Hutch Carpenter
Strategic Consultant with HYPE Innovation, helping enterprises get more value from their innovation programs. Firm believer in the concept of jobs-to-be-done, which stresses the importance of understanding customers' wants and needs. Also sports a 2:57 marathon PR. Dad to two awesome kids.
I’m joining RevolutionCredit as Chief Scientist
A note on my new job. I’m joining the startup RevolutionCredit as Chief Scientist. In this role, I’ll work on developing the next generation of alternative credit scoring methodologies in the financial technology field. Applying behavioral science to both (i) identify underserved people with characteristics of creditworthiness; and (ii) nudge consumers toward better financial behaviors. The […]
Why Amazon wins | Innovate the core, innovate to transform
Take a look at your organization’s innovation projects. Are you strategically balancing your efforts between the core business and future growth areas? In advising companies about innovation, an area I stress is the value of consciously pursuing both little and BIG innovation. Often, companies pursuing innovation can be categorized as either: Seeking small innovations such as operational […]
16 metrics for tracking Collaborative Innovation performance
In a recent PwC survey, 61% of CEOs said innovation was a key priority for their company (pdf). The only surprising result there is that it wasn’t 100%. Innovation efforts come in a variety of forms: innovation and design labs, jobs-to-be-done analysis, corporate venturing, distributed employee experiments, open innovation, TRIZ, etc. In this post, I […]
How self-driving vehicles can fix the San Francisco housing crunch
In the San Francisco Bay Area, home prices have seen significant appreciation the last few years: Source: Paragon Real Estate Group In the Bay Area, skyrocketing home prices and rents have driven people out of the area. They look for homes in further-out suburbs and exurbs, extending their commutes to work. And the Bay Area leads the nation […]
Avoiding innovation errors through jobs-to-be-done analysis
The lean startup movement was developed to address an issue that bedeviled many entrepreneurs: how to introduce something new without blowing all your capital and time on the wrong offering. The premise is that someone has a vision for a new thing, and needs to iteratively test that vision (“fail fast”) to find product-market fit. It’s been […]
Jobs-to-be-done | Three tests ALL ideas must pass
People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill… they want a quarter-inch hole. Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School professor You’re awash in ideas. Ideally from running targeted campaigns, but you may be seeing them from other quarters as well. Great, then what? A key activity in the process of innovation is determining which of many […]
Consumer adoption of Bitcoin | A jobs-to-be-done analysis
Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen recently did one of his tweetstorms on the topic of Bitcoin, a technology he avidly supports. In 25 tweets, he talked about criticisms people have of Bitcoin. Including this one (#18) about “use cases”: 18/The third critique I call the “innocent” one — “Are there enough sufficiently compelling uses cases for Bitcoin […]
Rate your company’s innovation culture
Culture. “Culture” is one of those terms. Hard to define, but you know it when you see it, right? I mean, we all understand what we’re talking about here, don’t we? I’d bet if you and I polled 10 people on the street, we’d get 10 different interpretations for culture. In the course of my work, […]
Radio Show Interview: Collaborative Innovation at Scale
The area of collaborative innovation is a natural extension of the social business movement. It’s the extension of social into purposeful collaboration, a term Alan Lepofsky uses to describe the evolution of the social business market. In the innovation-focused radio show, Women Who Innovate, host LeAnna Carey, innovation expert John Lewis and I talk about […]
Talk-n-Tweet | Collaborative Innovation at Scale
Previously, I’ve described Why Crowdsourcing Works. Crowdsourcing is a case where you get many people who don’t one another collaborating toward a defined outcome.To reiterate the principle points about the value of crowdsourcing: Diverse inputs drive superior solutions Cognitive diversity requires spanning gaps in social networks Simple enough, yet actually a rich field for work and […]
Harvesting Abundance in the Sharing Economy
The amateurs are coming! Are you ready? Over time, we have seen transitions in how goods and services are supplied to buyers. It used to be that you were limited to what you could buy in your local village. With the rise of industrialization and subsequent globalization, choices increased and costs went down. But inevitably, […]
Avoid these 3 mistakes when asking for employee ideas
Global advisory and research firm Ovum recently forecast 8% annual growth over the next five years for innovation management. Strong momentum, as organizations awake to the cognitive surplus their employees possess. Sadly, some companies launching employee innovation programs will inevitably find the going tough. They’ll launch their innovation initiative with great fanfare. They’ll give themselves the powerful […]
What if customers evaluated your company’s ideas?
At the 2014 HYPE Innovation Managers Forum in Bonn, I hosted a roundtable that looked at Involving Customers in the Innovation Process. There were over a dozen different corporations represented in the discussion. To spur the conversation, I mapped the points for customer involvement as: What customers want (jobs-to-be-done) ideas (open innovation) Feedback on options (collaborative design) As […]
Beyond Ideation: Four Fresh Ways to Generate Innovation
Innovation requires something new that changes the way in which an activity gets done. In this formulation, ideation is the processus maximus, the best way to get something new. It properly is the most frequent mode of innovation. It delivers results. But sometimes, it’s good to shake things up. Change up the routine to refresh the sources of […]
Consultant-Led Innovation
Finally, remember Innovation won’t come from plans or people outside your company – it will be found in the people you already have inside who understand your company’s strengths and its vulnerabilities. Steve Blank, Esade Business School Commencement Speech I think Steve Blank – well-respected thinker on innovation and entrepreneurship – has hit a key point […]
