Climate Fresk

Climate Puzzle Facilitator

Florian Hameister - The Innovation Process Guy

I help medium-sized manufacturing companies identify the best ideas, validate customer needs, and discover new market opportunities. Together, we minimize development risks and achieve sustainable success – efficiently and without detours.

How I can support you:
🎯 Find and validate the best ideas – structured and objective.
🎯 Understand what your customers truly need and develop compelling solutions.
🎯 Discover and prioritize new markets and applications for your technologies.
🎯 Design sustainable, circular products and business models.

What’s in it for you:
🎁 Clarity and focus in your product development.
🎁 Reduced risks in new projects.
🎁 Innovations that are both economically and environmentally successful.

Facilitator & Coach for Sustainable & Customer-Centered Product Development for Industrial Companies

Strategyzer

Strategyzer Innovation Coach

Circular Economy Nordhessen

With Circular Economy Nordhessen, we want to support companies with insights, learnings and exchange to shift to a more sustainable Business

 Co-Initiator

Where to Play

Market Opportunity Innovation Consultant

FORTH Innovation Institute

Innovation Facilitator

ONLINE INNOVATION

A practical “HOW-TO-INNOVATE-ONLINE“ book.

After describing ten common pitfalls, we share some great tools and techniques that work in practice. We discuss the “Achilles heel“ of innovating online and present you ten methodologies you can use for online innovation in a hands-on-way.
https://www.onlineinnovation.online/

Co-Author

Miro

Helping companies and teams to find the right product idea before wasting tons of money, time and effort in development.

Miro Expert

MURAL

- 🆁🅴🅼🅾🆃🅴 Innovation Workshop Consultant

The MURAL Consultant Network is a global community of leading independent consultants, agencies, and facilitators deeply committed to fostering creative innovation and work transformation. They are constantly working to bring Design Thinking practices to their clients and leverage MURAL🧡 as a visual workspace to enhance their creative collaboration and bridge the gap between in-person workshops and ongoing, remote collaboration in the cloud 🚀.

Part of the Consultant Network

FORTH Innovation Method

Together with Gijs van Wulfen, the founder of the methodology, I train participants in a 6-week learning journey the FORTH Method, and how to do the whole journey 100% 🅾🅽🅻🅸🅽🅴. Mastering the tools and the online facilitation.
Check the training here: https://forth-innovation.learnworlds.com

🅾🅽🅻🅸🅽🅴 FORTH Innovation Master Facilitator and Trainer 💻 🎯

In 2016, Design Thinking was already hip, too hip for me. What I missed with Design Thinking was the corporate perspective. I found this in FORTH.
FORTH is a structured 12-week innovation process that combines business thinking with design thinking. 
Here, the innovation assignment with clear success criteria and focus and the commitment and involvement of management are the factors that ensure that successful business cases are presented and go into implementation.

FORTH Innovation Facilitator 🎯

customercentric and sustainable products and business models, through facilitation and coaching

I empower medium-sized manufacturing companies to develop sustainable innovations faster and more efficiently.

With over 10 years of experience in product development and 8 years as an innovation consultant, I support innovation managers and R&D teams in medium-sized manufacturing companies to turn great ideas into market-ready products and business models. My focus is on identifying market opportunities, validating concepts, and minimizing development efforts – without wasting time or money.

How I can support you:
🎯 Find and validate the best ideas – structured and objective.
🎯 Understand what your customers truly need and develop compelling solutions.
🎯 Discover and prioritize new markets and applications for your technologies.
🎯 Design sustainable, circular products and business models.

Why work with me:
✅ 10+ years of experience in product development in medium-sized companies.
✅ Practical, customer-centered approaches you can apply immediately.
✅ Proven workshops and sprints that sustainably strengthen your team.
✅ Engineering and business background: I bridge the gap between technology and business.

What drives me:
I believe that successful innovations come from well-structured processes, true customer orientation, and sustainable business models. My goal is to help you and your team develop products that are not only economically successful but also make the world a better place.

Let’s talk! Message me here on LinkedIn or schedule a video call with me. I look forward to driving innovation with you.

Florian Hameister

Spent half a day at the IMPACT FESTIVAL – and it was absolutely worth it.

