Innovation Isn't Complete Until it's Implemented

My team and I had an idea: instead of carrying around two smartphones (one for business and one for personal), you should have one phone, and an App for business with its own phone number.

But in practice, people kept giving out their personal phone number, and not the new business number for their App. Our great idea wasn't working out in the real world.

I asked some customers to describe in detail, where they were and what they were doing when they gave out the "old" number. It turns out that people give out their phone number at really busy times.

They are in the middle of talking to a prospect, setting up an event, onboarding with a vendor. They are not going to dive into their app and look through menus to see what their "new" phone number is.

The answer was really simple. We told new clients to take out a Post-It note and write their new number on it. Cut off the flap, so it's only the small adhesive part. And stick it on the back of their phone. Now they had the number handy when they needed it.

And now - finally - they were getting value out of our innovation.

Innovation isn't complete until it's implemented. Have any stories of innovations that were failing until you discovered the key to implementation? Leave them in the comments below.