Oftentimes, innovating means creating disruptive processes. And, in these moments, many companies are afraid of losing the predictability of the market and its metrics. If, on the one hand, innovation requires companies and people to transform their ways of functioning, innovating must be an action like any other business process, that is, can (and should) be measured and controlled like any other company process.

Therefore, a systematic method is needed to generate innovation, monitor the stages of the projects and measure their success or failure based on real facts. That is, as much as your company is immersed in an innovation environment, the minimum it needs to have is a tool that allows the mapping of the initiatives that are being developed and the stage of each one of them.

ACE follows a model of innovation funnel that includes well-established steps and helps entrepreneurs to have metrics for minimal predictability. Building these funnels allows you to see an overview of all the initiatives together, which the entrepreneur can look at and make decisions.

>>Also read: What pain does your product solve?

Another advantage of using the tool is to check if the company has a sufficient number of innovation initiatives that can bring the return expected by investors, if this is the case for your business. Know each of the steps of the ACE model:

Ideation - Everything starts scanning opportunities and generating business ideas. These assumptions can be based on the day-to-day life of company employees, what they have heard from customers or what the competition is doing. From the ideation an experiment is conceptualized, which must be evaluated.

Experiments - Here ideas take shape and saw real tests done with customers through a minimum viable product - MVP (Minimum Viable Product). The idea is to have the smallest investment possible to test the business before making large investments. AND the results need to justify the next investments, therefore, it is necessary to check if the experiment was actually used by potential customers and what was their assessment of what the company delivered.

Product - With the experiment validated, the stage of creation of products or services in simplified versions, for a new stage of customer testing and evaluation.

Traction - It is time to expose the product to a larger number of people. This will allow companies to have more advanced product usage metrics. Here it is possible to measure progress by user feedback.

Scale - Time to perfect the project and decide how the product will be delivered. Progress here can now be measured by concrete financial results.