Blue Mine Group

Maximizing the value of innovation through strategic product management

Successfully creating, commercializing and realizing value from innovation is challenging. Most new product and service innovations either fail to earn a positive return on investment at all, or fail to realize their full economic potential.

There are many reasons for this, but in our experience, the single most common point of success or failure for most new ventures is product management. Product management is typically the least understood discipline in a new venture, yet paradoxically it is the central discipline driving value from innovation.

In this blog series, we will explain:

• The key disciplines needed to commercialize innovation.
• An overview of the product management discipline and its central role in an innovation-based venture.
• How product management maximizes the value of the innovation.

First is the key disciplines needed to commercialize innovation.

Ventures based on product or service innovations face many challenges, and need to accomplish many things. To do so, ventures need to develop expertise in seven disciplines, each of which plays a critical role in launching, growing and realizing value from the innovation:

Product management – as detailed below, the key role of product management is to identify the market opportunity, define the product and business model to capture that opportunity, and guide and support the other disciplines in executing that vision. 

General management – the primary role of general management is to attract and manage the venture’s core stakeholders. The most important stakeholders groups are typically the management team, the investors (whether internal corporate investment or external venture investment) and strategic partners – alliances, joint ventures, mergers and others.

Engineering – the primary role of engineering is to design and continually evolve the innovation’s core technology, product and / or service.

Operations – the core role of operations is to source, build and deliver the product or service to customers, provide ongoing support to customers, and to ensure a positive customer experience. 

Marketing – the role of marketing is build market awareness and credibility for the venture and its innovation, and to stimulate prospective customer interest and enquiries. 

Sales – the role of sales is win and grow customers, by helping interested prospects move through their buying cycles.

Support – the role of the support disciplines (finance, IT, HR, legal, administration) is to enable all other disciplines to operate effectively. 

As noted above, of these seven disciplines, the one that is typically least understood, yet with the biggest potential to create value, is product management.

Note that we make a clear distinction between product management and general management in an innovation-based venture. In our view, product management should be responsible for the vision and business model driving the venture, whereas general management should be responsible for attracting, managing and driving results from the core stakeholders in the venture based on that vision and business model.

Next time we will discuss an overview of the product management discipline and its central role in an innovation-based venture.

Generating high potential new product and service ideas: a practical guide

Generating ideas externally

In addition to generating ideas internally, it is critical to look externally for new product and service ideas. While this has long been done by successful innovators, it remains relatively rare – the “not invented here” syndrome is seductive and difficult to overcome. However, as popularized by Henry Chesbrough’s seminal work Open Innovation, it is vitally important. Companies that source ideas externally as well as internally perform far better on every key innovation metric.

Sourcing ideas externally is much more complex than internally, because there are many external groups of stakeholders who may offer insights of value. As such, as illustrated in table 2, we recommend a two dimensional phased approach. Begin with a first phase that focuses on a limited number of tactics with a few key stakeholder groups. Over time, add more sophisticated tactics, and add additional stakeholder groups. By phase three, you will be sourcing ideas using a wide range of tactics from a full range of external stakeholders.

Interviews / individual collaboration – you can begin quickly and easily this by reaching out and speaking with people.  Many customers, partners and influencers will willingly share their thoughts if you only ask them. While a discussion guide can be helpful, these interviews should be fairly unstructured to allow for rich conversations and idea generation.

Focus and brainstorming groups – assembling small focus groups can also be a relatively easy tactic. Usually eight to twelve participants, these sessions need a skilled moderator that leads the discussion and helps participants walk through problems and explore possible solutions.

Monitoring blogs – with the emergence of blogs as a mainstream medium, it is wise to keep track of the blogosphere in your space, particularly comments and ideas from customers, competitors and influencers.

Online research – with essentially infinite information online about every known subject, a central element of external idea sourcing is of course extensive online research. Key targets will include relevant companies, university research, media, patent applications, and industry association events. 

Advisory board or panel – create an advisory board or panel of customers, partners or influencers. These groups should be kept small, represent a cross-section of opinion and avoid exposing competitive sensitivities. Advisory boards should meet on a semi-regular basis and be enabled by web-based technologies.  To keep the group focused, your organization should supply them with specific issues for discussion, but also allow the group to self-regulate and brainstorm freely.    

Customer experience mapping – mapping the customer experience is an important tactic. While this methodology can involve varying degrees of sophistication, the essence is to document how your customers perceive your company and its offerings throughout the purchase, use and support cycle. 

