Innovators face tremendous time pressures today, whether they are tackling urgent issues such as public health and climate change or designing new products to stay ahead in a fast-moving competitive market. To meet the challenge, companies are investing in a number of technologies that accelerate innovation, but for many, the process is still frustratingly slow. What should organizations do? Our short answer: Do not use accelerating technologies only for rapid prototyping; use them much earlier and differently, for rapid ideating.
In recent years, a new group of “accelerating technologies” such as 3D printers and Arduino and Raspberry Pi electronics have helped to significantly speed product development. 3D printing is used to quickly produce physical objects using layering methods guided by digital input files, and it has revolutionized the ability to prototype. Developers use tiny, affordable singleboard Arduino and Raspberry Pi computers to build a wide variety of applications and devices. These technologies have largely been put to work at the rapid prototyping stage. But a study we conducted on accelerating innovation reveals that they provide even more accelerating power when teams use them differently and much earlier, for ideation.
We conducted an in-depth field study of accelerating innovation for assistive technologies in maker spaces in the U.S. (with Lior Zalmanson of Tel Aviv University). In our study, teams aimed to solve real-world assistive technology challenges, such as how to operate an elevator with voice or how to enable hearing-impaired individuals to “see” sounds in order to safely cross streets. This kind of innovation usually takes weeks or months, but these teams had just 72 hours to build new, working products and hand them over to anticipating users.
All participants were given these ambitious goals, faced the same time pressure, and had access to the same cutting-edge accelerating technologies, including 3D printers, Arduino and Raspberry Pi electronics, advanced laser cutters, and other maker-oriented gizmos like motors, carpentry tools, and welding equipment. None of the participants knew one another entering the challenge, and they quickly created ad hoc teams. We expected this to be a hard challenge; based on previous research on time-pressured innovation, most of them could be expected to fail, given that creativity often dies under time pressure. However, multiple teams were able to develop working new products in only 72 hours, so we looked more closely at how they did it.