Eureka! Winning Ways® Idea Engineering

Eureka! Winning Ways® Methodology Develops Ideas for Business Growth

What do you want (or need) your sales revenues to be three years from now? How do you plan to get there? Will your sales growth result from working harder than you already are, or will growth come from a more effective sales message, new products and services, or new customers and markets? If, like in most companies, simply working harder will not be sufficient to grow sales to meet your requirements, do you have a pipeline of growth opportunities and a process to regularly identify, evaluate and develop your growth ideas?

If not, you are not alone. A study conducted by the Eureka! Ranch of Cincinnati, Ohio found that 8 out of 10 companies indicated that they need ideas for growing sales. To meet this need, the Eureka! Ranch developed Eureka! Winning Ways, a disciplined process for developing Measurably Smarter Choices for Growth. The Eureka! Ranch has created and researched business building ideas for over twenty years for clients such as Walt Disney, Nike, Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard and others. Working with the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), Eureka! developed, tested and lauched a version of Eureka! Winning Ways for small to medium sized businesses which is now being delivered by High Tech Rochester's MEP and other approved providers throughout the MEP system.

Companies that participate in Eureka! Winning Ways receive:

• 50+ choices for growth outlined in a disciplined format
• 12 written and refined ideas for growth
• 4 Merwyn Research Reports that evaluate the probability of success of selected ideas
• 2 Trailblazer Action Plans to turn the ideas into reality
• 30 days of action plan coaching to ensure follow through
• A basis for a repeatable process to regularly add new choices in the company's growth pipeline

Idea Generation

The first component of Eureka! Winning Ways is Eureka! 7.0 idea engineering, an extremely fast-paced, one-day session for eight to fifteen participants.  The session consists of a series of five idea-generation cycles that use company-specific stimulus obtained during a pre-session planning meeting and just-in-time education about key concepts.  Each of these cycles leverages the diverse perspectives of the group's members by using a process of:

• Individual insights
• Paired ideation
• Team Feedback
• Individual (written) idea authorship

Ideas for growth may be:

(1) Ideas for more effective marketing messages
(2) Ideas for new customers or markets or
(3) Ideas for new products, services or business models

A key Eureka! concept is developing the idea from the perspective of the targeted customer. Each written idea includes descriptions of:

(a) Overt Benefit to the customer (What's in it for me?)
(b) Real Reason to Believe (Why should I believe you?) and,
(c) Dramatic Difference (Why should I care?)

The fifty or more ideas for growth generated from this process are then reviewed and refined by the participants. At the conclusion of the day, four of these ideas are selected for Merwyn evaluation. Eureka! research finds that these sessions deliver 8 times more actionable ideas than classic brain-storming.

Idea Evaluation

The second component of Eureka! Winning Ways - Merwyn Success Screening - is a scientific way to separate big ideas from costly losers before companies waste significant time and money. The patent pending Merwyn process and computer algorithm evaluates how "obvious and self-evident" an idea is to a potential customer by benchmarking the ideas to success factors. These success factors were determined by studying over 4,000 ideas and reverse engineering That separated market successes from failures. Merwyn has 88% realiability forecasting the probability of an idea's success and 97% accuracy identfying poor ideas. Merwyn reports are generated by Eureka! Ranch and sent to HTR a few days after the Eureka! 7.0 session.

Action Plan Coaching

The third component of Eureka! Winning Ways - Trailblazer Discovery and Action Plan Coaching - typically occurs during a half-day meeting one week after the Eureka! 7.0 session. Trailblazer provides a system for investigating and developing new ideas quickly, cheaply and with low risk. The team develops action plans for two of the four ideas evaluated by Merwyn. The activities in the action plans include gathering key market and competitive information, doing financial analysis, converting the idea into a demonstrable prototype, and getting real world feedback from industry experts and potential customers. The plan also specifies the person (or Scout) responsible to execute the plan and a completion date, typically within 30-45 days. HTR and the Scout hold weekly action plan coaching meetings to discuss any issues and Ensure that the plan is implemented by the due date.

Conclusion

At the conclusion of the Trailblazer process the company makes a decision of YES, NO or YES BUT (with changes). Actual development of the product or service and market launch typically occurs after the Eureka! process, potentially with additional assistance from HTR. The company should continue to fill its pipeline of growth ideas by obtaining Merwyn evaluations of other ideas from the initial Eureka! session and developing additional Trailblazer Action Plans. By conducting this "reloading" process quarterly, a company maintains a continuous process of identification, evaluation and development of new ideas for growth.

To learn more about Eureka! Winning Ways contact John Steele at john.steele@htr.org or Rich Gizzi at rich.gizzi@htr.org.  Or you may call 585-327-7921 for further information.