This month the press have been covering the soon to be launched “X-factor for Geeks” – the new TV concept being sponsored by the self-confessed technophile Will.i.am and the entertainment mogul Simon Cowell (see links below). The idea, whilst still clearly in development, seems to aim to do for the unknown entrepreneur, building gadgets in their garage, what Simon Cowell currently does for would-be singers, crooning into a hairbrush in their bedrooms.
Now the cynics amongst you are possibly thinking – “TV train wreck - Won’t this be a bit like running a junior Dragon’s Den – but with groovier music and lighting?” Well, it may turn out that way but I don’t think it will. Here’s why.
One of the biggest and most commonly reported issues that my clients report to me when they are trying to deliver innovation is this – “How do I carry out cost-effective User Acceptance Testing on my prototype products at a large enough scale to be conclusive.” This is a tricky and very real problem for most businesses – but not for Simon Cowell. His formula for the modern TV talent show is the absolute pinnacle of genius when it comes to doing massive, cost-effective user acceptance testing. At its simplest, he creates a showcase for his talents and then invites the millions of potential end users, via digital channels (texts, phone, apps etc), to pay to provide their assessment of the talent they are reviewing (genius). Now there is an awful lot more to it than that but, you can bet your bottom dollar that when the new Geek Factor show is aired, at the heart of it will be a version of this grand scale, money making, user acceptance testing.
So, what can the rest of us, who don’t have our own TV empires, do to tackle the Innovators conundrum of running cost effective user testing at scale. The answer is that we need to think like Simon Cowell and learn the lessons from the cleverly engineered processes behind his talent show formats. Over the last 6 months at Capgemini we have poured major effort and brainpower into deconstructing and then reconstructing the process of Innovation to be able to create a cost-effective process that delivers a reliable flow of innovation. What we concluded was - we need to “think like Cowell” and see the innovation process as a “production”. We needed to design and build a scaleable Innovation capability based on the production company concepts that sit behind the current plethora of Saturday night talent shows.
And... after many months of designing, prototyping, piloting and testing the good news is that we at Capgemini have now successfully created our own Innovation production service that utilises a plethora of the new digital media to keep costs low and outputs high – we even think we have cracked the problem of conducting cost effective, large scale user acceptance testing. Hurrah!
Ironically what is both gratifying and a little irritating for us is that whilst we’ve been looking at the entertainment industry for inspiration on the process of business innovation; Will.i.am and Simon Cowell have clearly been looking at business innovation as the subject matter for their next entertainment venture.
So, if you are struggling to drive innovation within your own organisation and would like to discuss further how this innovation production service could work for you and you don’t have Simon Cowell’s phone number then please do get in touch.
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