Non-customer analysis – it is important to consider the ideas of non-customers.  Their feedback as to why they did not select your product, and their suggested improvements, can be more valuable that your satisfied customers. 

Reverse engineering – this well known tactic involves buying and analyzing competitive products to understand the thinking and engineering behind them. Based on this analysis, generate new product and service ideas.

Intermediaries – these entities include brokers, agents, venture and innovation capitalist and provide a company with raw or market-ready ideas.

Licensing – other companies can be a source of ideas, and frequently they are open to licensing them. Large corporations also monetize their patents by allowing companies to locate them online.

Strategic investment – this involves identifying and investing in start-ups to secure and build upon their ideas.

Co-creation – at the end of the external innovation spectrum is joint development of product ideas.  In this methodology, customers, partners, complementors or even competitors share in idea generation and product development.

Enthusiast community – setting up an enthusiast community is a large undertaking, but can allow your users to interact naturally and suggest valuable improvements.  While it can be difficult for companies to create these communities, they can also leverage third-party sites where users congregate and interact. 

Extended observation / shadowing – this involves closely observing the user experience – how users go about their lives, the problems they encounter, and how they interact with your product or service.  Many needs are unknown to the customer, and can only be discovered through in-depth observation. Because this is usually done in a native environment, your team can identify new areas of opportunities. 

Acquisition – similar to strategic investment by taken to the next level, this involves identifying and acquiring companies for their ideas and technologies.

Technology transfer – universities and research institutes usually have an extensive intellectual property portfolio and are willing to license it.  Usually these ideas are more technical in nature, but if your company can create a solid business case or couple them with other ideas, they can be a source of tremendous value. 

Incubator program – companies such as Salesforce.com have pioneered creative programs to keep the pulse of related start up activity.  These programs involve providing companies with resources such as technology platform, technical advice, or office space.  Often this is done in exchange for equity; however, in other instances there is no equity exchanged.  In the latter instances, the incubator allows the larger company to gain early insight into innovations that benefit their business or provide an avenue for acquisition.

Idea exchange – this is common when a company has generated an interesting idea that falls outside of its core business.  In this case, it collaborates with another company and exchanges its idea with one from their portfolio. 

Crowd and open sourcing – leveraging large, web-based innovation platforms or open-source technology to come up with ideas.  Some companies have integrated crowd-sourcing into their business model to tap collective knowledge and creativity.

Initiative, forum, or promotion - to tap independent innovators, many companies allow for free-form submittal of ideas.  Many of these programs reward selected product ideas by acquiring or licensing the solution.

Technical innovation community – several technical exchanges exist where a company can anonymously post their technical problems and the members of the community submit their proposed solutions.  The rationale for using such a platform is the appeal of having a significantly larger number of people tackling your problems from potentially diverse angles.

The tactics and methodologies listed above, representing the thinking of innovation thought-leaders, are a menu of choices, not a rigid list.  Design and continually refine your external idea generation programs using this framework and these tactics as inputs

Generating high potential new product and service ideas is the critical foundation for successful innovation and new product development. In this article, we have presented a practical approach to help you build a best practice idea generation capability within your company.

Generating high potential new product and service ideas: a practical guide

Generating ideas internally:

With a clear innovation strategy in place to guide your idea generation activities, turn next to generating ideas internally. There are many tactics you can use to do so, we present seven below.

Like with most new initiatives, it normally makes sense to build your internal idea generation process in a phased way, starting simply and adding sophistication over time. As an example, table 1 comprises three phases. Phase one encompasses relatively quick, simple and easy activities, phase two adds more complex activities, and phase three represents systematic, deep engagement. Note this table is illustrative, not prescriptive. In practice, you will need to experiment to determine which approaches work best for you organization.

Table 1: Internal idea generation options

Phase one	Phase two	Phase three
Brainstorming teams	Market and scenario analysis Solicitation of ideas Peer networks	Corporate events / challenges Internal idea incubator Creative time allocation

Brainstorming teams – the quickest and simplest way to get started is to hold brainstorming sessions with selected employees to examine trends, explore new markets or industries, solve problems, and address specific topics. It is very important that these teams are comprised of diverse people with respect to function, background, seniority level, and demographics.  The directive given to these teams should be clear, but should allow for some “blue sky” thinking.  The team size should be large so that enough distinct perspectives are brought to the table and so that it can perform the necessary cognitive legwork, but small enough where everyone can participate and the team is not bogged down by its size.  We have found the ideal team size to be between five and ten. 

