At Organizing 4 Innovation we are very privileged to be working with innovation teams and facilitators all day, every day.

And looking back at the accomplishments of the users of our Innovation Deliver platform – I am so proud!

• Over 80% of the teams get to concrete outcomes within 6 months – in some cases, these are tested solutions. In other instances, it means actual (paying) users.
• After the 2-week START program, about half of the teams decide to continue, whereas the other half is glad that they quickly figured out that their project was not worth the effort, that it was not the right timing, and/or that better alternatives were available.
• The participants in the Master Innovator program, who started just a few weeks ago, are already managing their own teams. While I thought we would need to do a lot of handholding – they felt comfortable facilitating their own teams 2 weeks into the program! Kudos to them!

It made me wonder, what makes that we can get these results? What do we do differently? It turns out, we don't engage in rocket science. The difference is in JET learning.

The types of teams we support

The projects of the innovation teams that participate in our programs are not rocket science. They are typically pursuing more incremental types of innovations, such as productivity improvements, making offerings more client-friendly, increasing profit margins through automation, etc.

That we mostly cater to those types of projects is not surprising, as typically these incremental innovations make up over 70% of a firm’s innovation portfolio (HBR). That means that even for the most forward-thinking organizations, most progress comes from incremental innovations, which include all digital transformation projects, most ESG projects etc. These are the areas where rapidly and without too much risk, a lot of progress can be made.

In other words, it is the small stuff that matters. Or, as they say in Dutch: “wie het kleine niet eert is het grote niet weerd” [liberally translated: who does not honor the small, does not value nor is worthy of the great].

Our magic…?

A good magician never tells his or her tricks. Fortunately, we are not magicians. Instead, our mission is to enable all organizations to create an affordable and sustainable innovation culture. So, we happily reveal our magic.

The Innovation Delivery platform that we developed does a lot of the heavy lifting, but this platform is certainly not the panacea.

In combination with our approach to learning, however, we get this very powerful mix that works.

As I have often said, I would not have developed an Innovation Delivery platform if there was a learning management system that allowed for Just-in-time, Experiential, Team-based learning – or JET learning.

As the bird's eye view below illustrates, it is the combination of our Innovation Delivery platform & JET learning that gets teams to concrete results in 6 months, 3x faster and with a 5x higher chance of success than the industry average.

JET learning

Just in time

JET learning means that the learning is Just-in-time. Most innovation tactics like:

• Lean startup
• Customer discovery
• Jobs-to-be-done
• Agile
• Design thinking
• Discovery driven planning
• Reverse income statement
• Affordable loss
• Project management

are conceptually easy to understand. Applying them in day-to-day situations makes them hard. With Just-in-time learning, you learn about the concept the moment they come into use and get to apply them in practice immediately. That way the learning is most relevant and the taught concepts will stick much better (HR Drive).

Experiential

Experiential means that you learn while doing. Take for example learning to ride a bike. Reading about how to ride a bike in a book won't be of any help. You must get on that bike and try, in order to learn how to ride (BU Center for teaching and learning). The same holds for concepts like:

• Putting the customer at the center of innovation projects
• Designing experiments to address conflicting or absent information
• Making micro-commitments to maintain momentum and getting things done in no-time

Team-based

Team-based means that you learn as a team. Getting from the initial conceptual idea to a scaled solution is one (long) learning journey that takes teamwork.

Because it takes a village to bring an idea to life, it works much better to engage the village and rely on organizational learning theories than to teach each individual and hope that they are on the same page.

Want to experience JET learning yourself?

If you would like to know what all the buzz, JET learning, and our Innovation Delivery platform are about – please check out the various products that we offer, designed to help organizations create affordable and sustainable innovation cultures:

The PROGRAM is for teams that want to innovate 3x faster with a 5x higher chance of success.

We have the  DRIVE for organizations that want to Implement an innovation campaign that delivers results.

And we have the ACADEMY to train your team to become skilled innovation facilitators.