus on identifying ways to commercialize our innovative thinking into digital businesses and platforms with significant growth potential.
In order to realize this vision, we restructured our management team and Delvinia’s President Steve Mast took on the additional role of Chief Innovation Officer.
As our head of innovation, Steve spearheads Delvinia’s innovation agenda and leads a team that is responsible for developing next generation products and services to add to our portfolio; and for envisioning new business models, products and digital platforms to help our clients succeed in the digital economy.
I recently sat down with Steve for a chat about what he sees happening in the digital innovation space today and the work his team is doing to realize Delvinia’s innovation agenda.
It seems like everyone is talking about innovation. But what’s really going on out there? How are companies approaching innovation? What did you find?
We found there are really three big buckets or categories when it comes to the ways in which companies are commercializing innovation.
Organizations are either optimizing – finding new ways of leveraging existing assets; expanding their existing business by creating adjacent businesses that are directly related to what they’re already doing; or they are literally transforming a market by creating ground-breaking new products and offerings.
A lot of companies are doing all three.
How are organizations using innovation frameworks to help them through this process, and what kinds of innovation frameworks are out there?
There are a few different approaches being used. Problem solving frameworks are probably the most hyped in the marketplace right now. This model is really about solving a specific problem and identifying ideas to solve that problem. It’s really about idea generation, idea sorting and then narrowing it down to the top concepts.
The second category we found is what I call business-model focused. These frameworks are all about imagining a commercialized opportunity, creating a business plan, developing a prototype, testing it and getting it into market. This model is tried and true and very common in the packaged goods industry.
The startup model is the third approach, which is all about a constant cycle of coming up with ideas, building, measuring, and refining. It starts with a specific customer in mind, and is focused on testing ideas in a very niche market and expanding them from there. Think The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, that’s what this model really is.
What resonated with you about each of these models? What did you learn about how well they work?
When I talk to business leaders there are commonalities to all three. And when you really look at the challenges presented by this new digital economy, the frameworks are less about what they produce and more about the idea of trying to change the mindset of the employees.
Innovation frameworks are really being used by organizations to try to change the mindset of how people operate and think within that organization. Yes, companies are creating innovation labs and initiatives and partnerships, but they’re also creating a cultural change within their organizations.
So given all you’ve learned, what is Delvinia doing now? How are you and your team approaching innovation?
We’re really focusing on how to commercialize innovation. There is a real struggle, particularly in Canada, around that idea. The frameworks that are out there tend to be more focused on the upfront idea stuff and the prototyping, which is all exciting stuff—and absolutely critical to the success of innovation. But there’s a real struggle to know how to commercialize this stuff.
That’s the area we’re really trying to address with the framework we’re developing now.
To be successful, we believe digital innovation frameworks need to have a few elements built into their DNA. Customer-led innovation needs to be at the core; they need to be focused on how to build successful digital businesses, not just a product; everyone on the team needs to have an entrepreneurial mindset; and they need to be technology-enabled, not technology-driven.
That in essence is what we’re working on at Delvinia; bringing a systematic and very rigorous methodology to the marketplace – and it’s really about the idea of commercialization.
What does the rest of the year look like for your team?
During the first quarter of 2016, Delvinia experienced 45 per cent growth over the same period last year, so we’re focused on maintaining that momentum as we continue to invest in, and commercialize, our current business assets.
Over the next few months we’ll be meeting with a team of trusted advisors to determine how we can not only use the framework we’re creating for ourselves, but to help other organizations to commercialize their innovations.
Given the nature of today’s digital economy, there needs to be a mindset shift and a framework that works within that. We’re getting close to what that might look like and we believe our innovation framework has the potential to help clients.
In fact, we’ve already used our innovation framework to launch a variety of services and businesses, including Methodify, the research automation platform we introduced to the marketplace last October; and we’re really excited to launch it as a service to businesses this fall.
Susan O’Neill is director of communications at Delvinia
