I’ve been  reflecting on last week’s Tri-State PDMA conference in Cincinnati, where I did the keynote address on The Keys to Sustainable Front-End Innovation.

Some stats from this conference:

• 74 percent of companies say they will increase their spending on innovation
• 66 percent of companies say innovation is one of the top three strategic priorities
• 90 percent say generating organic growth through innovation has become essential for success in their industry

The so-called “Fuzzy Front End” refers to the way in which innovative companies put on their creative thinking caps and blend what they know about markets and competitors with newly-discovered insights about the needs of their customers. At this point they’re not coming up with ideas, but rather finding the right problems to solve.   I’m simplifying here, of course, but it takes a significant amount of up-front work for leaders to leverage their unique capabilities and competencies to create value for their customers through business models, processes, products, services and overall customer experience.

So how can leaders make innovation a systematic, repeatable process? First, you need to understand your company’s strategies and drivers to place all of the innovation opportunities in the proper context. And you must assess those opportunity areas in a structured way with a variety of tools and methods. Remember you don’t just want to talk to your customers; you want to watch them in action to gain insights into their lives so that you can prioritize which problems to resolve first. Once you generate genuine customer insights, you can begin to illuminate their motivations and construct winning concepts from customer requirements.