Use this bank to assess how candidates discover opportunities, generate and evaluate ideas, experiment responsibly, and scale what works. Each section includes prompts and cues for strong answers.

Mindset & Definition

• What does innovation mean in our context?
  Good answers: New value creation for users/business, not novelty; scope from incremental to disruptive; tied to strategy.
• Share a time you challenged a default assumption.
  Good answers: Clear before/after, evidence collected, respectful dissent, measurable impact.
• Where do you look first for innovation opportunities?
  Good answers: Customer pain, frontline insights, data anomalies, non-consumption, adjacent industries.
• How do you balance creativity with constraints?
  Good answers: Turns limits into prompts; prioritizes impact, feasibility, risk.
• What’s overrated vs. underrated about innovation?
  Good answers: Overrated: brainstorms; Underrated: problem discovery, iteration cadence, editing.

Problem Discovery & Customer Insight

• Walk me through your discovery process.
  Good answers: Jobs-to-be-done, qualitative interviews, shadowing, diary studies, and pattern synthesis.
• Tell me about a surprising insight you uncovered.
  Good answers: Method, signal vs. noise, reframed problem, impact on roadmap.
• How do you avoid confirmation bias in research?
  Good answers: Neutral prompts, triangulation, pre-registered hypotheses, peer review.
• What artifacts capture insights?
  Good answers: Opportunity briefs, personas/jobs, journey maps, and problem statements with evidence.
• When do you stop researching and start building?
  Good answers: Decision thresholds, diminishing returns, risk-based triggers.

Idea Generation (Divergent)

• How do you reliably produce many distinct ideas?
  Good answers: Timeboxed sprints, prompts (SCAMPER), analogies, cross-functional sessions, quantity targets.
• What techniques unlock unconventional options?
  Good answers: Constraint flips, inversion, “crazy 8s,” role-storming, and “how might we” reframes.
• Example of borrowing from another industry.
  Good answers: Responsible adaptation, risks considered, results.
• How do you foster psychological safety in ideation?
  Good answers: Yes‑and rules, silent brainstorms, turn-taking, no early criticism.
• What’s your personal idea capture system?
  Good answers: Idea log, tags, regular review, and kill/double‑down list.

Idea Evaluation (Convergent)

• How do you choose among competing ideas?
  Good answers: Criteria (impact, feasibility, differentiation, risk), decision matrix, evidence thresholds.
• Describe a time you killed a popular idea.
  Good answers: Data/insight, opportunity cost, stakeholder management, re‑direction.
• How do you counter selection bias?
  Good answers: Blind reviews, diverse reviewers, scoring before discussion.
• What tests validate desirability, feasibility, viability?
  Good answers: Smoke tests, concierge/Wizard‑of‑Oz, technical spikes, unit economics.
• What’s your bar for “good enough to test”?
  Good answers: MVP/MVT with explicit success/fail metrics.

Experimentation & Learning

• Explain your experiment design workflow.
  Good answers: Hypothesis → prediction → minimal test → guardrails → decision rules.
• A time an experiment disproved your belief.
  Good answers: Changed course quickly, public learning, updated roadmap.
• How do you measure learning velocity?
  Good answers: Tests/week, time to decision, % tests leading to action.
• What guardrails protect users and brand?
  Good answers: Safety/privacy checks, ethics review, rollout controls, kill switches.
• How do you codify learnings?
  Good answers: Decision logs, playbooks, artifacts shared, and rituals.

Portfolio & Strategy

• How do you balance core, adjacent, and transformational bets?
  Good answers: Portfolio allocation (70/20/10 style), risk/return, stage gates.
• What is your kill/sustain/double‑down cadence?
  Good answers: Quarterly/bi‑monthly reviews with pre‑set thresholds and owners.
• How do you avoid innovation theater?
  Good answers: Outcome metrics, shipped value, and sunsetting weak bets.
• Describe alignment with company strategy.
  Good answers: Clear bet thesis, fit to capabilities, explicit trade‑offs.
• What would you stop doing to fund innovation?
  Good answers: Sunset low‑ROI work, consolidate tools, reduce bureaucracy.

Scaling & Change Management

• Tell me about scaling an experiment into a product/process.
  Good answers: Readiness criteria, enablement, rollout plan, and KPIs.
• How do you drive adoption?
  Good answers: Change story, champions, training, incentives, and feedback loops.
• What’s your approach to technical/operational debt?
  Good answers: Capacity allocation, risk register, payoff milestones.
• How do you protect quality while scaling fast?
  Good answers: Guardrails, rollout stages, monitoring, rollback plans.
• Describe a failed scale‑up and what you learned.
  Good answers: Honest postmortem, structural fix, new standard.

Culture, Incentives & Leadership

• How do you create a culture where ideas flow?
  Good answers: Safe forums, time for exploration, recognition for learning, not just wins.
• How do you reward useful failures?
  Good answers: Celebrate learning, document, share; ensure no repeat root causes.
• What behaviors do you model?
  Good answers: Curiosity, rapid feedback, decision speed, credit sharing.
• How do you prevent idea hoarding or politics?
  Good answers: Transparent criteria, open backlogs, rotating reviewers.
• What rituals keep momentum?
  Good answers: Weekly demos, show‑and‑tell, decision reviews.

Partners & Ecosystems

• How have you leveraged partners/startups for innovation?
  Good answers: Build‑buy‑partner rationale, pilots, co‑selling, IP considerations.
• What’s your approach to open vs. proprietary?
  Good answers: Platform thinking, APIs, community vs. defensibility trade‑offs.
• Example of customer co‑creation.
  Good answers: Beta programs, design partners, measurable outcome.
• How do you evaluate vendor hype?
  Good answers: Proof‑of‑value, reference checks, small pilots, exit criteria.
• When do you spin out vs. integrate?
  Good answers: Cannibalization risks, brand fit, speed/scale considerations.

Governance, Risk & Ethics

• How do you innovate responsibly?
  Good answers: Privacy, safety, fairness; impact assessments and oversight.
• What risks do you monitor in early pilots?
  Good answers: Reputational, legal, security, and operational with triggers.
• How do you avoid bias and exclusion in new ideas?
  Good answers: Inclusive research, accessibility checks, diverse reviewers.
• When do you slow down innovation?
  Good answers: Irreversible risk, safety/compliance concerns; insist on review.
• What’s your rollback policy?
  Good answers: Clear triggers, comms, data retention/cleanup.

Metrics & Impact

• How do you measure innovation beyond vanity metrics?
  Good answers: Adoption, retention, revenue/cost impact, learning velocity.
• What leading indicators matter most?
  Good answers: Idea throughput, test velocity, time to decision, % shipped.
• How do you ensure ideas become outcomes?
  Good answers: Owners, milestones, definition of done, and post‑launch check‑ins.
• Share a quantified innovation outcome.
  Good answers: Specific KPI lift/savings with baseline and time window.
• How do you avoid Goodhart’s law here?
  Good answers: Paired metrics and periodic audits.

Case Study Exercises

• Zero‑to‑one brief: Turn a vague opportunity into a one‑pager with thesis, risks, and tests.
• Experiment plan: Design a 2‑week validation plan for a new concept; include guardrails.
• Portfolio allocation: Allocate a $1M budget across 6 bets; defend trade‑offs.
• Adoption plan: Outline a rollout that drives usage across 3 functions; include enablement.
• Postmortem: Lead a review of a failed pilot; produce decisions and next steps.

Tip: Look for curiosity, disciplined experimentation, portfolio thinking, and shipped value. Great innovators change outcomes—ethically and repeatably.