Welcome to the Mid Zone of Innovation

The Front End / Back End Era

Back in 1991, Don Reinertsen and Preston Smith introduced the world to the concept of the ‘Fuzzy Front End’ of product development.   The following year, Peter Koen offered a bit more structure and definition around this concept when he renamed it the ‘Front End of Innovation’, or FEI — a name that has stuck.

Koen envisioned the ‘Front End’ as involving a series of steps focusing on discovery, scoping, and business case development.   He later evolved it into a broader model involving opportunity identification, opportunity analysis, idea generation, idea selection, and concept definition — much of which today has come to be known as aspects of Innovation Management.   In both cases the work being described was work that preceded the formal product development process, in that it focused on defining – with clarity – the problem to be solved and the solution for doing so, before developing said solution.

Over time, and by way of reciprocity, the balance of the work involved in formal product development came to be known as the ‘Back End of Innovation’, or BEI.

Together, this two–part Front End / Back End model reflected the flow of activities involved in moving a new innovation from concept to commercialization — in large part because the innovations being pursued at the time were focusing primarily on new offerings for existing markets and new markets for existing offerings — and less so on new business models and ecosystems.

The Front End / Back End model was thus right for its time, and back then the activities involved in innovation were managed largely inside those two buckets.

But fast forward a quarter century and we find that a lot has changed.   Today, Innovation Management has become a business discipline unto itself, and along with it, the way in which more progressive organizations manage their innovation pipelines.   Introduced now is the discipline of learning — specifically around market–solution fit and new business-models & ecosystems — prior to making full–on commitments to a new innovation.   Consequently, that old two–bucket model no longer accurately reflects how innovation projects — and the pipelines they make up — are best managed.

Introducing the Mid Zone of Innovation

Today, organization must incorporate the ‘Mid Zone of Innovation’.

Here, the ‘Front End’ remains the domain of the discovery work, ideation, and creative brainstorming required to find new opportunities around unmet needs… the safe place where new business ideas are born and have their genesis.   And the ‘Back End’ remains the domain of execution — the place where we actually take the idea into the market and implement it… thus making it a reality.

But for those who've been running end-to-end innovation projects in recent years, they'll quickly recognize that a whole lot of work goes on in between those two ends.   This is the space we are now referring to as the ‘Mid Zone of Innovation’.

So What Happens Inside the Mid Zone?

This of course raises the question, “What exactly happens inside the Mid Zone of Innovation?”

What happens, as we are increasingly witnessing, is a substantial amount of in–depth research and planning work — work that's aimed at taking the relatively raw idea that the Front End has handed us and turning that into a well–vetted, viable concept that we can then hand off to the Back End for execution — especially if something is substantially new and/or different about how we have to take this new innovation to market – such as being in a new market space, using a new brand, and so on.

The work here thus includes crafting detailed go-to-market strategies, brand strategies, operational plans, marketing plans, production plans, distribution plans, and so forth.   It can also include in–depth user research, qualitative and quantitative market research, design research, and so forth — all focusing on how best to take the new innovation to market so as to achieve optimal market-solution fit, and thus maximum adoption and traction.

Indeed, the whole point of the Mid Zone is to learn as much as possible – as quickly and cost–effectively as possible – about market–solution fit and the right go-to-market strategy — prior to making a commitment to commercializing the new innovation at scale inside the market — so as to maximize its chances of success in that market.

It's not uncommon for this work to take anywhere from six months to two years to complete — depending on the industry and the market, and the novelty of the new innovation being delivered.

Why the Mid Zone is Its Own Zone

One might also wonder: “Why are these particular tasks considered a ‘Mid Zone’ activity, and not a ‘Front End’ or ‘Back End’ activity?”   The answer to that question lies partly in the scope and scale of the innovation, and partly in a shift in how organizations are now managing large-scale innovations.

In the case of very incremental (small-scale) innovations, the project may be fully greenlighted from the start, and this work would thereafter be considered a normal part of its Back End – because not a lot is changing about the market or the offering, and thus about how it is being taken into that market.   But for more radical, large–scale innovations, projects are now being run inside organizations in a far more lean and agile way – not unlike in a startup – where there will be multiple milestones and toll gates they must successfully navigate before they are greenlighted for full market introduction (sometimes symbolically referred to as Series A, Series B, Series C, etc. milestones).

This is because there are so many more unknowns in the case of a large-scale innovation that have to be explored adequately before a commitment can be made.   This minimizes the level or risk exposure to the organization, and thus ensures the most efficient use of its capital.

Consequently, all of this research and planning work has to be completed prior to the project being given the green light to go into market at scale.   This means that the project may spend a large portion of its working life winding its way through the innovation pipeline without knowing whether or not it will pass the final hurdle of approval for full market introduction.   Because the project is well past the ideation and concept development stage, this is not Front End work, and because it is not yet approved for final execution, this is not Back End work either.   It is Mid Zone work.   Once the project finally passes its last ‘Mid Zone hurdle’, then the executional work of the Back End can start, in which case all of these plans will be carried out to take the concept into the market.   Everything that happens in between approval to work on the idea and this final tollgate is in fact the Mid Zone of Innovation.   As can be seen, it is in this Mid Zone that the real make–or–break work of research, planning, refining, and pitching takes place, and the real high–level go or no–go decisions get made based on those learnings and their presentation.

A similar pattern is seen inside startups.   Often the initial concept is given a small amount of Angel or Seed VC funding for the purpose of creating a workable proof-of-concept / beta / MVP with which to do in–market learning prior to creating the ultimate product (perhaps after a pivot or two) — which then becomes the subject of a real Series A funding to scale it in the marketplace.   This same ‘pipeline’, between Seed and Series A, is where the real learning takes place (essentially on the fly, in–market, research and planning).   It too can be thought of as the Mid Zone of Innovation, but in this case for startups.   (This is also, coincidentally, where the so-called ‘Valley of Death’ occurs where so many startups meet their final demise).

The New Model Thus Contains Three Zones

In our work with our clients, a big part of the heavy lifting we do is precisely this — researching market opportunities and putting together new go–to–market strategies, branding strategies, operational plans, marketing plans, and so forth — all of which has its life in the Mid Zone of Innovation.

And thus, in our experience, this three–part model — Front End / Mid Zone / Back End — is a much better representation of the state of Innovation Management today, and a far better reflection of the Lean Startup Model and how that model is being used inside large organizations today.

We fully expect that, over time, it will become the defacto model for structuring Innovation Management efforts and their associated pipelines everywhere that large-scale innovations are involved.

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