FORTH Innovation Method. Double your innovation effectiveness.

FORTH is a proven five-step innovation methodology created by Gijs van Wulfen for the fuzzy front end of innovation. It combines design thinking with business reality across five stages: Full Steam Ahead, Observe & Learn, Raise Ideas, Test Ideas and Homecoming.

FORTH combines design thinking with business reality. Design thinking helps you step outside the box: discovering unmet customer needs, challenging assumptions and creating radically new ideas. FORTH then helps you bring the best ideas back inside the box, making them feasible, viable and supported by decision-makers.

That combination is what makes FORTH powerful. Innovation is not just about generating great ideas; it is about making them happen. That is why a FORTH expedition ends with tested mini new business cases, ready for decision-making and implementation.

FORTH is a creative, customer-centered innovation process, while Stage-Gate is primarily a decision-making and project management framework. Stage-Gate moves ideas through defined stages and gates, where they are evaluated before progressing to the next phase. FORTH focuses first on discovering unmet customer needs, generating new ideas and testing promising concepts in the market.

FORTH can complement Stage-Gate rather than replace it. A FORTH expedition helps create and validate innovative opportunities, ending with tested mini new business cases. These can then enter a Stage-Gate process for further development, investment decisions and implementation.

A full FORTH expedition runs through five stages in twenty weeks: Full Steam Ahead (5 weeks), Observe & Learn (6 weeks), Raise Ideas (2 weeks), Test Ideas (3 weeks) and Homecoming (4 weeks). The first stage, Full Steam Ahead, is where the innovation assignment is formulated. Counted from the kick-off with the innovation team, the expedition takes fifteen weeks.

FORTH goes beyond new ideas. It delivers four to six supported new business cases, tested and improved with customers, ready for management decision-making and carried by internal buy-in.

One of the biggest challenges for innovators is winning management buy-in. FORTH addresses this by inviting decision-makers to join the innovation journey. Instead of innovators trying to convince management afterwards, decision-makers convince themselves along the way.

During the 15-week FORTH expedition, decision-makers participate for around 7.5 days. They determine the innovation assignment, learn from new customer and market insights, contribute their own ideas and become sponsors of the resulting business cases. This creates deep ownership among the people who ultimately decide which innovations move forward.

That built-in management ownership is one of the reasons FORTH is so effective: buy-in is not something you seek at the end; it is created throughout the expedition.

Yes. Independent research by Prof. Dr Herman van den Bosch of the Open Universiteit found that 74% of FORTH business cases progressed to development (versus a 57% benchmark) and 68% reached the market (versus 37.5%). Participants rated the process 8.1 out of 10.

FORTH has been applied by organisations across six continents, among them 3M, Airbus, University of Oxford, Philip Morris International, Takeda and UNHCR, in profit and not-for-profit sectors, for products as well as services.

Yes. FORTH founder Gijs van Wulfen trains and certifies FORTH Innovation Facilitators in a five-day in-house programme.

You not only learn how to apply the FORTH Innovation Method, but also gain practical insights into how to become a great innovation facilitator. Because a methodology alone does not create impact. The quality of facilitation makes the difference.

The five-day programme enables organisations to build their own internal FORTH facilitation capabilities and apply the methodology independently.

Reach out to Gijs to explore how your organisation can adopt the five-day FORTH Innovation Facilitator Programme and boost its innovation effectiveness.

There is a global network of more than 300 certified FORTH Innovation Facilitators across 35 countries and six continents.

Contact Gijs van Wulfen directly at [email protected] to be connected with a certified FORTH facilitator in your region.

The FORTH Innovation Map is available in fourteen languages, from English and Spanish to Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. Every language edition is free to download on this website.

Contact Gijs van Wulfen directly at [email protected] to discuss your innovation challenge and how a FORTH expedition can turn it into validated new business cases.

Innovation effectiveness is the ability of an organisation to turn its innovation ambitions and ideas into meaningful impact. It rests on four connected pillars: breaking innovation barriers, building innovation discipline, creating innovation ownership, and using a proven structured methodology, the FORTH Innovation Method. These pillars reflect more than 25 years of helping organisations make innovation work in practice.