I met some amazing people in real life:
 👉 Patrick from circularity.fm – locking forward to our chat
 👉 Julia, a fellow facilitator for Climate Fresk Deutschland.  
 👉 A reunion with Mathias and Jan from the re:connect - Inkubator für regeneratives Wirtschaften, plus their colleague Anna, who I’ve “known” for years through LinkedIn and endless online meetings – but met in person for the first time.

I spent more time traveling than actually being at the festival — definitely not the most sustainable choice 🙃 — but still 100% worth it.

Real conversations.
Shared laughs.
New sparks for collaboration.
And a lot of positive, constructive energy.

Exactly what we need.
(Instead of the destructive “piggy” or “Stadtbild” comments … you know the type.)

_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about hashtag
#CustomerCentricity & hashtag
#CircularEconomy as drivers for hashtag
#Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

With proven formats and focused facilitation, I help midsize manufacturing companies develop customer-centric and sustainable products and business models—pragmatically, efficiently, and with minimal risk.

Risk aversion is often the biggest killer of innovative ideas.
It’s driven by uncertainty:

➪ How will this impact our organization?
➪ What does it mean for my position and influence?
➪ Can we make it profitable?
➪ Will customers actually buy it?
➪ Are we even capable of building it?

When idea concepts lack clear evidence, decision-makers are more likely to say no—especially if doing nothing feels like the safer option.

🚀 How can you reduce the risk of rejection?

💎 Make clear how the idea supports organizational goals and outcomes.
💎 Show how it helps decision-makers in their jobs to be done.
💎 Make uncertainty visible instead of hiding it.
💎 Outline the next steps to reduce risk—what do you need (time, money, effort)?

What would you add to this list?

_ _ _

👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💪 I help innovation teams tackle the challenges of early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 I believe in #CustomerCentricity and #CircularEconomy as drivers for innovation.

✨ If you liked this post:
💾 Save it for later or share it with someone who might find it useful.
🔔 Hit the follow button for insights on how to reduce risks in product development.
📬 Let’s connect – I’d love to hear your thoughts!

No alternative text description for this image

WHEN REALITY DOESN’T MATCH YOUR EXPECTATIONS…

Chuck Norris walks into a cage with a tiger.

He bends down to pet it when suddenly—
Grrrrrrr… 😬

The trainer immediately says, “Get up very slowly and back up.”

So, the tiger gets up very slowly and backs away. 🐅😂

Expectations vs. Reality?
A classic assumption gone wrong.

In innovation, unaware assumptions can be just as dangerous as stepping into a cage with a tiger when you are not Chuck Norris.

📌 We all make assumptions—without realizing it.

📌 We think we know how customers behave, what they want, or how they make decisions.

📌 But when we don’t challenge those assumptions, we build products, strategies, and business models that simply don’t work.

The first step I recommend is to reflect on what you think you know and mark assumptions as assumptions.


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Video: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

WHY CUSTOMERS SWITCH – THE 4 FORCES OF PROGRESS

Customers don’t just “decide” to buy.
They are pulled and pushed by hidden forces.

Jobs to Be Done practitioners like Bob Moesta describe it with the 4 Forces of Progress:

	➪ Push of the current situation: frustration with today’s solution.

	➪ Pull of the new idea: attraction of what’s possible.

	➪ Anxiety of the new: fear of risks, costs, or complexity.

	➪ Habit of the present: comfort of doing nothing.

Switching happens only when push + pull outweigh anxiety + habit.

Clayton Christensen emphasized the same truth in Competing Against Luck: without understanding causality, innovation is just guesswork.

Lesson: If you want adoption, stop asking “Do you like it?”. Start mapping the forces that drive or block change.

👉 Which force is holding your customers back the most today – anxiety or habit?


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

“DAD, I WANT A CAT!”

Who else has been there? 😂

Kids come up with brilliant ideas without fully understanding what they mean.
Like getting a cat… or a dog… or something even wilder.

Ideas are exciting and spontaneous, but their impact and consequences are often far from reality.

Sounds familiar? It should—because the same thing happens in business.

💡 A great idea doesn’t mean a great outcome.
💡 Our assumptions about ideas rarely match reality.
💡 That’s why testing ideas before building them is crucial.

Because sometimes, what seems like a perfect idea turns into unexpected chaos. 🐈🏡😂 and it leaves a deep hole where you buried much money, time, and effort.



_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Video: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

DATA TELLS YOU WHAT – BUT NEVER WHY

Companies today collect more customer data than ever.
Clicks, demographics, NPS, feature usage – all neatly stored in dashboards.

