Amazon Fresh exists to remove some key pain points for consumers, namely avoiding long queues and getting through the checkout with ease. But as Charged asks, is the way Amazon is going about it really what shoppers want?

Here's a question: Can you pretotype internal processes or tools? The answer is yes. If you think of your team members and employees as customers, you can quickly understand why and how they use your systems.

Reid Hoffman, a co-founder of LinkedIn, is pretotyping NFT sales generated by the latest AI kid on the block, DALL-E, using the Imposter method. DALL-E is an AI system that can create images from a natural language description — in other words, you input a word, and it makes up a picture. Hoffman is debuting and auctioning his collection on the NFT marketplace Magic Eden and seeing if these AI-generated NFTs can get any traction.

Cam Houser, entrepreneur, educator and creator of Minimum Viable Video, has used the Infiltrator Pretotyping method to drive email sign-ups to his 'Ultimate Guide to Personalized Video' via a LinkedIn post. Simply adding a static image of his video in action and providing a CTA in his post for his followers to sign up is a great and easy way to get skin in the game.

Arnott’s, makers of Australia’s most popular crackers, Shapes, have ‘released’ a new product: BBQ Flavour Shakers. According to Delicious, “The new Shapes Flavour Shakers allow you to sprinkle the flavour of Barbecue Shapes on absolutely everything from hot chips to peanuts and popcorn.” We suspect this is a well-executed Façade Pretotype.

FirstBuild, owned by GE Appliances (a Haier company), is testing demand for an indoor BBQ smoker using Indiegogo. It is a YouTube pretotype, best used for products that are complex or a big investment to bring to market. In this case, they have built something, but I suspect the video and results are simulated to test product demand — a perfectly valid strategy.

Coca-Cola Japan’s experimental new vending machines dispense water when you BYOB (bring your own bottle): ‘customers can wash and fill reusable containers with their choice of sparkling water or hot, warm or cold still water.’ This product is a Provincial and MVP Pretotype, testing the adoption of this product in a specific market (Japan).

Francis, a financial planning app, is an excellent example of a B2B (Business-to-Business) pretotype. It is a Fake Door because it’s testing the proposed solution with a yet-to-be-built service. It makes sense to validate this first as this space is complex, expensive and crowded, and they will need to create the “a-ha!” moment to cut through the noise in this market.

In order to diversify their range, Burger King wants to get data from customers and validate the demand for vegan burgers. How? By using the Facade Pretotype, which is when you have an existing product and test some attribute of scale. This method effectively uses your existing platform and resources (in this case, stores) to validate before scaling.

We made it! 2021 has been a huge year filled with challenges, change and a bucketload of innovation. We'll be taking a short break over the next few weeks to recharge for what is set to be another extraordinary year, but until then…

With December just around the corner, there's no better time to start setting yourself up for innovation success in 2022. We've got plenty of ideas and resources to help you out...

It's (somehow!) already mid-October - the silly season will soon be upon us. We also recently celebrated our 4th birthday! We want to say a big thank you to you, our pretotyping community, for an incredible few years; we can't wait to see all of the amazing innovations the future holds for us all!