picture used with thanks under Creative Commons licence; originally uploaded by Le Camembert Magique
When the factory near to the office where I worked was going Lean one of the terms I remember the Japanese facilitator using was "Going to the Gemba". I think of this in innovation terms as entering the space of our customer or consumer to observe and reflect on how life goes on in their "real world".
Consider the picture above; if we are thinking about shopping trolleys then what do we think is going on? Does this woman always take the dog with her? Does she need more capacity, today? always? Would more sections help? Is the system stable? What happens if the dog pulls?... does the basket get pulled sideways and oveturn?... there are a myriad of thoughts to be had which we can mine for insights. We can interview this woman and get a perspective on her daily routines... what she tells us she does and what we have seen her do is a rich paradox to explore... so "Going to the Gemba" is a fascinating excercise we should all carry out at the start of our new project... the time spent may uncover some deep consumer insights that enable us to build a strong vision of what our project is really about rather than we just accept it as given.. dream teams challenge the status quo... because innovation means change and change means doing something differently .. for our team and for the targeted consumers. We need to observe-orient-decide-act-observe--- till we come up with winning idea(s) to take forward.
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