But here’s the problem:
Data only tells you what happened.
It never tells you why it happened.

Clayton Christensen called this the trap of correlation.
Just because two things appear connected doesn’t mean one caused the other.
Example: Ice cream sales and forest fires both rise in summer. Correlation? Yes. Causation? None.

The same mistake happens in innovation. Teams see patterns in customer data and assume they’ve found insight. But without causality, you can’t predict behavior.

Lesson: Progress doesn’t live in data points. It lives in the stories behind decisions. That’s why Jobs to Be Done interviews focus on the causal chain: the struggles, triggers, and trade-offs that lead to a choice.

👉 How does your team make sure you uncover why customers buy?


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Picture: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

INNOVATION IS NOT ABOUT PRODUCTS – IT’S ABOUT PROGRESS

Clayton Christensen told the story of milkshakes.
A fast-food chain wanted to sell more. They tried to optimize flavors, add ingredients, run promotions. Nothing worked.

Then they asked a better question:
“What job do customers hire a milkshake for?”

The insight:
In the morning, commuters bought milkshakes because they were easy to drink in the car, lasted long, and kept them full until lunch.
At night, parents bought milkshakes as a small treat for their kids.

Two completely different jobs.
Same product.

The company stopped optimizing the milkshake itself. Instead, they designed experiences around the situations – faster service for commuters, smaller cups for kids. Sales went up.

Lesson: Customers don’t buy products. They hire them to make progress in a specific situation. If you don’t know the job, you’re innovating blind.

👉 What job do your customers really “hire” your product for?


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

NOBODY IS SHORT ON IDEAS.

The real problem?

Figuring out which ones are actually worth developing.

Not having the budget to build them all? That’s a good thing.
Because let’s be honest—most ideas are crap anyway.

The challenge is spotting the high-potential ones before they eat up time, money, and resources.

Business cases should help with this.
But too often, they’re just sales brochures—filled with unproven assumptions rather than an actual certainty status.

What if you could turn dreamy business cases into a probability of success—so you can make the right decisions before committing to development?


_ _ _


👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

IN INNOVATION, IT'S RARELY ABOUT having complex frameworks, endless brainstorming sessions, or rigid approval processes that make the biggest difference.

It's usually just removing unnecessary steps, cutting long approval loops, and getting honest customer feedback faster.

If your idea needs 80 slides to sell, it's not ready; test it with real customers instead.

_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

90% of new products fail.
Yet, most development processes are still set up to waste money, time, and resources.

Why?

Because they’re built backwards—focused on execution before real validation.

📌 Here are the root causes of failed product efforts—straight from Marty Cagan’s INSPIRED.

I get it. Changing an entire system is tough.
But if you want to reduce risk without slowing down, here are two practical ways:

1️⃣ When your product pipeline clears up

- Run a fully immersive innovation journey with a team of 7-10 people.
- In just 15 days of effort, you get customer-tested, innovation-ready business cases.
- I highly recommend the FORTH Innovation Method for this.


2️⃣ Before investing heavily in your next business case

- Do a Business Case Reality Check first.
- Get real certainty about its probability of success before wasting time and money.


_ _ _


👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

TOP 10 root causes for failed product efforts

STOP SELLING PRODUCTS – START HELPING CUSTOMERS MAKE PROGRESS

Most companies obsess over their products.
They refine features, polish specs, optimize performance.

But customers don’t wake up thinking: “I want a new product.”
They wake up with a struggle.

“I need to get to work faster.”

“I want my child to eat healthier.”

“I must reduce downtime in production.”

Products are only means to an end. The real driver is progress – the improvement people want in a specific situation.

Christensen called this the essence of Jobs to Be Done: people hire products to make progress. If the product helps, it gets re-hired. If not, it gets fired.

Lesson: Innovation isn’t about building more things. It’s about uncovering the struggles customers face and designing solutions that move them forward.

👉 What progress are your customers really trying to make?


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

SOMETIMES, WE HEAR WORDS… BUT MISS THE MEANING.

Ever asked a simple question and got an answer that made you question reality? 🤔😂

Understanding others’ perspectives isn’t always easy—product development is no exception.

Use heterogeneous teams in the innovation phase. Different demographics and work backgrounds form a group that will create a lot of different viewpoints, share insights, generate massive learning for everyone, and lead to fewer blind spots.

