If your house is like ours, you have a drawer full of the retired technology you used in the past. Old cell phones, cassette recorders—heck, we even have an original Palm 1 (forerunner of the Palm Pilot). If I look at what we've used in the past and think about what has gained more lasting traction, I am amazed at how many of the products created by large enterprises were supplanted by innovations from smaller, more nimble startups at the time like Apple and Amazon.

The problem, according to Yeti LLC product development design studio President and Founding Partner Tony Scherba, is that over time larger enterprises develop processes for research, development and scale that include multiple levels of approval, lengthy development cycles and in-depth testing that slow down innovation. That's when they get beat by the more nimble startups. In this issue of Promotional Consultant Today, we share Scherba's four ways to help even the largest enterprises act more like startups:

Use the Scientific Method. To speed up the innovation cycle, ask key questions about the product or service, including what consumers want and where current solutions fall short. Do the research to answer those questions and then create a hypothesis that incorporates those results. Create working prototypes based on the hypothesis and hand it off to usability testers. Ask the testers to keep notes, and take their feedback seriously.

Organize Experimentation Teams. Instead of innovating across departments, which leads to siloed employees who think according to department norms, create or hire small units with a complete focus on innovation and with the explicit permission to experiment.

Promote "Intrapreneurship." Much has been written about Google's 20 percent rule that gives employees 20 percent of their time to innovate, a policy that spurred AdSense and Gmail. You don't have to provide the structured time policy of Google, but you should provide some incentive to get employees to constantly be thinking about your product or service in an entrepreneurial way. Scherba suggests incentives like bonuses or public recognition of efforts and results as just a couple of ways to promote innovation.

Collaborate With Startups. A great way to start thinking like a startup is to regularly interact with one, even if it's just a few months old or has only a couple of employees. This kind of arrangement can yield benefits for both as the startup gets a chance to experience working with enterprises while the enterprise gets its employees exposure in startup ways of thinking about solving problems.

Tony Scherba is the president and a founding partner of Yeti LLC, a product-focused development and design studio in San Francisco.