Ian McAllister, a former director at Amazon, has described in a blog post on Quora how the company uses a similar tool to Future Back to infuse innovation processes. Through the “Working Backward” approach, employees who have ideas for new products or services are asked to write a press release. In most companies, a press release is written when a product is ready to hit the markets. Amazon turns this around. In their press release, the employee must describe the problem they identified, explain how existing solutions aren’t good enough, and how this new solution would benefit customers.
Written in a language that is both convincing and simple for customers to understand, the press release is then shared internally. This process forces the employee to focus and flesh out the…
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I by IMD (Digital) - 1 Issue, 11. September 2023