Bruysten Partners
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← The Progress Engine

Innovation

We build
originals.

Innovation that could only have come from you — and that the market understands in three seconds. Not a better version of what everyone already has. Something only your organisation could have made.

The fit

From a brilliant idea to a perfect fit.

Almost every idea fails one of three tests. Make all three fit at the same time and you no longer have a product. You have an original.

Switch one off — and watch the original turn ordinary.

3/3 fits

An original

Hard to copy, easy to understand, impossible to ignore.

A bet

Strategically elegant, perfectly timed — and nobody is waiting for it.

A niche

Genuinely yours, genuinely useful. Too small, too early or too late to matter.

A commodity

Real demand, right moment — and anyone can build it. Your competitor included.

A hobby

Very much you. Nobody asked.

A trend

You are following. Someone else is setting the pace.

A feature

Useful. And copied by Friday.

An idea

Everything starts here. Nothing survives here.

The navigation

Four controls.
One innovation system.

Four controls, four ways in. Press one — or run the whole path, from your essence all the way into the market.

Rewind

Where you come from

Roots, history, patterns. We free the essence a credible innovation can grow out of.

Diagnostic of the Innovation Essence · Historicity

Pause

What only you can do

We pull it into focus: the un-copyable core, the market, and the future picture everything runs towards.

Essence Lab · Scenarios

Play

What you build

The creative phase: methods, play, prototypes — and the customer as the test, never as an assumption.

Innovation Hackathon · Simulation

Fast Forward

How fast it lands

Acceleration and leap innovation. Fast, not frantic: speed with your balance held.

Leap Sprint · Always-on

The same four controls drive the Progress Engine. Innovation is what happens when you run them in order.

The four modes in full

Pause · Mode 02

This is how innovation lasts.

Five links between the future picture and the market. Each one is a real artefact — and each one is a place where innovation quietly dies when it is missing.

The innovation

  1. 01

    Future Picture

    The north star and the frame for every innovation: the picture everything runs towards, with its scenarios and the principles that hold along the way.

    inspiredThe idea comes out of the future picture, not out of chance.

  2. 02

    Innovation Paths

    Alternative routes to that picture — costed and comparable. Every route driven makes the next one faster.

    guidedThe route is chosen — out of several we already know.

  3. 03

    Target Pictures

    Here it gets concrete: targets, value, time window, roadmap, KPIs. Black on white.

    provenIt has to deliver before budget flows.

  4. 04

    Initiatives

    The projects and measures that turn target pictures into reality — and prepare the market entry.

    deliveredA decision becomes a project: team, budget, cadence.

  5. 05

    Activation

    The innovation reaches the market. Activation closes the gap between idea, prototype, product and customer.

    in the marketOnly the customer decides whether it was innovation.

Horizon: Outlook Cadence: Now

Every link is a living object: versioned, tied to the scenarios that justify it, re-checked whenever the world moves.

Run it continuously with Phoenix The Future Journey

Play · Mode 03

The whole canon. And nine instruments you will only find here.

We know the standard toolkit. We use it, every day. And where the standard toolkit stops, we built our own.

The canonBreadth

  • KPI
  • OKR
  • Business Model Canvas
  • Value Proposition Canvas
  • Red Teaming
  • SWOT
  • Blue Ocean
  • Kano
  • User Stories
  • Paper Prototypes
  • Wireframes & Flow
  • Customer Journeys
  • Customer Journey Map
  • Experience Map
  • Empathy Map
  • Service Blueprints
  • Double Diamond
  • Testing
  • Focus Groups
  • Surveys
  • Interviews
  • Desk Research
  • Overton Window
  • Future Shock Level

… and more

Our own instrumentsDepth

  • Diagnostic of the Innovation Essence
  • Phoenix
  • Simulation
  • Innovation Hackathon
  • Requirements Analytics
  • Data Business & Culture
  • Digital Landscape Analytics
  • Systematic Customer Analysis
  • Governance Diagnostic

For every question we pick the instrument that makes the answer testable fastest.

The result

At the end there is an original.

  1. Hard to copy and easy to understand
  2. Unmistakably yours and indispensable to the customer
  3. A leap, not an update and usable from Monday

Either side on its own is easy. The AND is the work.

And it holds. See the proof.

The foundation

What survives this, holds.

Before a single euro moves, an original has to pass the hardest test strategy research has: does the advantage actually last?

Strategy TripodThree perspectives on success

  • Resource-based viewWhat this company has and can do — and nobody else. Essence
  • Industry-based viewHow hard the competition in the field is — forces, dynamics, windows. Market
  • Institution-based viewWhich rules, norms and cultures apply — formal and informal. Customer

The tripod explains competition. It does not explain why a human buys. That is why our third corner is the customer — not the industry.

VRIOThe test of whether an advantage lasts

  • ValueDoes it create value?
  • RarityIs it rare?
  • ImitabilityCan it be copied?
  • OrganizationIs it anchored?

An original is the only advantage nobody catches up with.

Valuable, rare, hard to imitate, anchored in the organisation. Those four only occur together when innovation comes out of your own essence — never out of a benchmark.

Strategy Tripod after Peng · VRIO after Barney. From: Global Strategic Analysis, Prof. Tim Bruysten, 2023. Our research

The way in

Where do you want to start?

Three doors into the same system. Walk through whichever one fits your moment — behind all three sits the same engine.

Two days. Twelve steps. One run.

One bold idea — validated, mapped onto the market, made fundable. A concentrated format, and a concrete plan at the end of it.

Day 1Day 2

  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03
  4. 04
  5. 05
  6. 06
  7. 07
  8. 08
  9. 09
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  1. 01–03 Essence Where does this organisation come from, and what can only it do?
  2. 04–06 Outlook Which futures are plausible, and which window is open?
  3. 07–09 Idea This is exactly where the innovation happens: perspective shift, simulation, selection.
  4. 10–12 Market Prototype out of the hackathon, business model canvas, business case.
Format
Workshop with one cross-functional team
Duration
2 days
You leave with
A validated idea, a prototype, a business model canvas and a business case
Talk about a Roadmap