You have questions about this whole “innovation” thing.  We know…It’s okay.  In fact, we developed this “Frequently Asked Questions” Guide just for you!

Q:  WHY SHOULD I DO THIS?

• A:  Look, let’s be honest, you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t already realize that you need some help driving more top-line growth in your organization.  You’ve done your due diligence in driving out waste from your processes.  You’ve leaned out your workforce to the breaking point.  Your shareholders, partners, employees and/or customers are looking to you for something new…something to lead your organization forward instead of just treading water and maintaining the status quo.  Deep down…you already know the answer to this question.

Q:  WHAT DOES THINK FOR A CHANGE, LLC. DO?

• A:  Think For A Change exists to serve business clients with the development of successful and constantly maturing innovation processes and systems.  That’s our Mission Statement.  What it means for you is that we assess your organization across a broad range of different cultural attributes and process areas that either support or hinder new ideas and innovation.  Based on the outcomes of this assessment, we develop a specific action plan of activities for improvement, or maturity.  Some of these activities may include improving your culture for idea generation and risk taking, or it may focus on solving some specific problems your organization may want to tackle, or it may simply be to provide you and your employees with some training on how to be more creative.  See our Innovation Management Maturity Model, Continuous Innovation Model and Tactical Idea Generation Model pages for more information regarding some of these specific culture attributes and process areas.

Q:  WHAT DO I GET?

• A:  It all depends on what you need!  At a minimum, you’ll get a current state assessment of where your organization stands as compared to the “best practices” of idea and innovation management.  This will help you get caught up to the rest of the pack.  You will also receive a detailed analysis of the innovation maturity in your organization and recommendations on where you would get the most “bang for your buck” in improving your overall maturity.  Finally, you’ll get a set of recommendations laid out along a realistic road map timeline designed to develop the “next practices” that will help you move into a leadership position in your industry.  Following those basic deliverables, we can also help you identify the changes you should make internally and externally to generate ideas for new products, services or entirely new lines of business and show you how to filter those ideas, select the best one’s to develop and get them ready to take to market.  See our How Can We Help page for a more comprehensive listing of the specific services we provide.

Q:  WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO?

• A:  You have to commit to improving your organization’s climate for innovation.  You’ll need to demonstrate your active engagement in this process.  You’ll need to be tolerant of risk-taking and fast, learned failures.  You’ll need to give your employees the freedom to find problems to solve, either within your organization or directly for your customers.  You’ll also need to give your people time to come up with fresh, new ideas.  You’ll need to make certain resources available (people and money) to manage the ideas,  select the most promising and develop working prototypes to test their effectiveness.  Finally, and most importantly from our perspective, you’ll need to grant us appropriate access to the right people and documents so that we can conduct our assessments that generate the results and recommendations we have promised to deliver.

Q:  WHAT DOES THIS ALL COST?

• A:  Let’s take this important question in two parts.  The first part, the part where you engage with Think For A Change, LLC. to help you improve your innovation capability, will be the smallest allocation of your overall investment in new growth through innovation.  Our standard hourly rate is $200 per hour.  But seriously…who pays “rack rate” anymore?  Like any organization that values its loyal customers, we provide a wide-array of discounts that correlate directly to the size of the engagement effort.  A typical engagement for a basic assessment, recommendation and road map generation will start at approximately $7500 per week.  The number of weeks required to complete the assessment and road map work will depend on the size and complexity of your organization and the scope of your unique needs.  Following the assessment, you may with to engage with us for more strategic work, like training, process development, consultation/coaching and facilitation services.  The more you work with us, the larger the discount we give you…up to 20%!   Please note that the figures and estimates listed here are for illustrative purposes only.  We’ll tailor a more detailed engagement contract around your specialized needs.
• A:  Now, the second part of the “cost” question…implementation and on-going costs.  Yes, there will be an investment in people, money, time and space for innovation.  Just like marketing, information technology and finance…innovation management is a business discipline.  Just like marketing, information technology and finance…innovation management needs people, office space, office supplies, technology and other expenses to be effective.  How much that investment will be depends on your organization’s size, complexity and vision for growth.  We can help you ensure that your cost/investment in innovation management is as efficient, lean and effective as possible.  By providing you with a well-designed set of processes, tools and organizational structure up front, your innovation management system will be working efficiently right from the beginning.

