The 4 Simplest Innovation Levers I Keep Reaching For

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Let’s talk about innovation.

When people hear that word, they usually picture breakthrough tech or billion-dollar moonshots.

But most real-life innovation happens without much hype.

• Shaving 2 minutes off an annoying process

• Making something feel obvious instead of overwhelming

• Anticipating what someone needs before they ask

The best innovation is invisible.

It just works.

Whenever I’m in design or strategy mode, I keep coming back to 4 deceptively simple levers.

They’re not complex frameworks or MBA case studies. But they’ve worked across every product, funnel, and journey I’ve touched.

Let me break them down:

The 4 Innovation Levers

Forget the whiteboard sessions.

You just need to solve real problems in practical ways.

These 4 prompts will get you started:

1. Can we make it easier?

2. Can we make it faster?

3. Can we make it cheaper?

4. Can we make it more personal?

1. Make It Easier

Why It Matters: Friction kills adoption. Ease builds trust and repeat use.

Tactics:

• Kill unnecessary steps in signup or checkout

• Ditch jargon for plain language

• Add smart defaults, tooltips, progress bars

• Reorder flows based on actual user behavior

Example: Canva made design accessible to non-designers. Instead of fighting through Photoshop, you drag-and-drop your way to polished work in minutes.

Mental Prompt: Where are we making people work too hard to get value?

2. Make It Faster

Why It Matters: Speed = trust. It shows respect for people’s time.

Tactics:

• Automate repetitive tasks

• Pre-fill forms using known data

• Eliminate unnecessary approvals

• Reduce load times

• Offer real-time status updates

Example: Amazon’s 1-Click Checkout collapsed the decision loop and drove billions in revenue.

Foster & Co. Example: We recently shaved 27 seconds off a 4-step investor funnel by removing dropdown fields and linking directly to brokerage accounts. That single change improved trades placed conversions.

Mental Prompt: What’s slowing people down, and how do we eliminate that?

3. Make It Cheaper

Why It Matters: This isn’t about cutting price. It’s about delivering more value for less cost, on both sides.

Tactics:

• Use AI/automation to reduce labor cost

• Unbundle bloated pricing packages

• Switch to usage-based pricing

• Trim unused features

• Pass efficiency gains back to users

Example: Spotify made unlimited music cost less than one CD per month and reshaped behavior worldwide.

Mental Prompt: How do we increase access without sacrificing quality?

4. Make It More Personal

Why It Matters: People don’t want best practices. They want their preferences, their setup, their recommendations. Personalization increases perceived value and retention.

Tactics:

• Recommend based on real behavior

• Let users customize their setup

• Send nudges at the right moment

• Build adaptive systems

• Celebrate user wins

Example: Netflix tailors recommendations, thumbnails, and even video streams to your context. Quietly making the experience feel made just for you.

Mental Prompt: What can we do to make this feel like it was built for them?

Segment

As we just discussed, personalization is one of the most powerful levers in modern marketing. It’s also one of the hardest to execute without drowning in busywork.

That’s where Segment comes in. It’s a Customer Data Platform (CDP) that helps you:

• Collect customer data from every touchpoint (web, app, ads, email, POS, CRM)

• Clean it into a single, accurate customer record

• Activate it across your stack, from marketing automation to analytics to personalization engines

Instead of manually reconciling spreadsheets or stitching together APIs, Segment automates the flow of data so teams can focus on strategy.

Why it matters: This is exactly how you “make it more personal” without making it more complicated. Segment gives marketers a unified, real-time foundation to deliver relevance at scale.

Crowdworx 2025. Small changes, Big Impact: Unlocking the Power of Incremental Innovation

Breakthroughs make headlines, but it’s the small, steady improvements that move businesses forward.

This article highlights how incremental innovation, from streamlining a workflow, reducing customer friction, to repackaging an existing service, can outperform “moonshot” projects over time. The compounding effect of small wins builds momentum, boosts efficiency, and creates a lasting competitive advantage.

Key takeaway: Innovation doesn’t have to be flashy to be transformative. The teams that consistently make things easier, faster, cheaper, or more personal are the ones that win in the long run.

Most innovation isn’t a Big Idea. It’s a better experience.

• Make it easier → Strip away friction.

• Make it faster → Respect people’s time.

• Make it cheaper → Increase access, not just cut costs.

• Make it more personal → Build relevance into the system.

Keep these 4 levers in your toolkit. They’ll serve you better than any moonshot.

What you can do today:

Start small. Pick one place in your funnel or customer journey and ask:

Can we make this easier, faster, cheaper, or more personal?

Then ship the change and watch how even a tiny improvement compounds over time.

— Mac

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No wonder 10K+ everyday people are taking the chance on Pacaso.

Founded by a former Zillow exec, Pacaso’s co-ownership tech reshapes the $1.3T vacation home market. They’ve earned $110M+ in gross profit to date, including 41% YoY growth in 2024 alone. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

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Invest While You Still Can

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When you’re ready, here’s how I can help you:

1. Schedule a session with me. Discover how Foster & Co. can drive your company towards peak growth.

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