FAQs: Innovation Consulting
What is Innovation Consulting?
Innovation consulting events are custom designed to strengthen your innovation and commercialization efforts. We start with discussion of your needs, opportunities and challenges to determine where Deliberate Consulting can provide specific advice, tools or approaches.
Depending on your specific needs, an engagement can take different forms and last from 4 hours to more than a week. Talk with us so we can explore your needs and jointly develop a timeframe, deliverables and budget.
Sample engagements:
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Innovation strategy development
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Assessing idea collection and review processes
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Conducting innovation games and activities
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VoX (Voice of Customer / User / etc.)
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Product / Solution planning
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Developing path to commercialization / deployment
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Developing pitches to the leadership team
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Find holes in your commercialization / go-to-market plan
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Coaching new Innovation Managers
How do I know if Deliberate Consulting is a great fit for my needs?
Let’s talk! We don’t want to sell you a service that isn’t going to make you successful. If your need is outside our sweet spot, we’ll let you know (we may be able to connect you to a resource with a better fit!).
Can you help us find or develop more ideas?
Yes… but in our experience finding new ideas is rarely the primary challenge. The bigger issues are typically organizational culture, earning sponsorship and systems to collect/assess/advance ideas.
How long does an innovation engagement take?
Depending on your specific needs, an engagement can take different forms and last from 4 hours to more than a week.
What deliverables will I receive from an innovation engagement?
It depends on the type of engagement, your needs, and the scope of work.
What do you mean by “commercialization”?
Everything involved in taking the new solution or idea to market. It is rare for something truly innovative to be successful using existing infrastructure, behaviors, people or business models. Things to consider include training and development, new job roles, documentation, support structures, pricing models, channel partners, etc.
Non-commercial innovations (processes, non-profit solutions, restructuring) require a similar “path to success”.
Who should I talk to about a consulting engagement?
Contact us so we can explores your needs and determine if we are a great fit for your specific situation.
How much lead time is required to set up a consulting engagement?
It depends on the type of engagement. Some engagements can take several weeks to plan and execute.
How does Deliberate’s innovation consulting connect with corporate storytelling?
It doesn’t matter how good an idea or a strategy is if you can’t get others to act. Innovation efforts in particular are often “fuzzy” because they are trying to predict an uncertain future. To earn support and sponsorship, the innovation team needs to drive understanding, enthusiasm and commitment. Commitment requires persuasive communication… and persuasion is at the core of Corporate Storytelling.
But it isn’t just about the need to “sell” an idea. The ingredients of an effective message – core benefits, evidence, perspective – are also key ingredients needed to define a MVP, manage change, measure performance or develop a path to commercialization.
Depending on your needs, we can structure an innovation engagement followed by a Corporate Storytelling Workshop to develop your idea and then pitch it to leadership.