This presentation was given at the Lean Software and Systems Conference 2012 (LSSC12).

Time and money are precious to any business. If you could “see ahead” of everyone else and cut your need for both resources, would you gain a business advantage?

That’s what the General Theory of Innovation (GTI) has been delivering to product developers for the last several years. Its originator, Greg Yezersky, universalized a true Systems-level approach to finding and capitalizing on where a market is going, based on fifty years of design improvement findings from the TRIZ methodology. GTI identifies which products a business needs to direct its energies into, to take full advantage of the evolution logic followed by all markets.

GTI also provides something critical that has been missing in the Lean Startups approach. Lean Startups-style experimentation is an ideal way to get around the low effectiveness of traditional market exploration approaches like focus groups, marketing clinics, and customer surveys. These only have the likelihood of creating market growth below 1 percent. Lean Startups is much better, but still inefficient because it subjectively “stabs in the dark” to choose its experiments: It lacks a systematic front-end approach to determine where to conduct your experiments. In other words, it gives no help on finding out what your customers need next…and most. GTI provides the “eyes” you need to use Lean Startups effectively. The GTI approach is equally effective in a traditional established business environment, where forecasting lowers risks and improves results. In either case, it will lower your burn of time and money.

This session will present the GTI-based framework for how to see what none of your competitors can see, and tools for zeroing-in on what you need to do next for best business effect. It's like adding radar to your binoculars! The session will provide real-life examples, with actual results, and take-home tools you can use right away. If you also choose to attend the two-day workshop following the conference session, you will learn the step-by-step methodology (called the Design for Advantage™) and all the details (process, tools, principles, etc.) hands-on, with extended examples, background theory, and more helpful tools.