KNOCK inc., a full service creative agency, is launching a innovation services practice designed to deliver growth and competitive distinction for their clients. COMMA, Innovation, combines classic business horizon planning, macro trend synthesis and human centered design processes to help client teams achieve their goals.
Led by Chief Innovation Officer Jen Klise, COMMA’s team of innovation practitioners, strategists, researchers, and designers bring nearly two decades of deep retail and consumer branding knowledge to complement their inventive way of thinking.
Jen Klise, Chief Innovation Officer, explains:
Where did the idea of COMMA come from?
Over the past several years there has been a significant shift on how organizations are organizing their innovation efforts. The trend has been to move away from stand-alone incubator teams working on new concepts, to having accountability for innovation spread across leadership groups of all divisions. Organizations need to build innovation as a core competency to compete in the ever-evolving marketplace.
Why is it significant?
Cultural shifts along with new skills are needed for these efforts to be successful.
How can these tools help clients?
Shared understanding of innovation priorities and practices ensure efforts create value.
A process for development ensures stakeholder engagement and accountability for results.
How will this help KNOCK, inc.?
As a full experience creative agency, KNOCK, inc. is keenly aware of the emerging needs of our clients. Our marketing partners are seeking new services to support growth and competitive distinctiveness, but their colleagues in other divisions also have needs in the space.
Why is it important to focus on the human centered design processes?
Ensuring that the problems you are solving, meet the need of users is paramount to the idea of adding value and being recognized as innovation. Blending feasibility, desirability and viability in the assessment of concepts ensures the balance of meeting business needs with the ability to scale, to meet the desire in the markets.
Additional thoughts:
The success (or failure) of innovation work depends on cultural context. This is often overlooked when establishing approaches like stand-alone teams. At COMMA, we have a flexible framework designed to invite the diverse perspectives of stakeholders into the process to increase the value of concepts in and after development.
We named our practice COMMA. A COMMA reflects a pause in thinking to consider what is next. This reflects our view on where value lies in the space. We support teams applying a future focus to their talent and knowledge to uncover opportunities that may exist. We also support cultural shifts toward a future focus with simple practices designed to balance the urgent with the important. After an engagement, we leave teams with new skills and cultures more curious.