Market and scenario analysis – assign individuals and / or teams to research and analyze more formally the key customer, competitor and technology trends in your industry. This may include conducting similar analyses in related industries. Based on this analysis, develop a range of internally consistent scenarios on what the future of your industry may look like. What are customers likely to want or need? How are competitors likely to respond? What new competitors will enter? What new technologies will become available? Based on these trends, what new product and service ideas come to mind?

Solicitation of ideas – make a formal announcement to employees that you want to actively invite new product and service ideas.  Set the ground rules and strategic objectives, and then create a simple web-enabled database tool to enable easy submission, sorting and storing of ideas. In subsequent iterations, the tool could be modified to allow for interaction to further define ideas or perhaps allow employees to provide collaborative feedback.  Motivate your people to submit ideas by offering recognition and other rewards for good ideas, and monetary compensation if an employee’s idea is successfully commercialized. 

Peer networks – allow employees to self-select into groups to address specific market and product areas. Require a coordinator / leader for each peer group, and assign a senior executive to serve as a mentor to each peer group, holding periodic review sessions and providing advice and visibility within the broader organization.  Adopt one of the common social media tools to facilitate peer group discussion and collaboration. Although participation is voluntary, provide career and other rewards for peer group participation. Ensure the groups self-regulate and replace uncommitted members.  

Corporate events or challenge – hold specific innovation challenges that can span several days or weeks. These events can be virtual or live gatherings and involve a clearly defined challenge to creatively generate ideas. 

Internal idea incubator – set up a dedicated department to coordinate idea generation and other elements of ideation and commercialization.  Such an incubator may be part of an R&D department or a corporate venturing group.

Creative time allocation – allow your employees to devote a portion (usually between 10 and 20%) of their time to work on generating ideas of their choice.  Although this is an expensive option, companies such as Google have seen many products ideas hatched because their employees are more motivated to work on ideas they find interesting and in which they have a sense of ownership

Next time....Generating ideas externally

Developing an innovation strategy

The first element is to define and communicate your innovation strategy for your business. Your innovation strategy sets the direction and parameters to guide your idea generation efforts. These should allow for breakthrough, out-of–the box ideas, yet give sufficient guidance to provide coherence to your idea generation efforts and avoid wasting resources.

Define innovation objectives – the first step is to define qualitative and quantitative goals for your innovation efforts. Qualitative goals may include the role you want innovation to play as part of your overall business strategy. Quantitative goals may include the number of new product and service innovations you want to generate in a specific time period, or the percentage of sales you want to generate from new products. These objectives both give guidance to your innovation efforts, and can contribute to your motivation and reward processes.

Define market focus – a second component of your innovation strategy is your broad market focus. Your market focus should be based on your core competences and long term strategy as a company. Are you B2C or B2B? If B2C, which household income and demographic characteristics? If B2B, which industries, size of organization and decision makers are within your scope? What is your geographic focus? New product ideas can quickly be evaluated to ascertain whether they fit your current and future market focus.

Define technology focus – a third primary component of your innovation strategy is your current and future technology focus. As with market focus, your technology focus should also be based on your company’s core competences and long term strategy. Which areas of technology fall within your scope currently? How should this change over the next few years? This too provides an important guide to which new product and service ideas are in or out of scope.

Evaluate your product roadmap – fourth, consider your current product roadmap, and your current mix of existing offering improvements, new products or services, and new platforms or businesses. In light of your latest market and competitor analysis, does your roadmap need adjusting? Where is innovation most needed to do so? Gaps in your roadmap provide direction for your idea generation efforts.

Summarize and communicate your innovation strategy – finally, prepare a summary of your innovation strategy for both internal and external communication. While naturally you should not reveal competitively valuable information to the wrong people, it is important to share these guidelines with the appropriate stakeholders. By focusing your idea generation efforts in this way, you will significantly improve the quantity of useful ideas generated and reduce wasted time and effort

Our next entry will address : Generating ideas internally

Generating high potential new product and service ideas: a practical guide

In a previous blog entries regarding Ideation, we presented an ideation framework that covers the end‐to‐end process of generating, qualifying, and securing approval for new product and service ideas. In this article, we delve deeper into the front‐end of this framework: idea generation. This article presents a practical approach to generating high potential new product and service ideas for companies driven by innovation and new technologies.

