Anthony W. Ulwick

What skills are required to be a good ODI Practitioner?

Given the demanding responsibilities of the ODI Practitioner, we recommend that candidates meet all (or at least most) of the following qualifications:

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  Process orientation and systems mentality.
  
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  Skilled and experienced in qualitative and quantitative research practices.
  
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  Superior creative problem-solving, analytical, and quantitative skills.
  
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  Previous experience on a product team.
  
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  Trained in Six-Sigma practices.
  
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  Team leadership and group facilitation capabilities.
  

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  Strong communication skills with ability to synthesize, document, and present knowledge effectively.
  
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  Detail orientation. Highly organized.
  
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  Strong knowledge of PowerPoint, Excel, and Word.
  

Now you know what it is like and what it takes to become an ODI Practitioner.

7.
TRANSFORMING THE ORGANIZATION

When companies think about building an innovation competency, they often think about training hundreds or even thousands of employees as part of a change management effort—they want their employees to think differently about innovation. When companies take this approach, they usually have the concept of innovation inextricably linked with broad cultural change in the organization.

What we have learned is that innovation (at least product and service innovation that results in revenue growth) should not be everyone’s responsibility. It should be the responsibility of a small group of people—those who work to inform those that decide what markets to enter and grow and what products to place in the product development pipeline. The rest of the organization simply has to do what it has always done—that is, validate, prototype, design, build, create, ship, and launch new products. In my mind, training the entire organization for this purpose is not only time- consuming and costly, but it is an unnecessary activity. Most companies are great at creating products—they just aren’t that great at creating the right products.

Many companies have reached the same conclusion, and this leads us to our recommended approach to building an innovation competency, which is to create a team of internal

ODI practitioners who will form the core of an Innovation Center of Excellence. This team, armed with the right tools and the appropriate training and support, are responsible for applying Jobs Theory and ODI practices to carefully selected markets and transforming the company into an outcome- driven organization.

The success of this team, and the innovation program, is dependent on using a customer-centric, data-driven innovation process that mitigates the risk of failure and leads to winning market and product strategies. If companies had to develop such a process on their own, it could take years, but fortunately Strategyn has already done that work.

Outcome-Driven Innovation is that process. Once your
organization is ready to test or adopt Jobs Theory and ODI, you are ready for the next step.

As in any endeavor, picking the right team is essential for success. Practices that we have seen work the best include building the team around or into an established Six Sigma program. We find that Six Sigma certified practitioners with qualitative and quantitative market research experience are often the best at understanding and applying ODI effectively within the organization. When armed with the right tools, they quickly begin transforming the organization.