Product Innovation Lab Series
Cross-Disciplinary Innovation Engine
Established a product innovation lab series to enable cross-disciplinary innovation, bringing product, engineering, design and business stakeholders together to explore customer and internal problems, test concepts with customers, prototype solutions and share innovation practices across the organisation.
The Challenge
The product portfolio team lacked a structured approach to innovation, with product ideas emerging sporadically and often failing to gain traction. Collaboration between product, engineering and design was siloed, and there was no systematic way to capture, test and prioritise innovative concepts from across the organisation.
Approach & Methodology
- Designed and launched monthly innovation lab workshops bringing together product, engineering, design and business stakeholders around shared customer problems
- Applied design thinking and product discovery techniques, including empathy mapping, problem framing, ideation sessions and rapid prototyping
- Created crowdsourcing tools for colleagues to submit and vote on product ideas
- Developed a prototype testing process so that concepts could be tested with customers before committing engineering effort
- Conducted customer interviews and concept tests to validate problems and proposed solutions
- Established clear criteria for evaluating and strategically prioritising innovation initiatives against customer value and business objectives
- Built a shared repository of innovation tools, templates and lab outputs to support knowledge sharing across teams
Outcomes & Impact
Innovation Practice
Established an ongoing cross-functional collaboration and innovation framework
Innovative Features Framework
Developed a framework for taking promising lab concepts towards product delivery
Customer Validation
Prototypes and concepts tested with customers before development
Knowledge Sharing
Wider participation in, and shared learning from, the product development process
Technologies & Tools
Key Lessons Learned
- Regular, structured innovation sessions are more effective than ad hoc brainstorming
- Prototyping and early customer concept testing accelerate feedback cycles and reduce development waste
- Involving product, engineering and design perspectives early leads to more robust solutions
- Not every idea needs to become a product: clear prioritisation criteria are essential
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