OnRamp Innovation Program

Where our creativity can take the business and our community to?

The goal of OnRamp is to uncover unmet customer needs about the world around us, build actionable insights, and propose data-driven solutions that make our sponsors think differently.

Due to the confidential disclosure agreement (CDA), I am not able to reveal specific details of the project I have worked on. However, I am willing to share the innovation process, my experiences, and what I have learned from this valuable internship with our sponsor, the lead, and my teammates on a surface level.

Although it’s not an HCI or UX-related project, most of the working and thinking processes are similar. I believe this experience has leveraged my lateral thinking and problem-solving skills, and also developed my entrepreneurial mindset.

  • W1 – Goals and Ideas

    W2 – Interview Prep + Brain Dump

    W3 – Outreach Week

    W4 – Interview Week

    W5 – Data Mining

    W6 – Insights Review

    W7 - Spring Break

    W8 – Solutionstorm + MVP Creation

    W9 – Business Modeling / Concept Dev

    W10 – Deliverable Creation

  • Our sponsor provided us with 4 eggs. Each egg listed detailed research and requirements for topics that they are eager to further explore, including hypothesis, task, example, target customer, and value to enterprise. Each egg was then assigned to a team of 4 students based on our interests.

    Along the way of extensive research, we hosted several review sessions with our sponsor to update the progress and validate value alignment. During the final week, each team presented their key insights and proposed visionary solutions.

  • • Collaborated with a team to vet early-stage innovative ideas for corporate sponsor

    • Built unique customer-focused solutions using the fuzzy front end and lean start-up methodology

    • Generated qualitative research for data insights using in-person customer validation interviews

    • Pitched evidence-based concepts and solutions to senior leaders for consideration in the sponsor’s innovation pipeline

  • • Double-diamond Thinking Process

    • Market Research & User Research

    • Interview Techniques

    • Identifying Insight Assumptions and Unmet Customer Needs

    • Solution Ideation and Iteration

    • Final Deliverable with Mockups

  • Take the Initiative

    Be a proactive problem-solver and I will have the opportunity to acquire more support, resources, and critique to generate the right insights.

    Become a Team Player

    Effective Communication & Open to Critique

    Collaborating with an interdisciplinary team promotes innovative work but also requires team members’ effective communication to express and criticize ideas clearly.

    Be Confident to Speak out

    In my team of 4, I am the only female & international student. I practiced to be more confident when conveying my ideas during the meetings.

    Data Validation

    The data from our research is more important than our solutions. Our solution will change moving forward, but the foundation of insights will not.

    Ask Help as Innovation Work is Not Clear

    We will most likely get lost or overwhelmed, but we have great resources in the program. We are doing ourselves a disservice by not asking for help. Onramp is a supportive cohort pushing ideas forward.

  • Thinking back through the entire process, I think it could be better if we can ask more questions with our sponsor. Knowing their needs and constraints is equivalently important to meeting unmet customer needs.

To Explore More

Meet The Team —

  • Christian Lampasso

    PROGRAM COORDINATOR

  • Clay Scherer

    FINANCE + MARKETING

  • Toby Williams

    COMPUTER SCIENCE

  • Kenneth Trinh

    FINANCE + REAL ESTATE

  • Claire Lu

    FINANCE + ANALYTICS

OnRamp Process —

01 Exploration

Step #2 - Prepare for Data Gathering

• Asking questions – What do we not know? / What do we want to know?

• Identify target customers for outreach

• Build exploratory questionnaires

02 Identification

Step #3 - Interviewing

• Conduct 40+ interviews with the team

• Understand “what is going on here?”

• Uncover unique information

Step #4 - Data Mining

• Map out all information on Miro

• Identify trends and insights

• Create Unmet Customer Need to base solutions on

03 Ideate + Develop

Step #5 - Solution Ideation

• Lateral Generation of 100+ concepts

• How unique and out-of-the-box can I get?

• What will disrupt the status quo?

Step #6 - Business Modeling

• What components of each solution make sense?

• How do we create the most value for our sponsor?

• What product would customers actually use?

