Innovation Within- Onboarding Guide

What This Platform Is

Innovation Within is a structured system for conducting disciplined customer discovery.

It helps you:

• Make your assumptions explicit
• Design interviews intentionally
• Capture conversations accurately
• Extract evidence systematically
• Track how evidence informs your thinking

Customer discovery is not about pitching your idea.

It is about testing the claims your idea depends on.

The Core Logic

Everything in the platform follows a simple chain:

1. A problem exists.
2. Solving it creates value.
3. That value matters to specific people.
4. Interviews generate evidence.
5. Evidence informs hypotheses.
6. Humans decide what holds and what changes.

The system makes this reasoning visible and traceable.

Step 1: Build Your Canvas

Open your Canvas and switch to the Skinny View.

Focus first on three sections:

• Problem
• Value Propositions
• Customer Segments

1. Problem

Add multiple problem hypotheses.

Each problem hypothesis should:

• Describe an observable condition in the real world.
• Avoid solution language.
• Be clear enough to explore through conversation.

Ask yourself:

• Could someone reasonably disagree with this?
• Could I gather evidence about this in an interview?

2. Value Propositions

For each problem hypothesis, write one or more value proposition hypotheses.

These describe the value delivered to the customer when the problem is solved.

Focus on outcomes, not features.

Ask:

• What improves?
• What becomes easier, faster, safer, or more effective?
• Why does that change matter?

3. Customer Segments

Identify who specifically experiences the problem.

Be precise.

Instead of:

“Students”

Write:

“First-generation engineering students at large public universities.”

Specificity improves interview quality.

→Link: “Canvas Overview”

Step 2: Design Interview Templates

Interviews are structured conversations.

Create an interview template for each relevant customer segment.

Strong interview questions:

• Are open-ended, inviting participants to tell their story.
• Explore past behavior
• Avoid leading language
• Avoid explaining your solution too early
• Encourage specific examples

After drafting your template, ask:

Which hypothesis is this question exploring?

If the connection is unclear, refine the question.

→Link: “How to Create Interview Templates”

Step 3: Prepare and Capture Interviews

Before conducting interviews:

1. Connect your Google or Outlook calendar (read-only access).

   Choose how interviews will be recorded:

   • Use the meeting assistant, or
   • Use Zoom cloud recording.

You can configure the system to:

• Join specific meetings
• Join all meetings with a web conference link
• Join meetings that contain specific keywords

When scheduling an interview:

• Create the interview in the platform.
• Enter the interviewee’s name.
• Select the appropriate interview template.

This ensures:

• Questions appear automatically in your notes.
• You can check them off during the interview.
• Notes and transcript remain attached.

If the interview was not created ahead of time, you can still select the template when opening it.

→Link: “How to Connect Calendar and Configure Meeting Assistant”

Step 4: Extract Insights

After each interview:

• Review your notes and transcript.
• Identify meaningful statements.
• Create insights.

An insight begins with specific evidence.

To create one:

1. Select text from your notes or transcript.
2. The Insights panel activates.
3. Link the insight to one or more hypotheses.
4. Indicate whether it supports or does not support the hypothesis.
5. Add a brief comment if helpful.
6. Tag themes.
7. Assign priority.
8. Save.

This separates observation from interpretation.

→ Link:”What Is an Insight and Why It Matters"

Step 5: Review Evidence at the Hypothesis Level

Each hypothesis shows how many insights are linked to it.

Click the indicator to review:

• All related insights
• Supporting or non-supporting evidence
• Quotes and comments
• Audio playback
• Source interview

After reviewing all linked evidence, you may:

• Validate the hypothesis
• Invalidate it
• Leave it undecided

The system organizes the evidence.

You make the decision.

→ Link: “How to Review Linked Insights and Validate Hypotheses”

Review Insights Across Interviews

Use the Insights View to:

• Sort insights
• Search by tags
• Filter by priority
• Compare across interviews

Patterns emerge through accumulation.

Avoid drawing conclusions from a single conversation.

Best Practices

• Record every interview.
• Extract insights soon after conversations.
• Link evidence carefully.
• Review hypotheses regularly.
• Look for patterns before making decisions.

What Success Looks Like

You should be able to:

• Trace each conclusion back to specific evidence.
• Show how your thinking evolved.
• Explain why a hypothesis was validated or revised.

If you can do that, you are conducting disciplined customer discovery.