This is one occasion where it’s really hard not to fall back on the whole “there’s an app for that!” cliche, but for organizations that are serious about innovation, Lean Innovation Tools may do the trick.
What Is Lean Innovation Tools?
Developed by Implement Consulting Group in Scandinavia, Lean Innovation Tools doesn’t necessarily tell organizations or business professionals how to come up with new ideas that bring value to their customers or community. Instead, the app is designed to help chief innovation officers or innovation teams to better collaborate and manage their projects.
As the name suggests, the app is based upon the same lean innovation principles that have been embraced by startups across Silicon Valley. These include identifying customer value and seeking “perfection” (in terms of removing anything that is unnecessary or wasteful in a project or product).
In some ways, there’s not a lot of functionality here — the biggest value for most users will likely be the collection of work templates and guidelines for working on various innovation projects. These include guides for conducting user interviews, trend mapping and persona profiles.
Most of the app consists of visual depictions of things like the “5D loop” (define, discover, direct, design, develop) that has often been followed by application development teams.
According to Apple’s App Store, Lean Innovation Tools has been around since at least 2012, but updates likely aren’t much of an issue since best practices like these don’t change much.
Where Lean Innovation Tools Could Be Useful
“Developers probably already know all this stuff,” you might argue, and you’re right. There are lots of others in the enterprise, however, who I’d suggest know little to nothing about lean, even if there are projects going on somewhere that might affect their day to day lives.
This app might be little more than a sort of cheat sheet for those who need to get up to speed on innovation concepts quickly, but that’s better than lugging around a bunch of hardcover books on the subject. In other words, the app doesn’t have to be innovative if it’s a means to achieving it.
