Once you have discovered the seeds of truly disruptive ideas, formed your hypothesis, and tested the heck out of it, then what?

As professionals, our equipment finance leaders understand this is a fundamental part of building their own innovation skills toolbox, but wanted to take it a step further. How do you bring truly innovative ideas to life and get real results?

Grant Wood, Founder and CEO of Knotion Labs, returned to the UnConference on June 17th for the innovation session: Going from Disruption Nightmare to Dividends.

The goal?

To go behind the scenes of the product innovation process from soup to nuts, and learn how to go from disruptive innovation idea to cashflow.

Grant broke down his top-secret creation process, including Backlog, Qualified Concept and Product Development, illustrating each section and its key elements. He also shared intangibles, the things that aren’t part of the process but that have to happen along with the process.

For hands-on experience, the thought leaders were split into breakout rooms with an exercise called the “Taffy Puller.” Each group challenged a pre-existing idea using the fit & fitness criteria and altitude scale to further vet the concept, then brought their final considerations back to the zoom stage for further discussion.

“The first time anyone hears a new idea, they will automatically reject it. It’s just the way our brains work. The fight or flight response automatically kicks in. So we have a rule that says if we develop a concept for you, the first time you hear it you can say yes to it, but you cannot say no to it.” – Grant Wood

Key takeaways:

  • YOUR BACKLOG is the first opportunity to build an environment for concepts to succeed
  • FAIL FAST so you don’t waste time on concepts that won’t deliver. If something failed, it should go back into the backlog. Review stuff that failed to understand why and learn forward from it.
  • GIVE LEADERS CHOICES. As you move forward (beyond yes/no decisions), lower threshold for decisions that allow for change
  • CREATE THE LANGUAGE of innovation to fit your company context to allow ideas to be shared and developed in a way that generates success.

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