Lean canvas to Idea canvas

Sep 10, 2022

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Do passion projects spiral out of control in your organisation using valuable resources and budgets? How do you maintain enthusiasm for all new ideas and then quickly decide where to proceed? In this episode I describe how I turned the lean canvas into an idea canvas, so every idea is reviewed by the intrapreneur.

Support Diary of a Business Designer

Key takeaways

Do passion projects spiral out of control in your organisation using valuable resources and budgets? How do you maintain enthusiasm for all new ideas and then quickly decide where to proceed? In this episode I describe how I turned the lean canvas into an idea canvas, so every idea is reviewed by the intrapreneur.

Great ideas – sound logical but typically don’t have a well rounded view and forget important considerations like:

Strategic alignment and measurable outcomes
Testing the customer and their willingness to pay
Capacity and hidden costs to create
Channel effectiveness
Customer – problem – solution fit
Competitors
Volume, margin, revenue

I created a solution for Intrapreneurs .. changing the lean canvas to IDEA CANVAS

You do need to customise for your organisation capturing

Strat alignment
Impact or success measures
Competitor
A scale for easy explanation
A t-shirt size
Every time good idea is worth listening to!
Take one hour with the idea holder, using the Idea Canvas
Then I leave it to them to take a next step.

Examples I share:

Team insisted … one significant client asked, and it was such a great idea, insisted everyone would want it, and we would get major publicity from it. Canvas recommendation = do not proceed, there was a better alternative.
A Passionate Manager … wanted to add a complimentary product from another vendor and clip the ticket. Canvas recommendation = do not proceed, nil product traction and nil ROI.
Team had already … piloted their new solution, without a canvas, for the past 12 months. Canvas recommendation = do not continue, will always run at a significant loss.
Another customer request … this time the team used an idea canvas first. Canvas recommended = good demand, trial solution for 4 months to determine ROI. This ceased after 4 months.
A Pandemic idea … again the team used an idea canvas first. Canvas recommended = do a design sprint first to determine development cost. The product launched and became largest volume ever.