Nordstrom’s Innovation Lab Link to heading

Empathy Link to heading

  • Open-ended Questioning - avoid yes/no answers
  • Why? Tell me more - dig beneath surface
  • Deep Listening - understand before responding
  • Back-to-Back Listening - one talks uninterrupted
  • Emotional Response Profile - map user feelings
  • Emotional Check-in - team psychological safety

Frameworks Link to heading

  • Business Model Canvas - 9-block business design
  • Lean Canvas - problem/solution focused variant
  • Rainforest Canvas - ecosystem mapping
  • Value Proposition Canvas - product/market fit
  • Jobs To Be Done - motivations over demographics
  • Journey Mapping - experience over time
  • Personae/ProtoPersona - user archetypes
  • OKRs - objectives and key results

Prioritization Link to heading

  • 2x2 Grid - effort/impact matrices
  • RICE - reach, impact, confidence, effort
  • Pirate Metrics (AARRR) - acquisition through referral
  • One Metric That Matters - focus metric
  • Dot Voting - democratic selection

Methodologies Link to heading

  • Agile - iterative, adaptive development
  • Lean Startup - build-measure-learn cycles
  • Design Thinking - empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test
  • Kaizen - continuous incremental improvement
  • Kanban - visualize flow, limit WIP
  • Triz - 40 inventive principles
  • Systematic Inventive Thinking - structured creativity
  • Synectics - analogy-based solving

Validation Link to heading

  • User Stories - role, feature, benefit
  • Concierge MVP - manual before automation
  • Wizard of Oz - fake backend, real frontend
  • Smoke Test - measure demand first
  • A/B Testing - compare variants
  • Five Second Test - first impressions
  • Usability Testing - observe struggles
  • Pre-mortem - imagine failure, mitigate

Development Practices Link to heading

  • Test Driven Development - test first, code second
  • Pairing - two people, one keyboard
  • Continuous Integration - merge frequently
  • Make Work Visible - use boards
  • Time Boxing - fixed duration, flexible scope
  • WIP Limits - constrain concurrent work

Rituals Link to heading

  • Daily Standup - yesterday, today, blockers
  • Weekly Retrospectives - worked, didn’t, experiments
  • Show + Tell - demo to stakeholders
  • Lean Coffee - agenda-less structured discussion
  • Sprint Planning - commit to scope

Facilitation Link to heading

  • Auditions - quick concept tests
  • Stop/Start/More/Less/Continue - feedback framework
  • Silent Brainstorming - write before discussing
  • Affinity Mapping - group into themes
  • Rose/Bud/Thorn - positive, potential, problems
  • Flexible Work Spaces - reconfigure for mode

Reading Link to heading

Methodology: Lean Startup (Ries), Small Bets (Sims), Sprint (Knapp), Continuous Discovery Habits (Torres)
Innovation: The Innovators Dilemma (Christensen), Innovators DNA (Dyer)
Culture: Orbiting the Giant Hairball (MacKenzie), The Toyota Way (Liker)
Practice: GameStorming (Gray), Making Work Visible (Benson)
Personal: StrengthsFinder (Rath)

Additions Link to heading

Anti-Patterns (what kills innovation) Link to heading

  • Analysis Paralysis - research without building
  • Feature Factory - shipping without learning
  • HiPPO Decisions - highest paid person’s opinion wins
  • Perfection Theater - polished decks over rough prototypes
  • Sunk Cost Fallacy - continuing failed experiments
  • Innovation Theater - process without outcomes
  • Stakeholder Whack-a-Mole - seeking universal approval
  • Solution Attachment - falling in love with first idea
  • Metric Vanity - tracking numbers that don’t matter
  • Comfort Zone Camping - avoiding customer contact

Remote Adaptations Link to heading

Async-friendly:

  • All frameworks (Miro, FigJam, Notion)
  • Silent Brainstorming, Affinity Mapping, Dot Voting
  • Five Second Test, Smoke Test, A/B Testing
  • Lean Coffee, Retrospectives (with discipline)

Requires adaptation:

  • Daily Standup - needs camera-on discipline
  • Show + Tell - pre-record option reduces engagement
  • Journey Mapping - harder to collaborate live
  • Pairing - possible but friction, use VS Code Live Share

Avoid remote:

  • Back-to-Back Listening - needs physical presence
  • Flexible Work Spaces - inherently physical
  • Auditions - rapport harder to build

Modern Essentials Link to heading

  • Lightning Decision Jam - 90-min structured problem solving
  • Assumption Mapping - risk/knowledge quadrant for experiments
  • North Star Metric - long-term product success indicator
  • Continuous Discovery - weekly customer contact minimum
  • Dual-Track Agile - parallel discovery and delivery
  • Opportunity Solution Tree - connect outcomes to solutions
  • Story Mapping - visualize user flow and prioritize releases
  • Impact Mapping - connect activities to business goals
  • Kano Model - classify features by satisfaction impact
  • Wardley Mapping - visualize value chain evolution

When to Use What Link to heading

Problem unclear: Empathy methods → JTBD → Journey Mapping
Solution unclear: Design Thinking → Lightning Decision Jam → Assumption Mapping
Validation needed: Smoke Test → Concierge MVP → Wizard of Oz → A/B Test
Team forming: Emotional Check-in → StrengthsFinder → Retrospectives
Scaling: Kanban → OKRs → North Star Metric → Continuous Discovery