Supercharging Innovation With Process

Like the approach, and its use for products and processes.   We did it every day.   But I would add innovation should be used with a specific process to address these needs.  Sometime people think that innovation should be non-systematic and brainstorm like.  No, it should follow a process than can be stated, implemented, designed to be agile ... and delivered towards some goals.    Once you have that you can readily insert things like pattern analysis and optimization to improve what you have come up with.    It also makes you think about what parameters your innovations have.

Fusing data and design to supercharge innovation—in products and processes   By Akshay Chhabra and Simon Williams in McKinsey

Fusing data and design to supercharge innovation—in products and processes

While many organizations are investing in data and design capabilities, only those that tightly weave these disciplines together will unlock their full benefits.

Often in business, the biggest breakthroughs come when organizations connect different, and seemingly disparate, ideas and approaches. Diversity of perspective has been shown time and again to foster fresh thinking to solve tough problems. Such is the promise for organizations that can effectively bring together data and design.

Data are often prized for their indifference to intuition, stoic reflection of the facts, and ability to shatter our assumptions—veritable superpowers when put into the hands of decision makers. While data have always been an important business input, recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and other analytics are only increasing the number of organizational arenas in which decision makers can activate data’s superpowers, from hiring to product development to customer engagement.

Separately, design thinking has spread like wildfire across industries after some iconic brands and born-digital companies (think Apple and Google) demonstrated the revenues and customer satisfaction it could drive. Harnessing qualitative insights, creativity, and a relentless focus on end-user needs, the approach is typically aimed at product and service innovation. .... "