3 Ways the New Productable Accelerates Innovation

Removing battery cells from cargo aircrafts used to be dangerous—but in 2020, Senior Master Sgt. Robert Tingle and his team designed a battery extraction prototype that changed the game. With support from Productable, the team was able to validate their concept and use funding awarded at Spark Tank to acquire a 3D printer. From there, they secured the equipment necessary to scale their Battery Cell Extraction solution to multiple C-17, C-5, KC-46 and C-37 aircraft.

Tingle’s Battery Cell Extraction Tool project is just one example of the many exciting opportunities Productable has had to accelerate Air Force innovation. Funded by SBIR and SAF/MG, one of the goals for our contract is to digitize the innovation management process, making it repeatable and more approachable.  

“It wasn’t until Productable stepped in that we were able to get it moving in the right direction again. Their process gave us the ability to identify barriers, communicate those back up to leadership and make the requests we needed to go from problem to pilot and eventually to scale.” - Senior Master Sgt. Robert Tingle

Over the last two years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of innovators, including Spark Tank finalists and participants in the Holodeck Accelerator, a program we launched  to help Air Force innovators move projects from concept to scale. Innovators use our patent-pending methodology to advance their concepts, learn innovation best practices through hands-on workshops and activities, and receive direct feedback from decision-makers and peers.

Now, we’re excited to introduce the next iteration of our innovation platform. In just four months, our new R&D team (more to come on this in the future!), including engineers from Google, Disney, Microsoft and Intercom, has moved Productable from a no-code solution to a proprietary application deployed to AWS GovCloud through Second Front. With our new and improved software, innovators across the Air Force and beyond will have the systems they need to overcome bureaucracy and drive innovation outcomes.

What’s different about the new Productable?

Too many tools ask innovators to choose between idea generation and execution. Either you’re stuck in the clouds, brainstorming possibilities without validating them, or you’re stuck in the weeds, tracking tasks and dependencies that may not connect to your organization’s goals. Productable is here to change that. Our redesigned innovation management platform brings strategy and execution together at every stage of the innovation process, so you can move projects from concept to outcomes faster than ever before.

If you’re familiar with Project Holodeck, you’ve experienced the no-code version of our platform—but we’ve made some updates to create a smoother innovation management experience for you and your teammates. Here’s what’s new:

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Know what success looks like at every stage of the innovation process.

How: Productable’s five default innovation stages—Value, Concept, Validate, Pilot and Scale—make it easy to mature projects over time, without over-investing in half baked ideas. Plus, stage-specific decision criteria keep the whole team aligned on the progress innovators need to show in order to earn more funding.

So what? Innovation shouldn’t be a shot in the dark. By making expectations visible, Productable helps innovators spend less time guessing what leaders need from them and more time building solutions.

Leverage structured reports for smarter, faster investment decisions.

How: When innovators make progress on a project, stage-specific reports in Productable help them make their case for advancing to the next stage of funding. In these reports, innovators share evidence of progress, plus confidence scores that summarize how sure they are of their answers. Leaders can review those reports in Productable to assess the maturity level of innovation projects and decide which ones to pause and which ones to fund.

So what? If you want to build a winning innovation program, data-driven decisions are the name of the game. When leaders use objective information to determine which innovation projects are showing real traction, they’re able to direct money and manpower to the ideas that are most likely to achieve desired outcomes.

Get help with innovation barriers anytime, anywhere.

How: With barrier escalation tools in Productable, innovators can ask for help from leaders and subject matter experts when they need it. Then, leaders can review and resolve all barriers in one place to keep multiple innovation projects progressing at the same time.

So what? When innovation leaders have visibility into where and how to help, projects are more likely to cross the Valley of Death and drive real outcomes for your organization.

This is only the beginning!

We’re jazzed about the new Productable—but we’re just getting started. In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out more and more capabilities that focus on helping innovators build their concepts quickly and getting decision makers the data they need to make faster resourcing decisions. 

New to Productable? Schedule a demo to learn the ins and outs of our innovation management platform.

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