Step #1 - Immersion

• Select project + familiarize with Tasks

• Conduct an initial internet deep dive

• Discuss research with team to understand pathway forward

Corporate Innovation Pillars —

Performance Engines

- Companies are not innately built to innovate – Built to sustain the core business

- Make every activity repeatable + predictable

3 Horizons

- Incremental Improvement – Tweaks to the core business

- Adjacent Possibility – New asset + same customer // New customer + same asset

- Transformative – Concepts disruptive to the performance engine

OnRamp (Us)

- Identifying potential new business strategies

- Push the envelope + think differently

Our team’s Progress —

Review the Egg:

1. What do we think we know?

2. What should we test to see

3. What direction should we take?

4. What confuses us?

Conduct Personal Secondary Research:

1. Search the Web/Reddit/Tiktok

2. What are people saying?

3. What are interesting insights?

4. Save our sources

Teams of 4 students were formed based on our topic preferences

01 Brain Dump —

Hierarchy of Needs

Social

In what way do they want to be perceived by others while executing their jobs-to-be-done?

Emotional

How does our customer feel or want to feel while executing the functional job?

Functional

What underlying task does my customer want to achieve with my product or service?

Step 2: Jobs To Be Done = The Why

  • Customers often buy things because they find themselves with a problem they would like to solve.

  • With an understanding of the job for which customers find themselves hiring a product or service

  • Once I get clarity on why someone wants something, it makes it easier to create the right product.

Customer Discovery

01 Exploring interview Types

- What individuals will give us diverse information?

  • Different interview types will give us different sets of information

  • Interviewing multiple interview types will give us a more holistic view of the space

  • We must create different exploratory buckets to ask different questions

Business Model Innovation

Actionable Insights Needed to Move Forward:

  1. Identification of an unmet need of a large group

  2. Narrowing focus into a specific job-to-be-done that current solutions only include

  3. Development of a new technology to leverage or using existing technologies in new markets

Defining a Value Proposition

  • Industry – a group of proven business models around a definitive customer need

  • Value Proposition – the value a business promises to deliver to their customer

  • Business Leaders continuously evolve to provide value to the present consumer

Step 1: Identification of Unmet Customer Needs

What do the customer want?

=> They want a problem solved

=> A need to be fulfilled.

Product-oriented:

“I need an iPod to listen to music.”

(Focusing on a product)

Job-oriented:

“When I go running, I want to motivate myself and set my pace with some music.”

(Focusing on an outcome)

A potential customer + Our product =

The job our customer hopes to get done

(What our customers really want)

03 Where do we find other interviewees?

Internet Groups - Users

  • Reddit (Subreddits)

  • Facebook (Groups)

  • LinkedIn

  • Discord

  • Twitter (Search Tweets)

  • Various Forums

Ohio State

  • Students

  • Teachers

  • Alumni (LinkedIn)

Article Authors

  • Reach Out with Email

  • QUORA

  • Researchers

Unique Databases

Related / Start-Up Companies

02 Where to find target customers?

Target Customer: Watercolor Painters

  • OSU Watercolor Class List

  • Michael’s Watercolor Aisle

  • r/watercolor

Target Customer: Recent Break-ups

  • Valentine’s Day Locations

  • Dating App

  • Article about “How to handle a breakup”

Target Customer: Vinyl Collectors

  • Vinyl Stores

  • eBay or Online Vinyl Marketplace

  • Vinyl Facebook Groups

Target Customer: Adventurous People

  • Backpacking Trip 

  • College Clubs (not just OSU)

  • Rock Climbing Gym

Business Model Innovation

Customer Discovery

Our Team’s Progress —

Step 1: Brain Dump

1. Scheduled a secondary meeting

2. Discussed initial research with the Team

3. Developed 5 Interview Types

(Where will we find them? )

(What do we want to ask them?)

Step 2: Contact List

1. Created Contact List in Google Sheets Doc

2. Each member acquired 75-100 contacts

3. Brainstormed and divided customer lead routes

(Team Member #1 - Reddit/Discord/Twitter)

(Team Member #2 - Article Authors/Researchers)

Team’s Miro Research Collage was built

02 Questionnaire & Interviewing —

Open-ended Question

Long Answers

  • The best questions are those which elicit the longest answers

  • Do NOT ask questions that can be answered with one or two words unless it is necessary

  • “Tell me about” – an invitation for our interviewee to tell a story

Diving Deep

  • Trying to understand WHY someone answered the way they did

  • A deeper understanding comes from peeling back the layers of answers

    • Holistic Answer: For every question, I should attempt to dive deeper into smaller answers to get a more holistic answer.

    • Jobs-To-Be-Done: Have planned follow-up questions that are attempting to understand the Job-To-Be-Done (The Why)

  • “I listen to podcasts while I’m driving” – “What need do podcasts fulfill for you then?”

