2. “We want to increase engagement of our employees using an Amazon like
experience!” - CTO, a utility company
“We want to reduce our customer onboarding time from 2 months to 2 days!” - CTO,
an Entertainment payroll company
“We want to double the efficiency of our front-line agents using AI-assisted learning!”
“We want to take our content authoring platform to a multi-tenancy SaaS
architecture!”
“We want to pivot our mood enhancing product to treat autoimmune diseases!”
Product Visions
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3. “We have all of this data about shows and movies. Can we not monetize this
data?”
“We see that our customers spend a lot of time in stores. We’re worried they’ll
switch to online. Can you help us out? “
“We have this freemium service. But, there’s very less tuna and a lot of tires. Can
you help?”
...and then some more we’re looking at
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5. Accion Innovation Delivery Life Cycle
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Ecosystem
Analysis & Idea
Generation
Problem /
Opportunity
Validation
Solution
Definition / Lever
Analysis
UX/Solution
Design
MVP Planning &
GTM Strategy
SDLC
Doing the right things Doing things
the right way
6. Principles of Accion’s IDLC
❖ A problem or a pain is an opportunity waiting to be solved.
❖ Ecosystem is a sum of people, projects, products, process, plans and of course pains
❖ Digital Transformation is more than just great visual design or user experience
❖ Analysis … Too much vs too little. Have a bias towards Accion (Action)
❖ Choose and Choose wisely - Iterate or Pivot or Quit.
❖ Build to Change - Fast fish eat slow fish!
❖ Think Metadata & Instrumentation
❖ Technology, by itself doesn’t solve every problem.
❖ Innovation doesn’t have to be chaotic.
❖ Have a Value Driven, Architecture-First Approach
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7. Who are the actors in IDLC?
Product
Architect
UX Architect
Program/
Product Manager
SMEs, Marketing
Leaders, Exec Leader
Focus on how Levers of
Innovation apply to
problem at hand ..
How does Man-
Machine interface
will work?
Focus on building an
implementable Plan (MVP,
GTM, etc)
Valuable insight, usage
data, directional insight ...
8. Levers of Innovation
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Current Leading Emerging Futuristic
Microservices Personalization Hyper Personalization Nano-Medicine
Conversational UI Can I Platformize my product VR for Retail AR Applications for Fire brigade
Gamification Smart Search Smart Homes for Seniors Smart Agriculture
Reactive UI Is it for me - Edge Computing Maps of everything Drones for Automated Field Ops
Elastic Computing Wearable Computing Last-Mile Delivery Bionic and Assisted Robotics
Data Lakes UX for IoT Sleep Tech Superfast Mass Transportation
Activity Tracking NLP for everyone Healthcare clinic in your home Nanotechnology in Medicine
Machine/Deep Learning Comply with Privacy / GDPR Smart Workplaces 5G and Universal Connectivity
Event Sourcing/CQRS Handle Misinformation Social Networks Personal Non-Invasive Devices
Polyglot Persistence Omni-Channel APIs/ GraphQL 3D Printing with Natural Materials Adversarial Machine Learning
9. Ecosystem Analysis
❖ Goal:
➢ Understand all facets of the problem/opportunity domain.
❖ Activities:
➢ Workshops
➢ 1:1 meetings
➢ Immersion/shadowing
❖ Deliverable / Templates
➢ Corpus of all the problems & their related ecosystem variables
➢ Build a 6P Ecosystem Mind Map for each set of problems
➢ 6Ps - people, platforms, products, process, plans and pains
❖ Relevant Techniques
➢ Interviewing/Contextual Inquiry
➢ What's on Your Radar?
➢ Statement Starters
➢ Rose Thorn Bud
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➢ Fly-on-the-Wall Observation
➢ Walk-A-Mile Immersion
11. Problem / Opportunity Validation
❖ Goal:
➢ Determine whether this problem is to be solved and
➢ Define the vision of the solution
❖ Activities:
➢ Ideation workshop
➢ Vision documentation
➢ Assumption Validation
❖ Deliverable
➢ Product Vision
❖ Techniques
➢ Stakeholder Mapping
➢ Affinity Clustering
➢ Problem Tree analysis
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12. Example
Vision (What’s your purpose? What is the positive change that you want to bring with this?)
