Council Discourse: It's Not Necessary to Be Original, You Merely Need to Be Inventive
Innovation can sometimes feel daunting, especially in overcrowded industries. People frequently hesitate, questioning if their ideas are original enough or if they'll generate enough revenue or value.
Many product development teams stumble into a common trap when creating from scratch: the compulsion to build something completely unique. Regrettably, this happens more often than you might think—the fear ofanalysis paralysis is real! If I were to offer my two cents, innovation isn't solely confined to the product itself. Teams should explore the product's target markets, customer segments, geographies, and even parallel industries for inspiration. Here are a few examples of non-novel product ideas:
• Delivery method: Taxis and car services have been around for decades before the advent of app-based ride services like Uber and Lyft—they've even managed to keep a few of the traditional ones afloat.
• Value creation method: Suppose the teams designing minimally invasive surgery tools had thought, "Doctors have been performing this for centuries...should we even attempt it?" We'd likely have fewer 24-hour emergency units, and our medical system might collapse (without an extra bionic arm or two).
So, in short, I haven't built any completely novel products. Does that imply that all new technology is lackluster?
Certainly not.
Milestone 1: Pinpoint primary obstacles.
- Pursue a revolutionary idea in your field, one that everyone wants to build.
- Identify shortcomings in existing solutions, if any.
- Study auxiliary needs.
Milestone 2: Minimum viable problem.
This is my favorite: I erroneously believed I coined this term until Google corrected me that Dan Olsen had devised it in the Lean Product Playbook.
Innovation Over Novelty
We at Unit21 aimed to establish a Fraud Consortium, a collective whose sole purpose was for members to share data and insights about bad actors to aid the ongoing battle against fraud. Early Warning Services, a bank-owned and managed fraud consortium, and the company behind the Zelle network we use today, served as an early benchmark in the industry. Our idea gained momentum when our fintech customers pointed out that they were unable to address this issue since EWS is bank-only.
Building collaborative efforts is challenging to begin with. Convincing companies, often competitors in the industry, is exponentially more difficult.
Convincing companies in a highly regulated, high-stakes industry like financial services to collaborate is...virtually impossible.
What good is a data-sharing collaboration when no one wants to share data? Solving that became our primary objective.
Problem-solving in tech always begins with understanding if the problem has been tackled before, in any form, and most importantly, in any industry.
As it turned out, patient matching systems in the healthcare sector in various countries have encountered and resolved this issue. Regulations such as HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and their international counterparts have required organizations to preserve patient data privacy for decades. This became the basis for our R&D going forward.
So, in essence, we needed something that would allow our consortium members to share sensitive data belonging to their end customers without infringing on such users' privacy or violating privacy regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act or any other emerging GDPR-like laws.
We ultimately secured a patent for our novel data-sharing approach and launched the first industry consortium in the truest sense of the word: built for its members, regardless of the type of business, size, or operating model.
So, considering all this, how do we redefine innovation?
• Cater to a newer customer segment with an older product idea. Identifying new customer segments can help uncover new insights and lead to further new product ideas/market expansion opportunities.
• Discover a new method of value creation. New value-creation approaches can also assist your organization attract more buyers, investors, and potentially employees. For example, if you were to uncover a way to sell your product to the federal government, it would open up new opportunities for growth and expansion, encompassing various industries and geographies.
• Stay informed about the industry. A thorough understanding of the industry landscape can help a company make swift adjustments to its release pipelines or development roadmaps, allowing it to capitalize on emerging trends when the moment is right. After all, engineers enjoy nothing more than seeing their hard work rewarded through widespread adoption.
Remember, tried and tested is often superior to entirely novel.
Final Thoughts
Innovation can be found in the smallest details of your product development process. Don't overlook the industry landscape or customer segment, and constantly search for new value-creation methods. Innovation always grows from a foundation, just as almost every major technological breakthrough in our world did. My advice to most companies out there would be to keep your eyes open for parallel industries and use cases.
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Dhiraj Bhat might find inspiration in exploring parallel industries for innovation, much like how patient matching systems in healthcare tackled the data-sharing issue in Unit21's Fraud Consortium.
In Unit21's Fraud Consortium case, Dhiraj Bhat could seek out industries that have addressed similar data-sharing challenges to draw insights for his own context.
