**3.1 Cobra+**

Every e-service problem is inherently complex and so from a CLM perspective, smart innovators are well advised to build processes and protocols that acknowledge this complexity. Project resilience in this context often means operating as much as possible above the CLM 'Ashby Line', which means, per Ashby's Law, that 'only variety can absorb variety' [17], it is better to have excess capability in the project system than that required to deal with the level of complexity present in the surrounding environment. The best place of all to be on the CLM is the 'Golden Triangle' [18]. The COBRA+ process was designed with this scenario in mind. It too ensures problem solvers tackle the issues they are trying to address back at the first principles level. **Figure 6** describes the basic steps of the process.

The process is also template-based in order to swiftly enable problem solvers to work through a logical complexity-embracing sequence of steps without a long learning curve [19]. The overall process forms a cycle, and as such, allows a problem solver to undertake as many iterations as might be necessary to achieve an 'appropriate' solution.

The detailed tests for what might be classed as 'appropriate' are contained within the process, but essentially focus on achieving 'solutions' that a team is happy enough about to consider exposing to prospective customers to receive their feedback. Having obtained such feedback, more likely than not, a team is likely to find themselves passing around the COBRA+ sequence again. And again. One of the biggest difficulties, indeed, when dealing with this kind of customer-change complexity is knowing when to stop. The closest thing to a heuristic that exists to date is that the most likely (2%) winners will be the ones most capable of working through the cycle more swiftly and effectively than their competitors.

Which then leads to a final discussion around the meaning of the word 'effectively'. Systematic here needs to mean something better than trial and error iteration. The overall evolution trajectory towards an eventual 'Ideal Final Result' outcome is one way of helping to assure this happens. The next comes from recognising that each loop around the COBRA+ process forces project teams to identify and find solutions to at least one Contradiction. The final, and perhaps most

**Figure 6.** *COBRA+ process.*

#### *Systematic e-Service Innovation DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96463*

important one emerges via another piece of long-term research. This time looking at the meta-level evolution of industries with the aim of revealing repeatable patterns of success. Which, thanks to the contradiction-solving DNA effectively means looking for patterns of contradictions and their resolution. This is in effect another strand of the TRIZ research philosophy. Where – probably more by luck than judgement – it was found that by removing the 98% noise of coming from failed innovation attempts, what would normally looked like a host of random evolution trajectories, actually became a series of very clear step-change patterns. Patterns that, once innovators are aware of them, effectively provide a road-map to reliable and repeatable success, irrespective of prevailing societal and/or market turbulence.