Because innovation isn’t just about ideas—it’s about understanding perspectives.


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Video: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

EVERYONE THINKS THEY NEED the latest tools, the best frameworks, or a perfectly structured roadmap to speed up product development.

What they really need is to eliminate bureaucratic bottlenecks, test ideas early, and enable faster decision-making.

Most companies struggle because their approval chains and rigid processes slow them down. Too many decision-makers, too many sign-offs—by the time a product is ready, the market has moved on.

If your innovation process is buried under layers of approvals, you're not streamlining development—you're suffocating it.

HOW TO DEVELOP SUCCESSFUL PRODUCTS FAST

Old Way
➪ Stick to a rigid product roadmap
➪ Invest heavily before testing assumptions
➪ Launch and hope for adoption
➪ Fix mistakes after development

New Way
➪ Adapt the roadmap based on real customer insights
➪ Test risky assumptions before committing resources
➪ Validate demand before building.
➪ Prevent costly mistakes instead of fixing them later

Validating early leads to faster success than rushing development,

If you want to speed up development, start by slowing down and validating before investing.

👉 What’s one thing your team does to prevent wasted development time? Let me know in the comments.

_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

THE CHOSEN ONE!


Most of you will smile at this video.

But the innovators among you—who have been there—might feel something else entirely… 😅


Alexander Osterwalder once said:
“You can’t pick the winners without investing in the losers.”

Yet, too often, companies move forward with the ONE idea.


Instead, try this approach:

💎 Define objective selection criteria—desired outcomes, restrictions, and an Innovation North Star to guide you.

💎 Involve a cross-functional team—different perspectives lead to better, more diverse ideas.

💎 Use a multistep selection process—start with many ideas and narrow them down in steps, making them more tangible at each stage.

💎 Move from Thoughtland to reality—separate facts from assumptions before committing.

💎 Prioritize & validate assumptions—be aware of biases when interpreting results.

💎 Test until confidence is high—remember, what people say vs. what they actually do are two different things.

💎 Pivot or kill your darlings if they fail validation.

💎💎 Bonus tip for the advanced:
Want to save even more time and effort?
Do a customer deep dive with Jobs-to-Be-Done interviews.

With expert help, you can uncover what truly drives customer decisions—in under four weeks with limited effort on your side.

Have a relaxing weekend


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Video: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

How most successful product are created:

- focus on business outcome
- total commitment on customers needs
- multistep selection process with clear and simple criteria
- involvement of sponsors and make it their idea
- continuous validating of assumptions 


Why most products fail:

- ideas are made on what is believed customers need
- opinion-based decision making
- focusing on building the product right, not on finding the right product. 
- involving the customers the first time when the product is finished


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

NOT EVERY COLORFUL IDEA IS A GOOD ONE.

Almost every idea looks exciting, creative, and full of potential at first.

But let’s be honest—most of them won’t work for you.

What you really need is:

💎 Business focus – Understand which ideas are the right ones for your company at this moment.

💎 Customer focus – Ensure your ideas actually help customers make progress.

💎 A structured process – Turn raw ideas into validated concepts through multiple steps because sometimes, the grayest ideas evolve into the most valuable ones.

Innovation isn’t about chasing shiny ideas—it’s about finding the right ones.

How do you filter out the noise and choose the best ideas? 👇


_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Video: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

MOST COMPANIES FAIL TO INNOVATE EFFICIENTLY because they rely on guesswork instead of structure. 

You can’t speed up time to market success without evaluating whether this is the right idea.

If someone is telling you that skipping validation and jumping straight into development will get you faster to market success, you're the fool.

Innovation efficiency requires transparent focus, understanding, selection, and validation processes before development. So please approach it with that mindset.

👉 How do you ensure your innovation process stays structured and effective? Let me know in the comments.

_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

YOUR IDEA IS CRAP VS. YOUR IDEA IS AWESOME.

it depends on...

The framing

The process of selecting the best ideas is hugely underestimated.

Everyone talks about idea generation, but an idea isn’t fantastic or useless—until it’s framed correctly.

For me, two things matter most:
📌 Framing the challenge
📌 A structured selection process

And no, framing doesn’t mean dumping ideas into an Excel file with 20 generic criteria—that just kills motivation and wastes potential.

