Are you going to keep making strategic investments based on guesses?

There are two major worlds in innovation...

• The old world

• The new world

The New World

There are two camps in the new world:

• The guessers

• The knowers

The Guessers

The source of your insights is very important. The guessers value their own assumptions and opinions. The data they collect is stored on sticky notes which are collected in a workshop from a group of people that do not represent the market in any way whatsoever.

I removed the circles to protect the innocent

Do I really need to elaborate on this? The rigor is theater, and the results have not shown a demonstrative, innovative, or competitive advantage. In fact, product and service failure rates are still as high as ever.

But, it feels good.

The Knowers

These folks are typically not designers or product managers. They are front-end of innovation (FEI) focused. This is a a huge distinction. No offense. They don't operate with…