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In Innovation, Go Slow to Go Long
A marathon runner's case for treating innovation as a systematic, repeatable process built on preparation, user empathy and hypothesis testing rather than inspiration.
Patrick Ng, Venture Creation Instructor & Deep-Tech Mentor
Writing after what he estimates was his twentieth full marathon, Patrick Ng compares innovation to race preparation: the outcome depends on the practice runs. His process runs from identifying urgent problems and why current solutions fall short, to designing a better solution, proving its feasibility and planning how to scale it.
The practice runs are user empathy, exposure to many industries and their constraints, and a growing toolbox of technologies and methods to draw on when a problem appears. He stresses hypothesis testing and observing what people do rather than what they say, with "good enough" defined up front by the impact a team wants to achieve.
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More by Patrick Ng
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- The Foundation of Innovation
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