Describe the experience
Identify a person, a task and a specific moment of difficulty.
Explore innovation in New York
Bring a better-defined problem to your innovation discussion
NY Innovation Lab is a 1BusinessWorld editorial resource for framing business questions. Use a discussion canvas to distinguish what people experience, what your team assumes and which question deserves the next investigation.
A useful innovation conversation gives competing explanations room to be tested.
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Why this matters
A useful innovation conversation gives competing explanations room to be tested.
Designed for
- New York innovation teams
- Founders
- Business collaborators
What to explore
The ideas and decisions shaping innovation in New York
Compare explanations
Keep more than one plausible reason for the problem in view.
Choose the next question
Define the observation or conversation that could change your understanding.
Practical reading guide
A problem canvas for an innovation conversation
Use this editorial canvas before inviting people to discuss a new solution. It creates a shared account of the problem and the uncertainty. The site provides a reading and practice resource, not a physical laboratory or a managed experimentation service.
Capture the experience before naming an innovation
Copy these fields: person; task; situation; direct observation or account; current workaround; effect described; missing perspective. Keep the person’s own words distinct from your interpretation. A broad label such as “poor collaboration” can hide several different tasks. Describe one moment where information, responsibility or a decision becomes unclear, then ask whether the people doing the work recognize that description.
Fictional New York team Marketlane coordinates supplier samples for a showroom. A coordinator reports that samples sometimes arrive without a clear owner. The canvas records the specific account and the current workaround: ask several colleagues who requested the item. The team has not yet counted the frequency or heard from the suppliers. Its first problem statement is therefore a question about the handoff, not a verdict on the whole process.
Keep competing explanations visible
Add at least two explanations and the evidence that would distinguish them. One explanation may concern missing information, another an unclear role and another a change in work volume. Do not choose the explanation that best suits a product you already want to buy. Identify whose expertise would help interpret the situation, including the people who receive the work after the initial handoff.
Marketlane’s fictional canvas lists: requests omit the owner; labels lose the owner during shipping; ownership changes before arrival. The proposed solution was initially a tracking application, but the team cannot yet tell which explanation it should address. A receiving colleague suggests reviewing a few authorized, non-sensitive examples. A supplier contact can explain how the label is prepared. The discussion now has a useful evidence request.
End the meeting with a learning decision
Write one next question, the source of evidence, the person responsible and a review point. Record what would weaken your favored explanation. Keep the scope small enough to learn without disrupting the operation. A discussion canvas should leave participants knowing what will happen next and why. It does not need to produce a technology purchase or a confident solution in the same meeting.
The fictional decision is to compare the request note with the received label for a small set of approved examples. The team discovers that the owner is often known internally but never included in the label instruction. It proposes a wording change for review with the supplier. The canvas preserves the earlier alternatives and notes that the proposed change still needs observation in practice.
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