Customer-obsessed innovation · From insight to impact
Start with the customer. Build your next growth engine.
THE CRUX helps teams create what customers love, from a single product to a new line of business, with Topo™, our AI thought partner, and innovation experts working alongside your team. Every step follows THE CRUX Method, rooted in the Working Backwards process that produced Amazon Prime and AWS.
Topo · AI thought partner
Topo guides you from customer problem to product launch.
Topo starts with your customer and works backwards, helping you identify the critical customer insight that decides the most important benefit of your new product or service. From there, Topo helps you write the story and flesh out the details as you engage other teams, build the product, and prepare for launch.
Starts with your customer
Bring an idea or a business challenge; Topo turns it into a customer problem worth solving, and is clear about whose problem it is.
Finds the critical insight
Five questions, in order, from who the customer is to how you will measure success. The answers become the story.
Keeps the team on one story
The future press release (PRFAQ) is the team's living document: Topo drafts it, reads it, comments on it, and helps you refine it through progressive elaboration until launch.
Talk to Topo now. Then continue with a free trial.
THE CRUX Method
In climbing, the crux is the hardest part of the route. In innovation, it's finding what customers truly need and turning that into something they'll love.
We start with your customer and work backwards. Topo embodies THE CRUX Method, guiding your team from insight to impact in three stages.
01 · Base Camp
Understand the customer and the problem
Surface research, build customer empathy, and define a problem worth solving.
02 · The Crux
Invent the solution and write the story
Explore options broadly, choose the best one, and prove it in a narrative stakeholders can approve.
03 · Summit
Test, build, and launch
Identify critical risks, validate with customers, and move from story to reality.
Traditional innovation consulting forces a choice between rigor and speed. The Method, with Topo, removes that tradeoff. Rigor and speed, no sacrifice.
Work with us
Two ways to start. One Method.
Put Topo on your team, or climb with us. Either way you get the same Method and the same AI thought partner.
Topo seats
Your team, with Topo
Try Topo free for 30 days on one of your own projects. If it earns its keep, bring your team on board with an annual license.
Engagements
Your team, with our experts and Topo
- Introduction Session. Applying THE CRUX Method to a live customer challenge. 1–2 days with your team over a 1-week project.
- Innovation Strategy. Identify and prioritize where innovation creates the most value for your customers and your business. 3 days with your team over a 2–3 week project.
- Innovation Workshop. An immersive workshop guiding the team from Base Camp to a defined Minimum Lovable Product (MLP). 3 days with your team over a 3–4 week project.
- Innovation Engagement. A full innovation cycle, from customer insight to product launch. 10 days with your team over a 3+ month project.
Timeframes are typical; we tailor each engagement to your needs.
The people
Built by people who have done this at scale.
John Watson
Founder & CEO · Austin, Texas
At Amazon, co-founded the AWS Digital Innovation program, leading product innovation worldwide. Works with executive teams in technology, energy, manufacturing, retail, media, financial services, healthcare, and space exploration. 30+ years across Sony, Dell, PwC, Accenture, and AWS.
Brian (Jungsoo) Kim
Founding Partner · Seoul
More than thirty years in customer-focused innovation, boardroom strategy and AI partnerships, with clients including Samsung Electronics, SK AX, Hanwha, LG U+, Google and Motorola. As Head of Digital Innovation for APJ at AWS, led Working Backwards engagements for more than seventy enterprises.
100s
of engagements across industries
30K+
innovators using the AI tools we built
50+
combined years across tech and consulting
Ready to build something your customers will love?
Tell us about your team and the challenge or opportunity you are facing. We will come back within two business days.