Innovation & Acceleration
Innovation Can Happen at Any Stage
In most people’s minds, innovation is often aligned with disruptive, technology-based breakthroughs. However, those are only one part of the innovation puzzle. In many businesses, innovation is much more subtle and incremental in nature. It can happen across all stages of a business or product lifecycle.
For existing businesses and startups alike, the key is to embrace creativity and change by using an approach that minimizes risk and increases customer value. This is similar to the Lean LaunchPad methodology that we teach through Venture School, and it serves as a practical way to explore ideas, gather feedback, and move concepts forward with more clarity.
This approach is often called lean innovation. It focuses on increasing efficiency by capturing customer feedback early and often, while prioritizing discovery and experimentation over elaborate strategic planning. With lean innovation, you are developing concepts and testing them in a rapid-fire fashion.
Core Principles of Lean Innovation
- The ability to identify new opportunities through the use of design thinking and iteration
- The ability to consider innovation across products, services, departments, operations, and culture
- The ability to quickly, and with few resources, develop, prototype, learn, validate, and improve business models
- The ability to apply lean processes that enable teams to reduce waste, make incremental improvements, and eliminate the bureaucracy that often hinders innovation
- The ability to generate a multitude of valuable new business and product ideas by introducing startup and lean business approaches to product development teams
Lean Innovation in Practice
Lean innovation is not a new concept and has a long, rich history. In 1913, Henry Ford introduced the first moving assembly line, a manufacturing process that reduced assembly time for a single vehicle from 12 hours to 90 minutes. By reducing the time, money, and human capital required to build a car, Ford was able to lower the cost of the Model T and make automobiles more accessible to the masses.
These increased efficiencies helped eliminate waste while improving the customer experience, which are core principles of lean innovation. Toyota later built on many of these same ideas in developing the Toyota Production System.
Design Thinking and Iteration
Design thinking is a customer-centered approach to brainstorming new ideas and solving problems. Iterative design is a design methodology based on a cyclic process of prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining a product or process. Based on the results of testing the most recent iteration of a design, changes and refinements are then made.
How We Support Innovation
At the Pappajohn Center, we work one-on-one with entrepreneurs, early-stage startups, and established businesses to innovate, continuously test assumptions, and iterate on current products and service offerings. We also help clients explore how incremental innovation can accelerate growth and support the development of more sustainable business models.
Innovation Partners and Resources
NIACC Innovation Workspace
The Innovation Workspace is a makerspace that provides North Iowa inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs with access to modern fabrication equipment, training, and project guidance. It can support small- to medium-scale model and prototype creation, giving users a place to explore concepts, test ideas, refine designs, and develop early versions of products without needing to invest in equipment of their own.NIACC Business & Workforce Solutions
NIACC Business and Workforce Solutions helps individuals and businesses build skills, strengthen teams, and meet changing workforce needs. Through classes, workshops, seminars, certificate programs, mandatory trainings, and customized business partnerships, B&WS connects learners and employers with practical training and professional growth opportunities.BioConnect Iowa
BioConnect Iowa works with innovators and entrepreneurs across the state to help grow Iowa’s bioscience industry. Iowa is home to many world-class researchers and innovators in fields such as bioproducts, crop genetics, and human and animal health, and BioConnect Iowa supports these pioneers in their pursuit of excellence and broader recognition.
BioConnect Iowa also helps Iowa entrepreneurs prepare winning applications for the federal Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer programs, which award funds to qualifying businesses to stimulate high-tech development in the United States and help meet national research and development needs.