One thing (out of many) that has stuck with me from Nick Haley's (Director of UX at The Guardian) talk at AdaptiveLab's recent Harnessing Disruption event was about the need not just for speed, but for momentum in innovation. Nick talked quite a bit about how speed can disrupt large organisations since it disrupts legacy processes, thinking, and habits. So the challenge being to find the right place in the continuum between killing off ideas and pursuing them to the bitter end without really knowing how valid they are. Most of the time a lack of ideas isn't the issue (on one project sprint the team at The Guardian came up with 103 ideas on day one), but the way in which those ideas are validated is.
So it's no good just doing a hack day. You need to bring focus to which ideas to then pursue. Nick talked through a five-day product design sprint process they had initiated which has brought ideas to fruition and resulted in tangible outcomes. Once speed is combined with focus you get momentum. And momentum creates a very motivating environment for people to work in. So in this way product discovery can disrupt wider habits and approaches and perhaps even how the wider organisation works. Nicely done.
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