Agile innovation needs an inquiring mindset

High performing teams are willing to experiment with incomplete ideas, ask questions, test assumptions and push against the edges of what is possible.

Central to this is prototyping and experimentation

The tenet of scientific inquiry is that you run experiments to disprove your hypotheses. The more times your hypotheses stand up to scrutiny the more confident you can be in your thinking.

The same is true for innovation

BE CURIOUS

The prototyping phase of an agile project requires a questioning mindset to be successful - which goes back to a central question for any innovation team 'What problem are we solving?'

Let's say you are running a design sprint, and in the middle of the sprint, you have arranged for some users to come in to give you a perspective on your prototypes. In such instances - when we run consumer co-creation workshops or online consumer co-creation communities - our advice to clients is don't view this as an exercise to find the winning idea, but look for flaws.

Don’t focus on trying to find a winning idea. Focus on spotting the shortcomings in your idea.

List your assumptions - the needs you are solving for - and use consumer co-creation to examine these hypotheses. 'What if it worked like this?' 'If it had these features, would that help?' 'If you were presented with this screen at check-in, how would you respond?'.. and so forth.

This approach means you don't lock onto your first idea but are open to blending ideas, uncovering loopholes in your thinking to get to a sharper perspective of how an idea has to work to be of value to your consumer.

More often the real problem that needs solving isn’t the one you initially thought.

The more you experiment with alternative solutions, the sharper your understanding becomes of the real problem you need to solve for your customers, and how to do so in a way that is novel and meaningful.