In continuation of the book review of The Innovative Sale by Mark Donnolo, we now review the four phase Innovative Sales Process. This uses a blend of analytical thinking and functional creativity. It consists of four phases and there are eight steps within the four phases.
Phase 1: Conditions -  This is the set of boundary conditions  such as the constraints that include the time, price or product specifications that the customer has requested.
Phase 2: Known approaches - All of the brainstorming in the sales organizations consists of this phase.
Phase 3: Discovery -  This is where innovation happens. Ironically, this is where teams start to resist because it puts them out of their comfort zones and they complain about feeling lost.
Phase 4: Application - This is where we rubber meets the road as the idea is put to practice.
Now we look at the steps within each phase. The first step of phase 1 is when we define the challenge and the constraints, confirm or validate it or improve our understanding of the broader context and give more space for ourselves to act within this boundary.
In step 2 we gather insights about the challenges in the project.  These could include
customer challenges - in terms of financial performance, markets, products and resources,
causes - This set of questions addresses the causes and drivers behind the customer challenge.
precedents - when we lookup previous business models
In step 3 we create initial approaches - by looking up a list of all that has worked before in similar situations and picking out candidates. This just helps with a quick answer to the challenge and may not be the one that we find as we progress into the next few steps.
In step 4 we destroy false constraints by testing the boundaries which include operating rules, procedural rules and the accepted truths. This is where the discovery phase begins and we try to find alternatives or compromises to that constraints.
In step 5 we combine parallels which many not even come from business but from other life situations. In order to do that, we
look into the generations - the term generations here means looking beyond the immediate environment, company, competitors, industry or business. Parallels in each of these generations provide solutions that may never have been considered.
deconstruct our challenge question - we have an inventory of possible parallels from the five generations which we use together with the parts of the question for mix and match
find matches that address twenty five percent of the challenge -  because we use the rest to change our thinking
and put the pieces together - ideas generated by examining parallels and put them together to test their logic and potential application.
In step 6, we explore horizontally, where we create an abundance of ideas across a divergent range of options
In step 7 we develop vertically, which entails selecting the best ideas and digging deep down to build out the solution
The final step is to implement and communicate  which requires managing change. Here we :
understand the degrees of change where each degree represents a risk and a communications opportunity
we develop our positioning - where we recapture our reasoning and position our overall thinking
we operate our communications campaign - where we bring together target audiences, directed messages, communication medium, proof sources and message repetition on schedule
we manage resistance and push through - here we find where we can be flexible and where we cannot for a successful outcome.
#codingexercise

string x = "1..5,8,11..14,18,20,26..29"
string y = "1,2,3,4,5,8,11,12,13,14,18,20,26,27,28,29"
Expand a given string x to y.

For every numeral in x if the following notation is .., then we take the next numeral as end of range and expand it. If the range notation is missing, we copy it.
Let us take a closer look at some of the test cases.
For example, the range could start with the marker or the end numeral for the range may be missing.