How Might has a simple innovation formula:

  • Set an inspiring innovation challenge
  • Form the best imaginable team
  • Get the team to collaborate on-line.

Set an inspiring innovation challenge

Kennedy’s 1961 challenge to the American people was a great example of an innovation challenge:

“This nation should commit itself to the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth”.

It was a simple and inspiring goal, requiring enormous innovation to achieve. And the rest is history!

We begin each project by working with the client to formulate an inspiring innovation challenge - one which is simple, relevant to your business, inspiring to innovators, open to multiple solutions and richly described.

We also define a rigorous set of criteria and metrics for the types of innovations which will add most value to the client. These are used throughout the process to steer the innovation project in the most productive, useful directions and, later, to evaluate the propositions we come up with.

Form the best imaginable team

Our clients insist on the very best people for each innovation challenge. They want to listen to the people who buy from them, to leverage the talents they have available internally and to benefit from outside-in thinking and expertise.

How Might forms an on-line people network of the best imaginable team for the specific innovation challenge.  This is usually a few hundred people, including, for example:

  • A substantial sample of customers or target customers by key segment.
  • The relevant people from your own immediate team or from other parts of your organisation.
  • Selected suppliers and business partners.
  • External experts and innovators in relevant fields.

Many of these will be recruited by How Might specifically for the challenge, but we may also invite selected members of How Might’s own network, for example experts with relevant experience in strategy, entrepreneurship, marketing, branding, communications, design, finance or technology. 

Get the team to collaborate on-line

How Might has its own innovation methods and processes, which we tailor to each client and innovation challenge.  These are designed to lead clients along a structured, creative path from insight to ideation to innovation development. 

Where clients already have structured innovation processes of their own, we can adapt our methods to work hand-in-glove with theirs, addressing the particular opportunities for How Might’s unique approach to add value.

At various points in the process, we bring in the different types of people in appropriate roles - for example, using target customers to assess the market appeal of innovative propositions, client people to assess their organisational fit and experts to evaluate their potential profitability and risk profile.

The process is supported by our web-based innovation platform, which uses proprietary, third party and open source technology tools to enable us to orchestrate large-scale collaboration efforts quickly, creatively and reliably.

We also use sophisticated analytical tools and proprietary algorithms to mine and filter all of the data generated through the process to produce clearly-presented, actionable information for management plus a new organisational asset of rich, detailed innovation insight.