Ah-Ha Moment: An unexpected failure during an innovation activity that presents significant opportunities for learning

Adjacent Innovation: An innovative solution that represents the reconfiguration of an existing solution, or the application of an existing solution in a new way; these solutions tend to represent a moderate level of risk

Agile: A solution development methodology that emphasizes iteration, constant monitoring, and adaptation as a project progresses

Barriers to Success: Challenges that must be overcome to achieve an innovation goal

Baseline: A starting point against which future progress is measured

Bold Failure: A failure that results from a high-risk innovation activity

Business Unit: Refers to the office or division in which your immediate team resides

Calculated Risk: An experiment that fails due to an unlikely, but known, risk

Challenge Statement: A question designed to prompt – and provide constraints for – ideation around a specific topic

Cognitive Psychology: A field in the social sciences that studies the mental processes relating external, sensory stimulation and the processing of information including perception, learning, and thinking

Challenge Statement: A question designed to prompt – and provide constraints for – ideation around a specific topic

Crowdsourcing Campaign:Process for putting tasks, questions, or funding requests out to a large group, usually online, to collect their input or contributions

Data Collection Techniques: Approaches for gathering, storing, and making sense of qualitative and quantitative information; common methods include observation, one-one-one interviews, and focus groups

Design Statement: A concise description of your intended ideation activity

Digital Divide: The gap between individuals with and without access to the internet

Disruptive Innovation: A new solution applied to a challenge never-before addressed, with the potential to completely transform conventional ways of thinking or doing; these solutions tend to be high-risk

Enabling Environment: Refers to underlying organizational elements that make innovation more or less likely to be successful; specifically the organization’s innovation architecture, partnerships, and culture

End-User: The stakeholder that will ultimately be using an innovative solution

Ethnography: A qualitative research product that involves observing and interacting with individuals in their own environment. It is a key step in “human-centered design.”

Executive Champions: Organizational leaders who support your innovation goals and have a similar or higher tolerance for innovative risk

FailFaires: A technique for normalizing conversations around failure, where groups – including internal and external partners – come together to discuss something they succeeded at, something they failed at, and something that confused them

Failure Friday: A technique for normalizing conversations around failure, where teams come together on Fridays to discuss something they succeeded at, something they failed at, and something that confused them

Failure Report: Formal reports that detail failure experiences and lessons learned from them

Focus Group: A data collection technique during which a small group of individuals are guided through a facilitated discussion to learn more about the needs, preferences, and pain points of potential end-users of an innovation

Go and No-Go Decision: Decision points across the innovation life cycle during which you decide whether an innovative solution should be advanced with additional resources, refined through further iteration, paused in its current stage of development, or sunsetted with no additional resources provided

Human-Centered Design: A methodology for creating innovative solutions that focuses on understanding and addressing the needs and desires of stakeholders impacted by the solution

Ideation: The first stage of the innovation life cycle, in which new ideas for innovative solutions are generated

Incremental Innovation: A solution that addresses existing challenges through minor enhancements to existing solutions or products; these solutions represent a low level of risk

Incubation: The second stage of the innovation life cycle, during which ideas are turned into testable solutions through ethnographic research, prototyping, and other methods

In-Depth Interviews: A data collection technique in which one-on-one interviews are used to collect feedback on isolated user experiences during the User-Centered Design process

Innovation Goal: The end-state an organization or team is attempting to achieve through innovation

Initiative: An activity or effort focused on executing a phase of the innovation lifecycle

Innovation: The creation of “new” value for stakeholders and end-users; it can be considered both doing things differently and/or doing different things

Innovation Focus Areas: Identified opportunities for innovation (often via trends analysis, scenario planning, or user-feedback) that have not yet been converted into specific innovation goals

Innovation Life Cycle: The process through which innovative ideas are generated, developed, piloted, and scaled

Innovation Metric: A measurement used to describe some characteristic of an innovation initiative or project (quantity, impact, etc.)

Journey Maps: A tool that visually displays the high points, low points, and opportunities for innovation across an individual’s experience to inform solution development

Last-Mile Delivery: The final steps in a process needed to reach the end goal

Mad-Lib: A framework through which blanks (omitted words) in a statement are used to create structurally similar sentences

Minimum Viable Product: A version of a solution that has only the most basic features necessary for functionality and can be used to test features and identify what does and does not work

Observation Techniques: Data gathering techniques used to understand a subject’s behavior in the environment in which they work or live

Pilot: The third phase of the innovation life cycle, during which a working prototype of an innovative solution is tested with a subset of end-users

Pipeline: The set of projects currently under some stage of development across the innovation lifecycle

Pre-Mortem Analysis: A risk-mitigation method through which you identify what might go wrong before starting a new partnership instead of at the end of a partnership

Prize Challenge: An innovation initiative in which participants submit their ideas in response to a challenge statement, the best of which wins a prize

Project: An innovative idea in one of the four phases of the innovation lifecycle (ideation, incubation, pilot, scale)

Reputational Risk: A threat to a group’s status or perceived status as a result of a specific activity

Risk Tolerance: The amount of risk a team, unit, or organization is open to taking in its innovation activities

Scaling: The fourth phase of the innovation life cycle, during which an innovative solution is introduced to new end-users beyond the initial pilot population

Scenario: A data-driven depiction of a plausible way that the future could evolve

Simple Error: An expected and unavoidable mistake caused by an unintended oversight or natural human error

Social Innovation: Innovation with the goal of developing effective solutions for pressing social and environmental issues

Stage-Gate: The decision point at a go/no-go decision is made across the phases of the innovation lifecycle

STEEP Framework: A methodology for analyzing the social, technological, economic, environmental, and political factors shaping the future

Strategic Risk: A risk taken in accordance with the risk tolerance of a team, unit, or organization and its stakeholders

Synthesis: The process through which raw data about a stakeholder group is converted into insights

Theory of Change: A sequence of steps that outlines necessary activities to achieve a stated end goal

User Advisory Groups: Technical working groups, functioning like a standing focus group, that give the end-users of an innovation a voice throughout the development process

User-Centered Design: A collaborative design process that focuses on creating an innovation solution with the desired end-users as opposed to delivering one for them

User-Persona: A depiction of a cluster or segment of stakeholders impacted by an innovation who exhibit similar behavioral patterns or preferences

Workshop: A gathering of individuals for a discrete period to engage in an innovation activity