Ten Types of Innovation

What it is

A tool for creating market offerings that are differentiated in complex ways that make them difficult for competitors to copy. The main premise of the tool is that innovations that combine novel elements from at least three or more of the “types” will be more valuable to customers and more robust against competitive threats. 

When to use

When you want to create a truly differentiated market offering, starting either with a blank sheet of paper or an existing offering that isn’t sufficient different from competitors. 

When not to use

When leadership isn’t committed to being different from the “herd” in your markets (many aren’t). When looking at a multi-line business with significantly different market offerings or at an internal service without meaningful competition for customers.

Tradecraft tips

Note that this is the most complex framework we include—with 10 items, it pushes at the limits of cognitive load. What makes this complexity workable is that the 10 types are bucketed into three groupings: Configuration, Offering, and Experience. The main power of the tool lies in forcing people to think about innovative elements that go beyond the basic features and functions of product or service performance (e.g., by including novel customer experiences or profit models). Deploying this model well with groups depends on sharing powerful examples of complex innovations, usually from other markets. 

Source

First developed in the late 1990s at the design strategy firm Doblin, the definitive source is The Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs (2013) by Larry Keeley and colleagues. Supporting materials can be found at Deloitte Digital.

Download

To immediately download this Framework to your downloads folder, please provide your name and email below.