Have a workforce that is happy and engaged. This innovation should Increase engagement of our employees using a
consistent, useful, powerful, personalized and conversational experience.
Target (Who)
All employees - field to
desk
Needs (Problems)
Increase engagement of
our employees
Features (Solutions)
Content dissemination
Full integrated
Easy to use Experience
Personalization
Goals
Low motivation among
employees due to low
collaboration.
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13. Solution Definition
❖ Goal:
➢ Define the big boulders of work needed to build the solution outline
architecture
❖ Activities:
➢ Identify relevant levers - Technology, Strategy, Process, Culture
➢ Map each problem/opportunity to one or more of these levers
❖ Deliverable
➢ Solution Definition
❖ Techniques/Templates
➢ Creative Matrix
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14. Sample of an Opportunity-Lever Mapping
* Content
Dissemination
Full
Integration
Easy to Use Personalized
experience
Voice to Text ✔ ✔
Smart & Full Text Search ✔ ✔
Entity Microservices ✔
Machine Learning Cognitive Engine ✔ ✔ ✔
Workflows/ Orchestration ✔
Activity Tracking ✔
Reactive/Modern Front end ✔
Omni-Channel APIs/ GraphQL ✔
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15. Bring your ideas to life!
❖ Personal Assistant: A personal assistant to the
user, always available (mobile app) and will have
primarily a conversational user interface aka
Alexa
❖ Self Service Portal: provides the user access to
all the content, tools and information required to
achieve their business goals. In addition, the
platform also extends from business goals to
personal goals. So like Amazon Prime, it provides
a comprehensive platform for users based on
analyzing their behavior and their known roles,
responsibilities and other attributes
❖ Application Microservices: Micro services
architecture that allows new conversational
capabilities and self service features to the
platform to be added with minimal overhead
❖ Platform Services: Common shared services
that provide security, authentication, workflow,
content management and other such services in
the form of reusable APIs
Example: Solution Outline Architecture
Personal Assistant Self Service Portal
Application Microservices
Platform Services
Back End Business Applications
Conversational
UI
aka Amazon Alexa
Responsive,
Personalized UI
aka Amazon
Prime
Containerized
Microservices
providing APIs
Common Services
shared by all
Application
Microservices
Existing Business
Applications in
AmWater
16. UX/Solution Design
❖ Goal:
➢ Define the User experience and build the solution design including
prototypes
❖ Activities:
➢ UX Discovery to identify user personas & goals
➢ Approach Design
➢ Information Architecture
➢ Concept & Design System Creation
❖ Deliverable
➢ Storyboards, Prototypes and Design System
❖ Techniques/Templates
➢ Storyboarding
➢ Experience Diagramming
➢ Appearance Modeling
➢ Rough and Ready Prototyping
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29. ❖ Goal:
➢ Identify features to build an MVP/SLC and define Go To Market
strategy
❖ Activities:
➢ Prioritization of work for MVP
➢ Develop a Monetization Strategy
➢ Develop a communication strategy
❖ Deliverable
➢ Prioritized Feature set for MVP
➢ GTM Strategy
❖ Techniques/Templates
➢ Business Model Canvas
➢ Kano Model & 19 others
Planning and GTM Strategy
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30. Go To Market Strategy Sample
Key Partnerships Key Activities Value Propositions Customer Relationships Customer
Segments
Key Resources Channels
Cost Structure Revenue Streams
31. Planning & Prioritization
1. Prioritize at a high-level
2. Set goals, measure and adjust
3. Don’t do it alone
4. Quantitative vs. Qualitative
5. External vs. Internal - abstract outcomes vs concrete solutions
32. Innovating for Humans by LUMA Institute
Business model portfolio by Alexander Osterwalder
Both dual transformation by Scott Anthony and others, and
triple transformation by McKinsey
Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Customer Development by Steve Blank
Startup Thinking by oneUp
Growth marketing by Sean Ellis, and others.
Inspired By...
Innovator’s dilemma by Clayton Christensen
The concepts of Problem-Solution Fit by Ash Maurya
Product-Market Fit by Marc Andreessen and Sean Ellis
Open Innovation by Henry Chesbrough
Design thinking by IDEO
Design sprint by Google
Lean manufacturing by Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo
Decision making and Risk aversion by Daniel
Kahneman, and Amos Tversky, etc.