Please don’t hesitate to weigh in with some Constructive criticism if you see any opportunities for improvement.

There are numerous examples of fantastic thinking and great execution that are not rewarded by the market or recognized as innovative by the masses. Those market failures aren’t an indictment of good design or innovation, they just illustrate that it takes more than that. What the Balanced Breakthrough model attempts to do is put a set of repeatable patterns into a designer’s hands that looks at all the variables that often drive the success of new products and services.

This idea is neatly summed up in Chapter 2 as “context is king” and once one understands that context is the starting point the tools and methods that can go beyond simple marketing research can be snapped into place to start deriving insights around desirability and the discovery of latent needs–or the things many people may indeed fall in love with but have no idea that they really desire or need them. Nobody ever asked for Uber, Airbnb, or Keurig. The inventors of those products and services had to manifest them through hard work and creative thinking. The Balanced Breakthrough model gives you the right patterns to start the innovation process poised for success.

Let me try to give some examples, for each category, on how I would consider time in looking at each questions.

People:
Simply put, it is the balance between how long it take for one individual to be proficient in the required skills/technologies/… vs. the turn over, difficulty or hiring, …
I personally experienced the situation in India, hiring people to work on smart card (a competence you only grown in house or hire from competition) during a time where 30+ % turn over and 30+ % yearly salary increases were quite common, making it impossible to run a team in a sustainable way.

Business:
In evaluating the competition, some estimates have to de made on the speed the competition is moving. Are we skating where the ball/puck is, or where it is going to be when we get there?
When evaluating a business model, one must take into account the price erosion of products, price changes (both up or down) of material, components, … which mean a business model might not be viable long enough to make it interesting enough

Technology:
No matter which way the technical capabilities are sourced ((in house, acquisition, licensing, …) there is a time component to it. For example, if the choice would be to acquire a company for it’s technology and competence I would raise the questions “How long will acquisition and integration take?”, “How long before we can integrate their technology into our product, platform, … ?”, “Are those time compatible with the business and people side we identified?”

In short is the time component compatible with the balanced aspect or is it reinforcing the balance or throwing us out of balance?

Can you help me better understand what you mean by time in the comment above? I can understand how timing is very important in People, Business, and Tech, but I think you’re talking about something different. As someone new to the design and innovation world, I’m having trouble grasping the concept.

I feel each sets of 3 questions are very appropriate and help scope/define the 3 elements of the framework. I am a deep advocate of more examples, so I would be happy so see more of them here.

About adding sustainability:
The element missing (or not clear enough through current version), for each 3 (People, Business, Tech) is _time_ How does time affects those questions, the answers to those, … An innovation can be sustained through a long time, but it can also be short lived and a 1 shot as long as it can be done with limited investment, existing technology and guaranteed return.
Therefore I would add time or sustainability, not as a 4th element, but as a key item for each 3 elements of the framework.

One final comment would be about illustrating how those 3 aspects and sustainability (or time) can be balanced in successful way and showing some failures as well (where each element individually was research well but the balance was wrong)

For me, a great strategy book helps me see familiar stories or examples in a new way and makes me feel like I can’t wait to read more.

The best example I can think of is the Richard Rumelt book you gave me. Even in the introduction, when all he’s doing is explaining why he’s written the book, he hits you with the Stormin’ Norman gulf war story and you’re hooked. It makes it hard to put down.

Now I’m going to be a bit cheeky… There’s a project that we’re both familiar with that failed on each of these three issues individually and, inevitably, jointly. I think you should use or hint at that. A good disaster like that should get anyone hooked

It also occured to me that in the tech part you could refer to the hype curve. I saw an MIT lecture by Jack Schultz in which he said that Berg are most interested in technologies in the dip (cheap and boring). Might be a fun way for people to start thinking about tech.