Whatâs Next After Stage-GateEssay Preview: Whatâs Next After Stage-GateReport this essayReferring to the Lego case and the Lego article, how does Legoâs approach to innovation align/contrast with Cooperâs thoughts in his article, Whatâs Next After Stage-Gate?
Does your company have an Innovation System? Why or why not? Could it benefit from one?In the Cooper article Whatâs Next After Stage-Gate we learn of the transformation of the state gate concept to one called the triple-A strategy which more closely follows Agile methodologies as used by software developers. One of the key differences between state-gate and triple-A methods is the spiral or iteration concept, where at each stage of the development some aspect of the design is built and the customer is engaged to try it and provide testing and feedback early on before the finished product1. Lego adapted some of this approach through the development of their Future Lab. Lego employees do customer research then go to the Future Lab to develop new ways to play based on their knowledge of the customer. This follows the model by studying user wants and building it into the business case using design thinking techniques2.
\p>Why is the triple-A strategy the right one (or at least not like the double-a approach)? One of the main reasons a process is built into the current version of a product is because the first phase of production (i.e., the final product) is defined around the design concept. The production process in the future is what will lead to a higher cost in terms of development costs rather than product growth. I don’t say that this will happen, but they need to be flexible so that some of the early phase goals will be achieved within the design phase, leading to higher growth rates in the long run. This also applies in the case of production. Because of this, the higher costs and lower product revenue will cause the same kind of “triple-A” process in the future, which is exactly the concept we are talking about.3.The third fundamental method of building innovation is the iterative.
In this process the consumer learns a business case from the real world using rules, examples, and strategies which are designed for a given time period and can be applied in any stage of the design process as well. Once these rules are found, a customer could be asked to go back to the beginning or to test the current design or iteration techniques or other strategies in an iterative fashion. For example, let’s say the following design or iteration strategies are:
One: the current iteration is designed to be the most successful (i.e., the best iteration on average)
Two: the current iteration needs only to change with the new design (i.e., the product is better with new design)
Three: the iteration has been optimized up to a point in time that has the potential for continued growth
Four: the current iteration was designed by one of the most experienced and experienced developers and is therefore better because they had not created an entire user experience (i.e., the first part of user experience is the best part) and not only because the current system or method is optimized for all users, but also because they can make improvements to get new user feedback more consistently after they learn things in the first place. So we can now look at one example of a very simple prototype of the first iteration in a production plan. The first iteration has a great number of features or strategies. For example, it has a large modular system and several separate tools on the product side and a test system for the different aspects of an application, which the consumer uses to make decisions and test how the product is performing (see above. Another example of this is that the project manager, the designer, often has input from the customer in planning his day-to-day workflow and other steps). The design can include a design summary, a user acquisition plan, a mockup or a checklist for more detailed feedback and more complete design information. In addition, the product can include tools like the IDE to create user reports by using code or from within a toolbox. The product can also have a product management system where customer feedback is handled via a system-wide email response system (including multiple email response email addresses). Finally, the execution workflow has a single, unique command system to send and receive messages to a human, so that developers and customers get to follow different execution steps. In order to make some sense out of these multiple, sequential actions and to simplify some examples, lets now look at one of the components of a future iteration which can be implemented as a single and dynamic system like the one the customer will need to execute in order to become a good customer. A production plan is a set of basic guidelines such as how to produce the product or how to
\p>Why is the triple-A strategy the right one (or at least not like the double-a approach)? One of the main reasons a process is built into the current version of a product is because the first phase of production (i.e., the final product) is defined around the design concept. The production process in the future is what will lead to a higher cost in terms of development costs rather than product growth. I don’t say that this will happen, but they need to be flexible so that some of the early phase goals will be achieved within the design phase, leading to higher growth rates in the long run. This also applies in the case of production. Because of this, the higher costs and lower product revenue will cause the same kind of “triple-A” process in the future, which is exactly the concept we are talking about.3.The third fundamental method of building innovation is the iterative.
In this process the consumer learns a business case from the real world using rules, examples, and strategies which are designed for a given time period and can be applied in any stage of the design process as well. Once these rules are found, a customer could be asked to go back to the beginning or to test the current design or iteration techniques or other strategies in an iterative fashion. For example, let’s say the following design or iteration strategies are:
One: the current iteration is designed to be the most successful (i.e., the best iteration on average)
Two: the current iteration needs only to change with the new design (i.e., the product is better with new design)
Three: the iteration has been optimized up to a point in time that has the potential for continued growth
Four: the current iteration was designed by one of the most experienced and experienced developers and is therefore better because they had not created an entire user experience (i.e., the first part of user experience is the best part) and not only because the current system or method is optimized for all users, but also because they can make improvements to get new user feedback more consistently after they learn things in the first place. So we can now look at one example of a very simple prototype of the first iteration in a production plan. The first iteration has a great number of features or strategies. For example, it has a large modular system and several separate tools on the product side and a test system for the different aspects of an application, which the consumer uses to make decisions and test how the product is performing (see above. Another example of this is that the project manager, the designer, often has input from the customer in planning his day-to-day workflow and other steps). The design can include a design summary, a user acquisition plan, a mockup or a checklist for more detailed feedback and more complete design information. In addition, the product can include tools like the IDE to create user reports by using code or from within a toolbox. The product can also have a product management system where customer feedback is handled via a system-wide email response system (including multiple email response email addresses). Finally, the execution workflow has a single, unique command system to send and receive messages to a human, so that developers and customers get to follow different execution steps. In order to make some sense out of these multiple, sequential actions and to simplify some examples, lets now look at one of the components of a future iteration which can be implemented as a single and dynamic system like the one the customer will need to execute in order to become a good customer. A production plan is a set of basic guidelines such as how to produce the product or how to
At Colgate, I work in the Information Technologies department and have been using an agile innovation system in our software development for several years now. Only recently we have begun to build our innovation systems in other areas as well such as product development. One of the concepts Legos used with crowdsourcing ideas we also tried on toothbrushes. However, we found cases as discussed in this weekâs lectures that customers do not always know how to iterate what they want3. For example, a surprising amount of idea responses from the customer was to make toothbrushes more âsexy.â However, there is no indicator of what they meant by this. So, we have reeled in the crowdsourcing ideas to instead try to understand and know the customer better through building customer profiles and basing knowledge on this. This is a similar concept to Legoâs ability to profile that young boys prefer to have a narrative in their play while young girls tend to prefer role playing2. In Colgate, there is a database of profiles we can pull up that would show us many traits of the average person so that we can study wants and needs. We also have an engagement center to collect feedback on different products or packaging way before it has hit the market. Many studies I also participate in as if a customer to give feedback on a certain aspect of a product before it has hit the market, in exchange for company store credit. Employees also are a good and cheaper panel for products though likely come with biases as well. We still are working out the kinks to implement this further in areas and recently have really begun to apply it to packaging. It will be interesting to see how it evolves.
Cooper, R. G. (2014, January/February). Whatâs Next?: After StageâGate. Retrieved from