Many companies, both new ventures and established corporations, do not place sufficient importance on front‐end idea generation. They get caught up in an initial concept, and do not take time to explore the wealth of knowledge, insight, and ideas both inside and outside their organizations. As a result, their thinking is limited, they begin making investments in sub‐optimal ideas, and soon they are trapped into trying to make an average idea generate above average returns.

The impact of this is profound – the vast majority of a company’s total lifetime investment in developing, launching and growing a product or service is built on the initial foundation laid in the idea generation phase. If the company moves forward with sub‐optimal ideas, it will consume vastly more time, money and other resources, take much longer to secure market traction and have to manage much higher risks than it otherwise would have.

By contrast, successful repeat innovators focus on maximizing the idea pipeline. They work diligently to identify as many new product and service ideas as possible from a full range of internal and external sources. They then manage these ideas like any pipeline, applying quick but effective screening criteria to identify the very best ideas. In this way, these companies are developing a hidden, but very real and powerful, competitive advantage over their less insightful competitors.

As detailed below, a best practice approach to idea generation comprises three elements:

• Developing an innovation strategy
• Generating ideas internally
• Generating ideas externally

We will explore each of these elements in the blogs to come...

Developing an effective board for venture success con't...

The final aspect...

Board management

With the right board design in place and the right members making up the board, you can focus on the third area of excellence – board management. Typically it is the chairman’s key function to manage the board and make sure it performs effectively. The chairman should lead the board in setting its purpose and direction, and in balancing discussion and consensus building with championing progress of key issues. In doing so, he or she will secure support and advice from the CEO and other board members. Well-managed boards typically have three characteristics:

• A balanced schedule of formal meetings. Most ventures hold formal board meetings regularly, monthly or bimonthly. Each meeting should comprise a regular review of performance to date, a focus on a specific topic, and time for ad hoc discussion. The specific topics should be carefully considered and scheduled. These can include a strategy review, approval of the annual business plan and budget, review of management performance and approval of bonuses, review of market / competitive conditions, review of innovation and research and development activities, and many other topics.

• Continuing informal oversight. In addition to the formal meetings, well-managed boards have effective processes for ongoing informal oversight. Primarily based on continuing chairman – CEO dialogue, this can be supplemented by assigning individual board members to specific areas of ongoing oversight based on their particular skills and experience.

• Continual timely information sharing. Board members should have continuing access to timely, accurate and relevant information. Good CEOs ensure their boards are always kept apprised of all key developments, and make sure there are no surprises at board meetings. With the wide range of online collaboration tools now available, boards today are able to keep informed, discuss issues and reach decisions between formal meetings

Developing an effective board for venture success...board members

Board members

 

Selecting members

With the right board design in place, you can now turn your attention to recruiting and selecting the right members to your board.  It is important to take into account both the individual qualifications and the collective skills and team dynamics of your board.

You should seek individual team members who offer the right personal skills and experience for your board.  Typically, these might include:

• Broad business experience of ventures at your stage of evolution
• A specific area of skill or knowledge that will be of value to the board
• A deep understanding of the role of a board and individual board members
• The ability to work and collaborate in a team, yet independent minded and able to think and reach conclusions without being unduly influenced by others
• Strong ethical standards and an understanding of legal and regulatory requirements 
• A good listener, able to ask questions, alert and inquisitive with sound problem-solving skills and judgment
• An effective meeting participant with strong communication skills.

In addition, you should try to achieve a balance of skills, experience and personalities on your board. Ideally, your board will consist of the right mix of people to provide the full set of skills, knowledge and perspectives your venture needs to realize maximum value and results.

Reviewing board member and team performance

Just as your management team should be reviewed periodically individually and collectively, so too should your board. In our experience, this is rare for venture boards, but it is a powerful process that generates significant benefits.

From time to time the board should take time to review and critique its own performance. Led by the chairman, the board should evaluate its results against goals, and also evaluate its working practices against best practices. Such an exercise can generate rich lessons for your board.

In addition, the board should define processes for performance review of individual members. Typically these reviews are conducted by the chairman or by an independent board observer or advisor. The reviews should be based on the board member’s performance against responsibilities, and should include assessing the extent to which the board member is:

• Devoting adequate time and attention to board matters
• Developing an appropriate level of company-specific knowledge
• Doing an appropriate level of preparation for board meetings
• Participating effectively in board meetings
• Maintaining independence and avoiding potential conflicts of interest.

Such reviews serve to improve the individual performance and contribution of board members. Unlike with management, board member reviews do not carry the potential sanction of dismissal. Board members can typically only be removed in accordance with the organization’s board policies and bylaws.

