Nordstrom dissects an innovation project that fizzled

If you want to get jazzed about how the lean startup methodology can be practiced in the real world, have a look at this high-energy video posted by the Nordstrom Innovation Lab. It shows what happened when a project team conducted the “world’s first flash build” inside Nordstrom’s flagship store in Seattle, creating an iPad app for sunglass shoppers over the course of a week, while working in the sunglass department with customers and salespeople. They collected feedback as they went along. They created “user story maps” and paper prototypes.

Sooooo cool. And at the end of the video, the sunglass department manager says, “I think that it’s going to be really easy to be able to implement into our sale, and I think that we’re going to find a lot of success with the application.”

But the app didn’t get adopted by salespeople. More on that after the video.

Marius Grigoriu, manager of the 15-person Nordstrom Innovation Lab, showed the video above earlier this week at the DMI’s Design Leadership Conference. He explained what happened after the innovation team left the new app with the sunglass salespeople: