FORWARD | Innovation Engineering
For heads of innovation who must deliver value in the next 12 months.
Stop pushing technology. Start pulling demand.
We help industrial companies build products the market actually wants.
Across 45+ programs with industrial leaders:
Discovery
3,200+
customer interviews conducted
Validation
100+
prototypes tested within 6 weeks
Execution
45+
initiatives brought to market
Capability
500+
employees innovating
Active Installations
We don't run workshops and leave. We embed with your team until the project reaches the market — or we kill it together.
Methodology
The method.
From first customer interview to market launch.
Discover Real Customer Demand
Talk to customers. Understand their pain. Validate that a real problem exists before investing in solutions.
Decide What to Fund or Kill
Use evidence to allocate resources. Fund what's working. Kill what isn't. No more zombie projects.
Build, Test, and Validate
Run rapid experiments. Stress-test assumptions across desirability, feasibility, and viability before scaling.
Proof of Impact
Beyond the tools and methodology, Forward taught us how to think and work like entrepreneurs.
— Ivan Ollivier, Innovation Lab Director, Nissan Europe
We appreciated Forward's expertise in innovation management, which we didn't find with our other partners.
— Allianz Trade
The confrontation with the reality of the passenger was an eye-opener. Meeting customers and understanding their needs is something we never did before.
— Lagardère Travel Retail, Digital Team
System Upgrade
From push to pull.
The shift from technology-push to market-pull changes how your organisation operates at every level.
Every project gets funded because nobody wants to say no.
A governed pipeline where only projects with customer evidence get resources.
Engineering builds what it thinks is clever. Sales tries to sell it afterwards.
Teams validate demand before committing engineering resources.
Innovation is a side project someone runs when they have time.
A structured process that runs in parallel with core operations.
Customer feedback arrives after launch — usually as complaints.
Customer evidence is collected before a single spec is written.
Killing a project feels like admitting failure.
Killing a project early is celebrated as capital saved.
The innovation team operates in a bubble. The rest of the company ignores it.
Innovation capability is embedded in how product teams work every day.
Core Modules
Visible impact.
We run projects. Those projects create results. Over time, those results change how the organization decides what to build.
Faster from decision to market
We compress the gap between strategic ambition and first commercial revenue.
Market Certainty
We replace boardroom assumptions with direct customer evidence — interviews, prototype tests, live signals — before your engineering team commits to a specification.
Teams that execute without constant escalation
Remove leadership bottlenecks. We build teams with clear decision rights so your organisation can move without everything escalating to the top.
Less budget on the wrong bets
Stop funding 'zombie projects.' We install a simple governance threshold: if a project can't show customer traction by a defined milestone, it stops — freeing budget for the ones that can.
The Architect
Innovation Coach & System Designer.
"I measure success the same way my clients do: does this new product have paying customers? If not, nothing else matters.
The goal isn't to run one successful project. It's to leave your teams capable of running the next one without us.
At some point in every engagement, the team stops asking for permission to kill a bad idea. That's the real turning point. When they can do this without me, the engagement has succeeded."
How it works in practice
A typical engagement lasts 12 weeks. We embed with your team — not as observers, but as operators. The work starts with customer interviews and ends with validated concepts and a funded roadmap. Your team runs the process with us. By the end, they can run it without us.
System Requirements
Prerequisites for Engagement.
We only work with teams whose survival depends on delivering business impact. Before we engage, we look for:
Executive sponsorship
A senior leader who owns the outcome, not just the budget.
A real project at stake
Not a training exercise, but a product or strategy that needs to reach the market.
Willingness to talk to customers
Teams that will get out of the building and confront assumptions with evidence.
Commitment to act on what they learn
Including killing projects that don't have market pull.
If your team meets these criteria, the next step is a conversation.
We take on four to six engagements per year. If you don't meet these conditions, we'll tell you.
Start the Conversation