Lessons from disruptive innovation for the extreme uncertainty of a COVID world | WARC | The Feed

Lessons from disruptive innovation for the extreme uncertainty of a COVID world

The world feels like quite a different place from the one we were in before the pandemic, with new consumer habits and expectations, new rules of business and new competitors; as a result, we all know we need to do things differently: be more responsive, and act faster – at least for a while, according to behavioural scientist Dr Helena Rubenstein, 

Why it matters

Lessons from the front-end innovation sector are exactly those required by creative industries during these uncertain times created by the pandemic, because they are designed for just this kind of high-uncertainty situation.

Fundamentally, we are looking for some fixed reference points in all this change, says Dr Rubenstein, director of strategic services at innovation consultancy Innovia Technology – something to help us navigate this storm and steer us in the right direction. While many clients and brand innovation managers find navigating the current COVID-19 situation to be chaotic and difficult, it feels more familiar to those multi-disciplinary teams operating at the ‘fuzzy front end of innovation’, she explains in ‘Innovating through the extreme uncertainty of a COVID world – four lessons from the disruptive innovation sector’.

Key takeaways

• The principles behind radical basics are about adopting different ways of working, rather than creating clever new techniques. These approaches are well-known to those who practise front-end innovation and enable companies to navigate through the extreme uncertainty we are currently dealing with.
• Before solving a problem, we must first check that we understand what the problem really is, including the assumptions which led to it. Challenge the mythologies, separate the facts from the assumptions, and know when to collect new data suitable to the changed context
• To avoid numerous iterations and wasted time, it’s essential for marketing teams to collaborate in early-stage discussions with other teams, such as those responsible for research and development, product design, engineering etc.
• Allowing teams to fail (and learn) enables them to work in an agile way, cope with uncertainty and, if necessary, pivot and change direction when required.

_{[Image: Katie Moum from Unsplash]}