“What need does this fulfill?” - Example

01 What activities do you do in the car when you’re by yourself?

I pretty much only listen to music.

02 What need does music fulfill for you?

It helps me feel distracted

03 Why do you need to feel distracted?

It helps to pass the time and I feel less anxiety while I’m on autopilot

Sticking to the Script

Have a Flexible Interview

  • Be willing to make on-the-spot revisions to our protocol

  • The best pieces of information come from an undirected pathway – Always ask Why!

  • We have no idea what the interviewee is going to say

It’s Just A Conversation

  • Start with a light introduction and casual chit-chat

  • They agreed to the interview – Keep them talking while we are listening

  • If a question isn’t getting good answers in our questionnaire – Change it!

“The best interviews go off script to construct a holistic understanding.”

What are the functional, emotional, and social JTBD for these individuals?

Develop exploratory open-ended questions to allow customers to tell stories

Extra Helpful Information

Question Testing - How do we know if a good question is good or not?

  • Interview ourselves - Ask myself or teammates to answer the question as if an interview type

  • Make sure the question is framed for respondents to answer freely

  • Put me in the shoes of the interview type - Will they have the info I am looking for?

Tag Team Interviewing

  • Much easier to focus on the interview with two people

  • One asking questions while the other takes notes - Capture direct quotes

  • Note taker can listen and JTBD follow-up questions

Our Team’s Progress —

Step 1 : Questionnaire Build

1. Built separate questionnaires for interview types

2. Duplicated Template provided in Google Drive

(Demographic / Warm-up/ psychographic)

(Exploratory questions about concept space)

(What questions from our egg can be answered)

Step 2 : Outreach Week

1. Reached out to Interview Excel List

2. Stayed organized - who responds/who doesn’t

3. Scheduled Interviews for next 2.5 weeks

4. Developed outreach system with email templates

40+ Interviews with 15-30 min each

25+ Questions crafted for each group

03 Data Mining —

  • Given problem space to investigate from egg

  • General information gathered from interviews

  • Unique derived assumptions from data mining

  • An opportunity or problem that can be innovated on

Data Analysis Steps

02 - Data Learnings

Step #1: Data Organization

Take screenshots of questions and answers from Google Forms separated by Customer Type

Step #2: Data Learnings

Read through question answers and create post-its of our learnings from the data

  • Common Trends

  • Summary of Information

  • Interesting Facts

  • Specific Quotes

  • Highlight Outliers

03 - Insight Assumptions

Step #3: Answers to Tasks

COPY Data Learnings to begin an understanding to the questions from Tasks

  • Answers to Tasks

  • Locate Cluster Similarities

  • Interesting Conclusions

  • General Gathered Information

Step #4: Develop Insight Assumptions

Insight Assumptions are the strongest findings from our research

  • Starting Point for Solutions

  • Problems + Opportunities

  • Link Examples to Interviews

  • Assumptions not Facts

  • Can Focus on Negatives

01 - Tasks Setup

Example

01 Data Learnings:

  • Losing umbrellas is a worry

  • People forget to bring one if it’s raining

  • It’s not part of a normal routine

  • It’s hard to lug the umbrella around

Then we get…

02 Derived Insight Assumption:

We believe consumers don’t want to own an umbrella because they only want to use it when they need it.

Our research shows that other companies such as Bird & Lime have parallel services for renting when it comes to transportation.

Then we get…

03 Unmet Customer Need:

[Customer…(descriptive)] + [need (verb)] because [insight…(compelling)]

College students need a solution for quick and easy access to an umbrella because they do not wish to carry around an umbrella during their day

04 - Unmet Customer Needs

Step #5: Create Unmet Customer Needs

Where can we innovate?

  • Can Be Aggregate of Insights

  • Can Be A Single Insight

  • OK if a Solution Exists Already

  • Other Groups Will Build on This

In our Miro board, our tasks that were given to us from our egg are listed with extra additional space for ‘Other Insights’