1️⃣ Framing: Setting the Right Context
An idea is only as good as the challenge it addresses. Before evaluating ideas, define:
✅ What business outcome needs to be supported?
✅ What does success look like for decision-makers?
✅ What customer opportunities need to be solved?

👉 These should be your selection criteria—for this specific challenge.


2️⃣ The Selection Process: Iterative, Not Instant
It’s impossible to rate an idea properly at first glance—most are just a few words in the beginning.

That’s why selection should be a multi-step process, refining ideas as you go:

🔹 Step 1 – Gut feeling: Everyone picks their top 3 ideas based on the selection criteria.
🔹 Step 2 – Clarify & refine: Align on the idea level and get a shared understanding—most ideas are either too vague or too detailed at first.
🔹 Step 3 – Idea concept: Link the idea to an existing customer opportunity.
🔹 Step 4 – Customer testing: Validate assumptions with real customers.
🔹 Step 5 – Business case: If the idea passes all stages, build a real case with all relevant info for decision-makers.

By framing ideas properly and selecting them step by step, you avoid wasting time on weak ideas—and ensure the best ones get the chance they deserve.

How does your team evaluate new ideas? Gut feeling or structured process? 👇

_ _ _



👋 Hi, I’m Florian!
💡 I help innovation teams reduce risks in early-stage product development and turn chaos into clarity.
🌍 Passionate about #CustomerCentricity & #CircularEconomy as drivers for #Innovation.

📌 Want frameworks & tools to make better product decisions?
🗂 Get free access to my Library for Innovation & Circular Economy – full of templates, guides & checklists.
🔗 Find it in my Featured Section.
📬 Let’s connect! I’d love to hear your take.

🖼️ Picture: All rights and credits belong to the respective owner(s).

Do you need to reinvent your business and create a culture for innovation in response to these dramatic times of change? I inspire you with my speeches, workshops and innovation methods, in a practical way, both 100% online and offline. I am honoured to be chosen by LinkedIn as Influencer on innovation, and I like to thank all of my 330.000+ followers.

Founder of the FORTH Innovation Institute and FORTH innovation methodology

Breaking Innovation Barriers

Author of 7 books on DesignThinking & Innovation f.e. Breaking Innovation Barriers (2024)

Future-Fit Manifesto

Charter member of this highly-regarded, highly-impactful, and very forward-looking think tank.

On the Twentieth Anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, we collectively crafted "The Future Fit Manifesto" - a manifesto that charges organizations with proactively shaping their futures, not simply reacting to the future as it unfolds - a recipe that no longer works given the pace of technological change we are witnessing.

This think tank will constantly champion the cause of the Future Fit / Future Ready organization - organizations capable of remaining relevant to the world of today, while also resilient to the ongoing sea of change happening all about us. These are the organizations who will still be creating tremendous value - not years, not decades, but centuries from now.

Contributing Author

Global Speaker, Trainer and Author on Innovation

Gijs van Wulfen is a recognised authority and keynote speaker on innovation and Design Thinking. He is an illustrative lyrical storyteller with an articulate informal style, which is full of humor, entertainment and insight.

He has been keynoting for companies like NEC (Japan), 3M (USA), AIRBUS Group (France), ENZEN (India) and BIlfinger (Netherlands). He's a regular speaker at big innovation conferences like 'The South African Innovation Summit, 'The Turkish Innovation Week', 'The Polish Innovation Day' and 'The 3rd Innovation Forum' in Porto Alegre (Brazil). Movies and reviews of his performances you find at gijsvanwulfen.com

Global online & 'live' speaker on Innovation (gijsvanwulfen.com)

Gijs is the founder of the FORTH innovation method and help organisations to jump start innovation by facilitating this effective method. It helps them creating a culture for innovation. His clients are both companies in industry and services and non profit organisations looking for innovative products, - services, business models or new markets. His focus is on new product development, new service development, innovation strategy and innovation management. He works all over the globe.

Founder FORTH Innovation Method

Boer & Croon

Associate Partner

Ernst & Young Consulting

Management -, Marketing and Innovation Consulting

Executive consultant

CSM (Honig, Red Band Venco)

Group Product Manager

Innovation keynote speaker, Number One Thought Leader Design Thinking 2024, LinkedIn Top Voice helping you and your organisation, to become amazing innovators with keynotes, workshops, and a proven innovation method.