Developing an effective board for venture success

Board design

Before inviting candidates to join your board and preparing for your first board meeting, it is important to give careful thought to the structure, roles and responsibilities of your board. 

Board structure and roles

The structure of your board will largely be determined by your venture’s phase of growth. During the start up phase, the board structure will most likely be small and relatively informal, comprising founders and investors. As your venture grows, non-executive appointments will be made to bolster functional and industry skills and add representatives from new investors.  Over subsequent stages, the board structure will be further formalized and aligned with the venture’s financial, organizational and ownership structure.   

One initial structural decision is the size of the board.  As a general guide, a board must be large enough to accommodate the necessary skill sets to fulfill the board’s mission, while at the same time small enough to promote cohesion, flexibility, and effective participation.  In practice, venture boards are typically three to five members in the early stages, growing to eight to ten members over time.

You will need to determine the core policies governing board members, such as how board members are elected, re-election frequency, term limits (if any), as well as the number of boards a director may sit on simultaneously. These and other policies normally form an important part of your company’s governing bylaws.   

Another key decision is to define the board’s leadership role, the chairman. We believe that the responsibilities of the chairman of the board and the chief executive officer differ significantly, and that ventures are best served by having a non-executive chairman who is not the CEO. Such a structure ensures the chairman can focus on his or her role as leader of the board, eliminates conflicts of interest, ensures the board can fulfill its central role of oversight of management, and provides the CEO with a “thought partner” in running the business.

Some argue that a joint chairman / CEO is more effective at creating a bridge between the board and management and can ensure that both are acting with a common purpose.  However in our experience, this structure is normally a result of a powerful founder or leader asserting his or her control, rather than a truly optimal structure for the board. Ventures in this position should at least ensure that a non-executive independent undertakes a senior leader role in working with the chairman / CEO to manage the board.

Regardless of which leadership model is selected, it is imperative to delineate clear roles in order to avoid an undue concentration of power.  To achieve impartiality, the board leadership must be independent in thought and action, look to strengthen oversight, and provide checks and balances and improve information flow between the board and management.

The chairman’s role is that of board leader and steward of the company.  He / she presides at meetings and reviews and manages the composition and performance of the board.  Overall, the chairman is responsible for the board’s performance much like a CEO is responsible for the management team’s performance.  In addition, the chairman ensures that the external accountabilities are addressed and often plays the role of external figurehead.

In addition, individual members usually take on specific roles.  Public companies normally require directors to participate in specific committees on issues such as auditing, compensation, and nomination / corporate governance. Smaller companies, however, may allocate these roles on an ad-hoc basis depending on director preference and/or availability. 

Board responsibilities

Many boards lack clarity as to their responsibilities, and as a result end up either neglecting certain responsibilities or taking on responsibilities that are really the function of management.

The central responsibility of the board is to oversee and direct management in order to secure the best long-term interests of the company and its stakeholders. We believe this translates into the following five specific responsibilities for venture boards:

• Review and approve strategy and plans: the board’s first primary responsibility is to approve the venture’s strategy and business plan. Management is responsible for developing the company’s strategy and business plan; the board’s responsibility is to review, provide input, request clarification, and ultimately approve the strategy and business plan.

• Appoint and review the CEO and key executives: the next key responsibility is to appoint the company’s CEO, and to approve the CEO’s appointment of key executives. This includes setting the CEO’s and key executives’ compensation plans. The board must periodically evaluate the performance of the CEO and key executives, as a basis for both compensation awards and to approve continuation in those roles. The board must also develop a management succession plan to ensure long-term company leadership.

• Approve major decisions and commitments: the board must review and approve all major decisions and commitments that can materially impact the future of the company. These might include major investments, changes in the venture’s fundamental business model, and strategic combinations such as alliances or acquisitions, Once again, it is management’s role to develop the recommended action, and the board’s to review, question, clarify and ultimately approve.

• Monitor company performance against plan: a fourth key responsibility is for the board to continually track and monitor the company’s performance versus its plans. In doing so, the board will need to rely on the information and reports generated by management. As such, boards should ensure that sufficient precautions are taken and processes are in place to ensure that the information it reviews is timely, complete and accurate in all material respects. The board must identify issues that need to be addressed, and move quickly to direct management to take appropriate action to both exploit opportunities and guard against threats. Ultimately, if management cannot or will not address issues according to the board’s directives, the board will need to appoint alternative executives to do so.

