When working with some of the most distinguished and effective companies, those with world class products in profitable and sustainable markets, there is one crucial organisational competency in evidence more than any other; and that is the ability of the engineering and scientific people to understand the markets which they are serving, and the ability of the marketing and sales teams to understand the design, development and industrial processes.

The principle reason for this success is that the builders with the operators, the constructors with the consumers, the technology with the market, are all interacting with each other. There is thus a continuing dialogue between cost and effort, value and application. This same understanding is at the heart of agile and innovative teams. Instead of making the relationship contractual and transactional, it becomes cooperative and transformational. It does not pre-judge the solution, but rather sets out to understand the real problem. It is focused on the evaluation and delivery of valuable end results instead of assuming that the usefulness and usability of the end result are already a foregone conclusion.

Agile approaches set up a framework of stages (called sprints and timeboxes) and team sessions. The interaction is based on roles which enable the developers and the customer perspective to interact within a fixed deadline and level of effort. It produces prototypes and ‘minimum viable products’ that can be inspected and adapted in iterations that converge upon results fit for purpose: So far so good.

There are numerous and various questions to be asked when innovating, amongst which are “What will you tell a friend or colleague?” “What must it do in order to be used and useful in your life or work?” “How will you know when you have succeeded?” These are all customer questions. They are most crucial when risks and opportunities are commercial.

But also there are scientific and technological questions such as “How can we integrate into the existing institutional framework, into the infrastructure, respect regulations, deploy, operate, ramp up, revamp, maintain, recycle, provide support and finance those services?” Whether commercial or technical, so-called LOFAs, or ‘Leap Of Faith Assumptions’ require validation. They require a managed and scientific trial and error approach. The difference between technological risks and marketing risks is that the interactions will be with experts and systems, rather than customers and users.

To keep on reading the article, click on Innovation Iterations and Interactions, partie 2 .