Q:  WHAT ARE MY POTENTIAL BENEFITS?

• A:  Good question.  You want to know your Return on Investment (ROI).  Well, what is the typical profit margin on a new product or service in your market?  What would market exclusivity be worth?  What would customer loyalty and retention be worth?  What overall value does a new customer provide?  A growth-focused strategy via innovation is how you find out.  For innovation processes, ROI is calculated in a slightly different manner.  We use the “S-Curve” methodology for calculating ROI around innovation.  As noted above, it does cost a certain amount of money to generate ideas and produce innovation.  You’ll have to decide how much to invest to get any new idea generated, prototyped and consumer tested.  This is the first plot along the S-Curve and takes your profit line into the negative as you’ve spent money up front on development and marketing but haven’t sold anything yet.  At the time of the launch of your new product/service, the profit line should move upward toward a break-even point over time.  This is the second plot along the S-Curve, the most important time in the new innovation’s life cycle and the place were you have the most control over product placement, advertising, marketing, pricing, etc. to grab market share.  The third plot along the S-Curve is your profit, ROI or where the income now exceeds the initial and on-going costs.  The final plot along the S-Curve is where there support costs and additional investments begin to flatten out your profit.  Think For A Change, LLC. helps you define these cost estimates, growth projections, break-even points and eventual payback for your investment in ideas and innovation.

Q:  WHY COULDN’T I JUST DO THIS INTERNALLY?

• A:  Well, I suppose you could.  But then again, new things rarely emanate from the status quo.  In fact, you are perfectly aligned and structured to achieve the results you currently generate.  So you need to change in order to grow.  You need to educate yourself or your employees with the skills required to effectively generate ideas and do something with them.  You need to invest in the tools and techniques that make innovation happen.  If you think you can manage this change yourself…good for you…we wish you well!  However, if you think you’d rather engage with experts in the field of organizational creativity and innovation, we are here to offer your our help and experience.

Q:  WHY THINK FOR A CHANGE, LLC. AND NOT SOMEONE ELSE?

• A:  Another fair question.  There are many qualified firms that provide effective consulting services around innovation management concepts.  Some are more general and provide a wide-range of services.  Some are more focused and specialize in certain areas such as: creative problem solving, facilitation of idea generation sessions, process improvement or training.  We at Think For A Change, LLC. believe we have a unique, more holistic, approach to innovation management.  In fact, we consider our unique value proposition to be our innovation maturity model approach.  We know you may not want (or can afford) to build a complete innovation management capability all at once.  That’s why we developed the assessment, gap analysis and road map of recommendations approach to innovation maturity.  With our Innovation Maturity Matrix, you can see, at a glance, where you most need improvement.  You can focus your investment where it matters most to your growth strategy.  Finally, we have worked with organizations on the Fortune 500 list, small-to-medium sized businesses and even non-profit organizations.  We’ll share with you our unique combination of best practices learned from prior client engagements, our own dedication to developing the “next practices” of innovation management and general research in the innovation management arena.

Q:  WHERE WOULD WE START?

• A:  We start with a discussion of how you define innovation, your vision for growth and your level of dedication to seeing this work through to the end.  We would rather walk away from a client who is only half-interested in improving their innovation maturity, and focus our full attention on clients who are completely engaged and committed to their growth initiatives.  Following this, we will negotiate an engagement contract around a statement of work, including milestones and deliverables, designed to address your specific growth strategy needs and concerns.  Once that engagement process is complete, we get right to work assessing your existing innovation environment, plotting your organization along our innovation maturity matrix and developing the recommendation road map to move you toward increased innovation maturity!

Q:  OKAY…I’M SOLD…HOW DO WE ENGAGE WITH THINK FOR A CHANGE, LLC.?

• A:  That’s the easiest task of all!  Just call us at (920) 309-2012 or e-mail us at: paul.williams@thinkforachange.com