Everyday innovation is defined as a daily process of introducing new ideas, devices, or methods through small improvements. There are different types of innovation, including empowering, sustaining, efficiency, and disruptive innovation. Everyday innovation focuses on making incremental improvements through collaboration, identifying opportunities by listening for user needs, and building habits of innovation. Effective collaboration and feedback are important to driving everyday innovation, with feedback working best when it is specific, goal-oriented, organized, relevant and timely.

1. Confidential + Proprietary
Everyday Innovation
Carl Sziebert • FITC Toronto • 29 Apr 2019

2. What is innovation?

3. Defining innovation
● A new idea, device, or method
● The action or process of introducing a new
idea, device, or method

4. What about the everyday part?

5. Defining the everyday part
● Happening or used everyday
● Daily; commonplace

6. You’ve heard about the
toothbrush test?

8. How do we define innovation?

9. We define innovation as...
● Making things more user-centered
● Finding unmet user needs
● Filling a gap in the market
● Creating differentiating technology
● Solving problems for our users

10. Let’s look at some examples…

14. All innovation is good, right?

18. Are there different
kinds of innovation?

19. Innovation comes in many forms
● Empowering innovation
● Sustaining innovation
● Efficiency innovation
● Disruptive innovation
● Innovation from above
- Clayton Christensen, Harvard

20. Empowering innovation
● Provides new tools for managing resources that are scarce and costly
● A breakthrough technology; something no one else has; 10x idea
● Generates whole new industries, jobs, and economic growth
● Must be genuinely exciting to customers
● Often has a ripple effect...

21. Sustaining innovation
● Improves an existing system
● May “disrupt” incumbents with new features
● Competitors and incumbents can respond quickly
● Drives revenue through constant updates

22. Efficiency innovation
● Does more with less
● Sells established products at lower prices
● Raises productivity, reduces costs, but might eliminate jobs

23. Disruptive innovation
● Disrupts an existing business model
● Targets the lowest tier of users first
● Competitors ignore it as it doesn’t affect business
● Slowly adds value and features
● Expands quickly to become a serious threat

24. Innovation from above
● Creating a premium product in an existing sector
● Makes it harder for competitors to sell their cheaper products
● Open to pressure from below

25. Wait, everyday innovation isn’t
on that list. What gives?

26. Defining innovation
● A new idea, device, or method
● The action or process of introducing a new
idea, device, or method

27. Defining the everyday part
● Happening or used everyday
● Daily; commonplace

28. Everyday innovation is a daily process

29. That’s it? Just build good habits?

30. Toothbrush journeys and everyday
innovations can seem small but have
a huge impact

31. How do we identify
opportunities to innovate?

33. Building the proper mindset for innovation
● Fight the imposter syndrome
● Find the right time, space, and tools
● Listen attentively
● Identify gaps, seams, and overlaps
● Reframe the problem

37. But, we don’t actually
collaborate very well...

39. What does effective
collaboration look like?

43. Sports vs. Collaboration
● Assigned a role and you often stick to it with
little compromise
● Rule book stays the same with few changes
over time
● Goal is to crush your opponent with a clear
idea of who is the winner and loser
● Flexible and creative - use your unique skills
in a way to adapt well to task at hand
● Collaboration evolves over time and can get
messy
● Goal is to foster ideas and contribute to the
big picture

44. Why does effective
collaboration matter?

45. The importance of effective collaboration
● Promotes self-awareness and self-analysis
● Helps us see the bigger picture
● Encourages continuous learning
● Results in problem solving

46. Yes, and...

47. Practice makes perfect, right?

49. Success is built on compounding failure

50. FEEDBACK IS THE
BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS!

51. Good feedback vs. bad feedback

52. How do we make
feedback more nutritious?

53. Great feedback is specific, goal oriented,
organized, relevant, and timely

54. Great feedback is specific
● Is the wording vague or open-ended?
● Would someone else understand?
● Am I identifying a problem?
● Could this be an actionable item?

55. Great feedback is goal oriented
● Why do I want to add this?
● How will this suggestion benefit a user?
● How does this help accomplish our goals?

56. Great feedback is organized
● Am I repeating myself? Can I consolidate my points?
● Are there clear patterns or categories that I can reuse?
● Have I prioritized my feedback appropriately?
● Is my feedback well formatted?

57. Great feedback is relevant and timely
● Is this the type of feedback requested?
● Am I sharing this with the right person?
● Is this related to the current stage of the project?
● Is this the right time or place for my feedback?

58. Receiving feedback is hard, too!

60. Why is this so hard to do?
● Miscommunication
● Limited experience
● Personal bias
● Lack of time
● Fear

62. Responding to feedback is a subtle art
● Review the strategy behind the decisions
that brought you to this point
● Analyze and explain the goals of this
step of the process
● Outline the type of feedback you’re
looking for

63. Inspire great feedback
● Establish and use a common vocabulary
● Send your work ahead of time to prevent churn
and maximize your returns
● Ask lots of qualifying questions to dig deeper

64. To recap...

65. Innovation comes in many forms

69. Everyday innovation is a daily process

70. Building the proper mindset for innovation
means finding the right time, space, and
tools to identify gaps, seams, and overlaps

71. Effective collaboration promotes
self-analysis, encourages continual
learning, and results in real problem
solving

72. Feedback is the breakfast of champions
when it is specific, goal oriented, organized,
relevant, and timely

73. Great communication is the key to
everyday innovation

75. Thanks!

76. Questions?