Making innovation happen is a tough job! It requires priority, management buy-in, creativity, structure and perseverance.

Do you want to double your innovation effectiveness and create a culture for innovation? Then I can help you for sure.

As an empathic storyteller with 40 years of innovation experience all over the world, I will inspire you with my speeches, workshops and innovation methods, in a practical way, delivering quick wins and changing mindsets leading to long term change in your organisation. 

I am honoured to be chosen by LinkedIn as Influencer, thanking all of my 310.000+ followers. Thinkers360 just awarded me as Number One Global Thought Leader on Design Thinking in 2024. And my book ‘The Innovation Maze’ was crowned as Management Book of the Year.

When you want to spark a culture for innovation in your organisation, I can add value in four ways:

1. As author with 5 innovation books. Check out 'Inspiration for Innovation', 'The Innovation Maze' and my 'classic' on innovation 'The Innovation Expedition', an my innovation bestseller on Amazon.

2. As storyteller with keynote lectures (online). As illustrative storyteller with an informal style, full of insight, humor, and entertainment I inspire leadership teams, innovators and business professionals on innovation and design thinking (see gijsvanwulfen.com).

3. As practical trainer in workshops (online). In 1 -, or 2-day workshops, I train your people in a very practical way how to start innovation and create a culture for innovation within your organisation (see gijsvanwulfen.com).

4. As facilitator with the proven FORTH innovation method. With the structured FORTH methodology I help people in organizations worldwide to jumpstart innovation and create new products, services and business models (see www.forth-innovation.com). Scientific research has proven that FORTH doubles the effectiveness of your innovation process, as 3 out of 4 new business cases get launched.

Call or direct message me when you are looking for a speaker, workshop facilitator to increase your innovation effectiveness at 0030 6985716289 or gijs@forth-innovation.com

Specialties: Innovation. Design Thinking. Ideation. Service Innovation. Innovation management. Innovation Organisation. Innovation culture. Innovation leadership. Concept development. Product innovation. New business development. New Product Development (NPD). Design Thinking. Brainstorming. Innovation seminars, innovation workshops, innovation presentations, innovation key-notes, FORTH innovation method, innovation consulting, innovation training.

Gijsbertus J.J. van Wulfen

How can you grow innovation in an organisation that is tired and overloaded?

No! Not by launching yet another innovation programme.

Tired teams don’t need more. They need different.

Here are 5 things to do:

1. Kill before you create

You can’t grow innovation on top of a full plate.
Make a stop list before a to-do list: which meetings, reports, projects and rituals will you end to free up energy for new ideas?

2. Protect small islands of focus time

Innovation dies in back-to-back calendars.
Block fixed “no meeting” slots or a monthly sprint where teams can work on one opportunity without interruptions. Guard this time like you guard client deadlines.

3. Shrink the ambition, speed up the learning

Overloaded people fear “big transformation”.
Instead, ask for tiny experiments: 1 idea, 1 customer segment, 1 simple test within 2–4 weeks. The goal is learning, not a perfect business case.

4. Change leadership behaviour, not posters

Culture follows what leaders do on Monday morning. Leaders should ask: “What did we learn?” more often than “Did we hit the numbers?” and publicly reward smart experiments, even when they don’t “win”.

5. Make progress visible and human

Tired organisations often are moving… they just can’t see it. Create a simple “innovation wall” (physical or digital) showing ideas, tests, and outcomes. Celebrate small wins with names and faces, not just dashboards.

Innovation culture doesn’t start with energy.
It starts with permission, space and small, real progress – especially when everyone is tired.

#innovation #innovationculture #leadership #change #futureofwork #organisationaldevelopment

Award-winning innovation keynote speaker | Founder of the FORTH innovation method | Empowering and training the world’s innovation facilitators

All ready to rock & roll on stage 🎤


Thrilled to be speaking today at the TOP seminar in Belgium 🇧🇪(ICC Gent) – sharing the key insights from my latest book “Breaking Innovation Barriers”.

I’ll be taking the audience on a journey through 15 practical strategies to win management buy-in, remove internal roadblocks and finally get innovation moving instead of stuck in PowerPoints.

Innovation isn’t just about big ideas.
It’s about getting decision-makers on board, building momentum and delivering real impact. That’s exactly what I’ll be talking about on stage today.

