Consider a company that engages InnoCentive to find a lubricant for its manufacturing machinery. In fact, many clients have realized while working with us that they may not be tackling the right issues. Many have considerable difficulty even identifying which problems are crucial to their missions and strategies. But we’ve seen that most organizations are not proficient at articulating their problems clearly and concisely. We now know that the rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a suitable solution. In our early years, we focused on highly specific technical problems, but we have since expanded, taking on everything from basic R&D and product development to the health and safety of astronauts to banking services in developing countries. Interestingly, even unsolved problems have been tremendously valuable to many clients, allowing them to cancel ill-fated programs much earlier than they otherwise would have and then redeploy their resources. Indeed, our success rates have improved dramatically over the years (34% in 2006, 39% in 2009, and 57% in 2011), which is a function of the increasing quality of the questions we pose and of our solver community. Since our launch, more than 10 years ago, we have managed more than 2,000 problems and solved more than half of them-a much higher proportion than most organizations achieve on their own. Successful solvers have earned awards of $5,000 to $1 million. Through this process, which we call challenge-driven innovation, clients define and articulate their business, technical, social, and policy issues and present them as challenges to a community of more than 250,000 solvers-scientists, engineers, and other experts who hail from 200 countries-on, our innovation marketplace. My firm, InnoCentive, has used it to help more than 100 corporations, government agencies, and foundations improve the quality and efficiency of their innovation efforts and, as a result, their overall performance. I offer here a process for defining problems that any organization can employ on its own.
How many times have you seen a project go down one path only to realize in hindsight that it should have gone down another? How many times have you seen an innovation program deliver a seemingly breakthrough result only to find that it can’t be implemented or it addresses the wrong problem? Many organizations need to become better at asking the right questions so that they tackle the right problems. Without that rigor, organizations miss opportunities, waste resources, and end up pursuing innovation initiatives that aren’t aligned with their strategies. Indeed, when developing new products, processes, or even businesses, most companies aren’t sufficiently rigorous in defining the problems they’re attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important. Those were wise words, but from what I have observed, most organizations don’t heed them when tackling innovation projects. “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein said. What requirements must a solution meet? What language should you use to describe the problem? How will you evaluate solutions and measure success?ĮnterpriseWorks/VITA, a nonprofit organization, used this process to find a low-cost, lightweight, and convenient product that expands access to clean drinking water in the developing world. What have you and others already tried? Are there internal and external constraints to implementing a solution? Why should your organization attempt to solve this problem? Is it aligned with your strategy? If a solution is found, who will implement it? What is the basic need? Who will benefit from a solution?
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The four-step process consists of asking a series of questions and using the answers to create a problem statement that will elicit novel ideas from an array of experts. The author describes a process that his firm, InnoCentive, has used to help clients define and articulate business, technical, social, and policy challenges and then present them to an online community of more than 250,000 solvers. They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems-missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process.
Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies. The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution.
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