Step #6: Research Support

Add Supporting Data + Secondary Research to Slides

Miro Analysis Process

Our Team’s Progress —

Data Mining + Insights Generation

1. Completed our final interviews

2. Completed our Data Mining Process

3. Each member generated 2 IA/UCNs that we wish to present on Insight Review Day

4. Communicated to the team on Miro about what insights we are investigating & critique

5. Used Google Drive template to finalize our Insights Review slide within the Deck

04 Insights Review —

Insights Review Day

  • Presentation of Insights Deck to Sponsor

  • Each member presented our IA/UCN

  • Discussed why we obtained these insights

  • Always refer to interviews and to our data

Goals of Insights Review

  • Update sponsor on research completed so far

  • Designate a Note Taker for P&G’s Discussion

  • Answer any questions we have for our sponsor

We are the experts of our project

  • They want to know what we’ve learned

  • It’s okay to not know something if we are prepared

  • Focus on the data and what we gathered

  • “Did your team research any information about…?” = “Our team did not gather info about that”

05 Solutionstorm —

Lateral Thinking

Break out of comfort zone of what I think is best and explore other possibilities to ensure better ideas are not missed or not explored.

  1. Never judge ideas

  2. Move away from fixed pattern recognition

  3. Focus on significant change

  4. Indirect approach using reasoning that is not immediately obvious

  5. Looking at problem from sides rather than head-on

  6. Seeks solution through untraditional methods

S-Curve of Innovation

McKinsey’s 3 Horizons of Growth

H1 (Incremental) – Continuous Improvement

  • Improving a single technology’s performance

  • Lower costs of operations and procedures

H2 (Adjacent) – Customer vs. Asset

  • Warp existing products into new usage

  • Moving products into adjacent markets

  • Capitalizing on a narrower unmet customer need

H3 (Disruptive) – Market Creating

  • New products are created under conditions of extreme uncertainty

  • Most promising ideas are those that are polarizing – Love it or Hate it

  • Ideas that cannibalize current products rarely come from inside a business

Innovation Work is Fuzzy

  • Do not need to know which Horizon a solution fits

  • This is just a model for us to start thinking differently

  • Use this framework to think for the near/far future

Be Creative & Think Big!

  • Build a vision for how our unmet customer need can be solved without legacy

  • Feasibility is not our job at the current moment

  • How can our sponsoring company integrate our insights to build a new market？

Vertical vs. Lateral

“Lateral Generation is not about creating a great idea. It’s creating a lot different ideas.”

Lateral Thinking Skills

Alternatives

What could be a different component of our problem that could be attacked to generate a new result?

Challenge

Identify and break free from traditional methods by proposing unorthodox and less efficient methods

Focus

Instead of trying for the best solution, direct our focus to generate concepts from fresh unexplored areas

Random Entry

Utilize random input to open new lines of thinking. Find relations with seemly unrelated things to provide new value

innovationmanagement.se

What happens if we identify:

   - A new technology?

   - A different unmet customer need?

   - A new type of customer?

Solutionstorm Workshop

  • 1hr Workshop with entire OnRamp Cohort

  • All teams will have an Ideation Station on a Miro Board

  • Every 20m randomized breakout groups will ideate inside each section

Why vs. How

Why questions were used to gather deep insights in our investigative wandering to unwind customers’ true needs.

How questions are used to provoke ideation and the consideration of different solutions to revolve an insight.

Our Team’s Progress —

Step 1: Build Solutionstorm Station

1. Each member created our own solutionstorm station inside Miro Board:

(Background / IA + UCN / How Statements / Catalyst Questions)

2. 5 preliminary ideas (per team member) inside the station

3. Develop a “Growth Mindset Environment” for others

Step 3: Solutions Mapping

1. Copy & Paste “Ideation Station” back to Miro Board

2. Group Post-its together with like-minded thoughts

3. Begin to develop solutions for MVPs

Step 2: Three 15-minute sessions with other teams

1. Station Member acted as facilitator

2. Briefly discussed project - less than a minute

3. Ask questions to group members as they work

(Clarify / Dig Deeper / Ideate / Build on Thoughts)

4. Answer any questions group members might have

Create as much content as possible

· Startups and similar concepts

· Potential partners & acquisitions

· Add pics and prototypes from Google

06 Concept Development —

Build Concept Canvas

Strategy Mechanism

“Be creative in our approach to our business implementation”

Borrow / Build / Buy

  • Not all solutions need to be built from scratch

  • P&G as a company can make strategic moves to partner with others

  • Acquire existing companies to obtain their final goal

Difference in Strategy

  • P&G spending 3 years and $500M to develop a meditation app from scratch?

  • P&G purchasing Headspace for 1.5B with 70 million current users?

Value Add

What is your compelling argument?

  • Why should your sponsor get your ideas into their innovation pipeline?

