Imagine your organization is designing a new product. Let’s say you are designing a chair. You will create a new project and name it: “New Chair”

On the project objectives you will respond to “ what problem do you want to solve?” You will add information about the macro and micro environment. For example: You may need to respond to a specific audience and communicate your brand values making sure that this new product will be easily recognized, differentiating from the competition. Ultimately, you will want to have a bigger impact on the entirety of your industry.

Generally, when teams across the company are working on a project, each team is focused on their own particular goals and tasks. With Nova, you can break the barrier of these gaps between cross-functional teams and get everyone involved in the process. We invite all the different teams to collaborate in the process while they have other tasks and responsibilities to attend to.

Steps

1. Create a “New Project”

The team lead or product manager will create a “New project” in Nova.

2. Set up and define your goals

Once the project is created, we recommend you strategically talk to your team and define the project (goals, time frame, budget, who will be involved in the process, etc.).

You can also talk to your Nova Innovation Consultant during this step. Your Innovation lead will help you to choose tools, understand how to optimize the process, and get the team started.

3. Add sessions

Now you can continue by inviting your team or by adding the first session.

Here are a common process (Alternative: Use a project template) or create your own:

Project Scope:

• Basic Project description: This is a core tool to provide an easy and more in-depth project description. This is an ideal tool to start a project, also providing information to the rest of the team. Many times this information will be used as a reference during the innovation process.
• Define success: This is a core tool to help your organization determine what your objectives are by defining what success looks like to your organization, the customer and the team.

Secondly, we recommend to start using tools from the research phase.

Research:

• Secondary Research: This tool reveals market insights and potential challenges which will allow you to make informed decisions quickly. It can also reveal opportunities for innovation.
• Personas (Card Deck): This tool is ideal to understand in depth user needs. You will create a useful persona that will aid you in developing products and solutions tailored to a specific audience.

At this point, your organization will have a clear and transparent concept of the project, the end user, and the market. Possible challenges should be taken into account by the team before starting the next innovation phase and the ideation process. The tools provided during this process will help your team to generate ideas and solutions as well as eliminate assumptions, spark new ideas and eliminate gaps. We recommend you explore the tools or ask your Nova Innovation Consultant for advice. This innovation phase is often where teams spend less time but where they have the opportunity to explore creativity in its most extreme form.

Creating a safe and open communication space in this phase is essential. Use team building tools like The ZOO, Gratitude or The Johary Window.

Ideation:

• Brainstorming
• Chinese Portrait: This tool is used to brainstorm and develop concepts using lateral thinking. It is excellent for product design, branding, advertising and helping the creative team to explore ideas deeply.
• Challenges: This tool will encourage your team to think about a problem through a specific challenge. The purpose is to use lateral thinking to explore other solutions.
• SCAMPER

Once your team has explored different ideas and your team has a general selection of ideas they would like to focus on, the team will need to select the most effective tools based on the project goals and their definition of success. Use the tools from (Idea Validation> Evaluate Ideas and Reduce Risk) to discuss which ideas you should move forward with.

Evaluation:

• The 3 rooms
• Roles: This tool is ideal to enhance discussion and it also promotes the sharing of ideas more effectively. It provides a structured system to inject multiple and necessary perspectives into a discussion that may otherwise be overlooked.
• Evaluation Board: This tool is used to evaluate the potential of an idea and it responds to your goals. Additionally, through the evaluation process, sometimes the team spots ways to improve upon their ideas and explore new challenges to develop a product that is more likely to succeed.
• Prototype discussion board

If the team decides not to go back to the research or the ideation phase after the evaluation of their current ideas, the team can move forward and define the requirements that the selected idea will require.

Please note that, in most cases, it will be necessary to get feedback from customers and collaborate with experts to evaluate the idea further. Use our co-creative sessions and primary research tools like: Collage, Interview dialogue, Resource Flow, etc

Planning:

During this phase, while the team is planning the project, other tools from other phases can be used. Team-building tools are highly recommended to be used during the entire innovation process to encourage team collaboration, to improve personal skills and to keep the team engaged and motivated.

Tip: During the planning phase you are developing, discussing and improving you product launch, product, sales and marketing strategy. Nova is ideal for idea and strategy development but complemented with additional project management tools like @asana or @Clickup to manage your project and your tasks.

Your project board should similar to this:

For more information about how to start your first project and how to select the best tools, please contact your Nova Innovation Consultant or contact us.

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