If your organisation is struggling with:
	•	endless discussions but no decisions
	•	risk-averse leaders
	•	ideas that never reach the market

…then Breaking Innovation Barriers – and my keynotes & workshops – are designed for you.

👉 Interested in having me speak at your next event or run an in-company innovation journey?

Send me a message – let’s make your next innovation project the one that actually breaks through.

#BreakingInnovationBarriers #innovation #keynotespeaker #TOPseminar #leadership #strategy #corporateinnovation #changemanagement #GijsVanWulfen

“Innovation is a battlefield.” ⚔️

Every day, innovators step into the unknown, face resistance, and keep going anyway. This short movie is a salute to everyone who dares to challenge the status quo, needs to play political fames, and fight for better ideas, better products and a better future.

#innovation #innovator #gijsvanwulfen #speaker #motivationalspeaker #movie

How do you become a world-class innovation facilitator in just 6 days? 

By joining me in Italy 🇮🇹, June 7–12, 2026.

I’m hosting a small, intimate FORTH Innovation Method Certification Training (max. ~12 participants) at Cascina Caremma, an authentic organic farm just south of Milan. Six intense days, in English, working on a real innovation challenge – and you’ll be facilitating from the start.  

You will learn how to:
	•	Apply the FORTH innovation method – a proven approach that doubles innovation effectiveness compared to regular stage-gate processes.
	•	Facilitate hybrid innovation journeys: in-person workshops combined with online collaboration on MIRO.
	•	Move from fuzzy front end to validated concepts that your organisation (or clients) can actually implement.
	•	Boost your personal facilitation skills and confidence with a diverse international group.
	•	Enjoy an unforgettable culinary Italian week – all breakfasts, lunches and dinners together, creating a true community of innovators.

And yes, you’ll go home as a certified FORTH Innovation Facilitator – with access to the digital toolbox and our global community.

🎄 Early bird Christmas offer
Register before Christmas and you’ll get 10% discount on the training fee.

If you’re:
	•	an innovation manager or project leader
	•	a consultant or facilitator
	•	or simply the one who always pushes for new ideas…

…then this week in Italy might be a turning point in your career.

👉 Interested? Comment FORTH or send me a DM and I’ll share the brochure & registration details.

#FORTHInnovation #InnovationFacilitation #DesignThinking #InnovationLeadership #InnovationTraining #HybridWorkshops #Creativity #Italy2026

“Innovators should understand top managers BEFORE they start…”

In this short movie I share why stepping into the shoes of your board and senior leaders is the crucial first step for any innovation journey. 

When you understand their pressures, language and priorities, your ideas have a much better chance of getting real backing — and making real impact.

#innovation #innovator #gijsvanwulfen #speaker #motivationalspeaker #movie

On my way from Milano 🇮🇹 to Ghent 🇧🇪

Excited to be one of the speakers at the UNIZO  TOPseminar in Ghent, where I’ll be sharing my experience as an innovation strategist, author and keynote speaker.

Over the years I’ve helped many organisations turn fuzzy ideas into concrete innovation results with the FORTH Innovation Method – a structured way to move from insight to validated new concepts.

In my session I’ll talk about:
	•	How to overcome internal resistance to innovation
	•	How SMEs can innovate without big budgets
	•	Practical tools you can apply the next day in your business

If you’re joining the UNIZO TOPseminar, I’d love to meet you, hear your challenges, and exchange ideas on how to make innovation really work for you. 👋

#UNIZOTOPseminar #innovation #keynotespeaker #entrepreneurship #SME #Ghent #Milano

Do you know the main reason WHY innovation gets killed …

It’s not bad ideas.
It’s NO MANAGEMENT SUPPORT – in 52% of all cases.

Too many great concepts die quietly in PowerPoints and pilots because leaders:
	•	Don’t feel ownership
	•	Don’t see the business case
	•	Don’t trust the team (yet)
	•	Or are simply too busy with “today” to invest in “tomorrow”

👉 That’s why getting – and keeping – management buy-in should be your priority number one as an innovator.

I’ve just released my latest book “Breaking Innovation Barriers” with 15 practical strategies to win management support and become a truly impactful innovator.

If you want your next innovation not just to start, but to survive and scale, this book is for you.
🔗 Link in the comments

#innovation #breakinginnovationbarriers #leadership #management #corporateinnovation #changemanagement #designthinking #strategy

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Florian Hameister's LinkedIn Performance

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