• Ensure ethical, legal, and regulatory compliance: the board has a significant responsibility regarding ethical, legal, and regulatory issues in order to protect the interests of stakeholders and manage ongoing risk.  Company boards must ensure compliance with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements by putting the right processes, checks and balances in place.

In addition to these five major responsibilities, individual boards may take on other responsibilities. A common example with venture boards is for board members to provide help to the venture by introducing management to their personal networks. Such responsibilities must be secondary, however. Many boards suffer from the problems described at the beginning of this article precisely because they have appointed board members for their connections rather than their abilities as directors! Boards should take particular care not to expand their responsibilities to encroach on management. We believe that for most ventures, the above five responsibilities should define the role of the board.

Next: board members

Developing an effective board for venture success

A venture’s board of directors plays a significant role in its success. An effective board both contributes substantial value to the venture and directs it wisely to maximize growth and value for its stakeholders. By contrast, an ineffective board can become a major drain on vital senior executive time, and can destroy substantial amounts of stakeholder value. This article introduces a framework for improving board effectiveness to drive venture success.

Many venture boards suffer from one or more problems that lead to sub-optimal results. Boards dominated by one or two personalities do not act with the considered wisdom of all members. Boards made up of unqualified members are unable to act effectively. Board members who act only in the interests of some stakeholders bias the board in ways that may not be in the best interests of the company. Some boards are too involved in day-to-day detail, whereas others are too detached from the business. Many boards lack focus and structure, and are managed too loosely.

In our experience, building an effective venture board requires excellence in three areas: 

• Board design – defining the right board structure, roles and responsibilities.

• Board members – selecting right mix of qualified members, and reviewing fit and performance periodically.

• Board management – managing the board with the right blend of formal meetings, informal oversight and information sharing.

We will explore board design in our next entry.

Building an effective management team con't...

Teamwork

With the right organization in place populated by the right people, the final dimension of management team effectiveness is to ensure your executives truly work together as a team. A high performance team is one that together can achieve results well beyond the aggregate of individual capabilities. The New England Patriots in the early 2000’s were an example – few individual stars, but spectacularly successful as a team.

This is easier said than done. Venture executives are typically experienced, type-A personalities, with strong views and individual ambitions and preferences. In addition, by necessity (as described above), each person has individual goals and accountabilities, which the venture needs them to achieve. How do you foster teamwork in such an environment?

Three elements are key:

Develop shared vision and values

One of the foundational tenets of teamwork is to have your team share common values and be committed to a single vision of the team’s goals. This can include:

1. Developing a core, written set of values as a team early on, and evolve as needed.
2. Establishing mutual accountability and trust
3. Insisting on transparency – do not shield ulterior motives or political agendas
4. Accepting and encouraging diverse viewpoints
5. Managing disagreements in a healthy and productive way – encouraging open expression, empathy and listening, with a joint commitment to make fair tradeoffs where needed

Conduct joint problem definition and solving

Teams that identify and solve problems together typically experience strong bonding and mutual commitment. However, team problem solving can be lengthy, so should be reserved for key issues that face the business as a whole. Individual executives should focus on solving functional problems, and the CEO should make decisions on issues that do not warrant team attention.

It is important that you identify clear criteria that will define which issues will be problem-solved by the team. Failure to do so may lead the CEO to view his or her team as indecisive or the team to consider the CEO’s actions as unilateral and unfair.

For key issues that do warrant management team attention, incorporate the following best practices:

1. Begin by jointly defining the problem and the outcomes to be achieved
2. Define the criteria by which solutions will be evaluated
3. Do not focus on only a few alternatives, rather generate multiple possible solutions
4. Do not be unnecessarily hampered by perceived constraints; identify and agree on which constraints can be overcome and which cannot
5. Explore each option’s advantages and disadvantages; insist on factual support wherever possible
6. Try to avoid a vote, rather “take the pulse” of the team periodically and use that to guide the discussion
7. Creatively devise hybrid solutions that borrow the most desirable elements from distinct alternatives
8. Designate ample time to discuss and solve problems, but also set a deadline to impart urgency.

Pursue continuous joint learning 

Similarly, a team that learns together, particularly through extensive joint experience and problem solving, develops a very strong group culture and identity. 

One way to facilitate group learning is to reflect as a team on performance and lessons learned after reaching a milestone or overcoming a significant obstacle. Other tactics can include 360-degree feedback, creation of new processes and metrics, revision of team’s values / ground rules, and team-building exercises.