  • Be explicit about what you’re trying to achieve

  • How can we add value to our sponsoring company?

Revenue Generators

Standalone product generates money through business model

Customer Generators

Attracting a new type of customer to sponsor

Insight Generators

Understand new & emerging customer needs

Visualization

Goals of Visualization

  • Focus on understanding the customer journey through our idea

  • Help to define what our proposal could look like

  • What aspects of the idea might be difficult or impossible to implement

Visualization Delivery

  • Prefer concept visualization is delivered through a prototype – Not always possible

  • Reference pictures can be for building a visualization

  • Take time to research the correct photos – This will not be our first google search

Branding

Naming – Namelix

  • Type in keywords related to your concept

  • Search through the list of generated

  • Change keywords as you go

  • Make sure to scroll down far enough!

Logo – Looka

  • Sign up for a free account

  • Walkthrough initial logo creator prompts

  • Edit your logo using the edit functions

  • Do not get sucked into making it perfect

Create MVP Statement

Minimal Value Proposition:

<Concept Name> would like to address the <UCN/IA> for <Customer> resulting in <Objective or Goal> by providing <Solution> via <Strategy Mechanism (Build/Borrow/Buy) + (App/Service/Product)>

Uber Example:

<Uber> would like to address the <current over-priced taxi space> for <individuals between the age of 18-45> resulting in <quick and easy transportation> by providing <a service where anyone with a car can become a taxi driver> via <building a standalone ride-hailing app>.

Our Team’s Progress —

02 Concept Canvas

1. Used feedback from the internal meeting to develop final concepts

2. Build out Concept Canvas on Miro

3. Focused on creating a compelling argument of innovation for sponsor

Internal OnRamp MVP Presentations were hosted

03 Visualization + Branding

1. Used any technique available to create a prototype / visualization (Reference pics if not work)

2. Went to Namelix + Looka to finalize our concept

01 Internal OnRamp MVP Presentations

2 Breakout Room Discussion on concepts and builds for Strategy Execution

Each Team Member developed a Slide for their Concept

· Conduct Research on our identified MVP to develop it into a viable concept

· MVP Statement / Core Features / Key Assumptions / Competitive Analysis / Catalyst question

· This is a starting point for a concept so it’s okay for it to be messy - The cohort will help!

07 Deliverable Creation —

Deck Structure

02 Research Summary

i. Interview Tactics

  • How many people did we interview?

  • Where did we find them?

  • What are some of the best questions asked?

ii. Insight Assumptions

  • Teach our audience what we learned

  • Provide concise valuable information

  • Do we have secondary data?

iii. Unmet Customer Needs

  • Focus on IA + UCN that relate to our solutions

  • Do NOT pack a ton of information on one side

  • Convince audience this is a problem to fix

03 Proposed Solutions

i. What is our Solution?

  • No MVP Statements

  • Use this slide to WOW the audience

  • What IA + UCN was this built from?

ii. How Does it Work? – Visualization

  • What are the core features?

  • What would this look like if it existed?

  • Walk the audience through a journey

iii. Why Is It Important? – Strategy / Value Add

  • Why should the company invest in this?

  • How will this make money?

  • What are the costs associated with execution?

  • Are there intangible value adds?

  • Are there major risks involved?

Presentation Details

Building the Deck

  • Refrain from changing template structure

  • Do not mash 10 points on one slide – Separate them out

  • Presentations are 15 – 20 minutes

Deck Content

  • Assume the audience has never heard of our project

  • Teach what we have learned from research

  • Always refer to data of WHY we have our final concept

01 Team Intro

02 Research Summary

03 Proposed Solutions

04 Appendix

Context & Overview Slides Required

Individual Concept Refinement

  1. Worked on our individual slides - formatting + talking points

  2. Went to Zoom and recorded a draft mock presentation of our own section (5min)

  3. Submitted our recordings in team’s Basecamp by Sunday

  4. Our coordinator reviewed all content and uploaded his notes and changes

Workshop - Draft Creation & Task Assignment

  1. Worked with our team to organize the slide deck

  2. Each member selected which section we wished to present

  3. Followed the slide creation system from the workshop’s PPTX

  4. Attached screenshots of Miro Boards / Concept Canvas / Insights Review as Appendix

“The above is the accumulation of all the work we have done in the past 9 weeks!”

Final Presentation

  • Dress Code: Smart Casual

  • 20 Min Presentation + 20 Min Q&A

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