Archive for the 'The Power of Collaboration' Category

Six Ways to Create New Demand for Your Brand

Published on 05.14.2012 in The Power of Collaboration, The Tenets of Innovation and What's New. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Valuable learnings from the 2011 book, Demand, by Adrian Slywotsky with Karl Weber

What do you think is harder:  generating a supply of new products or generating demand for those products?  Given the large numbers of great new products introduced every year, and the much lower number that achieve their year-one and year-two sales goals, demand appears to be the greater challenge.  If you need to raise demand for your brand (and who doesn’t?), check out this highly readable book.  It provides six steps to help you open up the demand floodgates, illustrating each step with case studies from brands like Amazon Kindle, Zipcar, Netflix, and Nespresso.

The book starts with one simple fact – that there are usually significant gaps between what people buy and what they really want – and shows ways to use those gaps as the springboard to design products that create new consumer demand.

Here’s a quick overview of the six steps that are key to “opening the taps” of the consumer demand pipeline:

1)   Make it Magnetic. Keep developing the idea until it generates excitement among consumers and an irresistible desire to have it.  Great functional design contributes to magnetism; in fact, the emotional appeal is partly created by the beauty and functionality of the design.  It’s not the first mover who wins the race, but the first to create and capture the emotional space. Slywotsky wisely reminds us of a remarkable truth about demand and human nature:  We let little things govern big decisions. Zipcar’s research showed that they could unlock significant incremental demand by reducing the distance from a customer’s home to an available car from 10 minutes to 5 minutes – just 5 minutes made a big difference in the number of people willing to sign up for the service, despite the fact that Zipcar usage saves their urban customers thousands of dollars per year.

2)   Fix the Hassle Map. Map out every way in which your current product is less than 100% easy to buy and use – rooting out those characteristics of your product that waste your consumer’s time, money, and energy – and then figure out how to eliminate those hassle factors.   For example, Netflix experimented with many versions of their mailing envelope until they came up with the best design to turnaround movies within 48 hours.

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3 Strategic Questions Every Brand Manager Needs to Answer Before Beginning to Innovate

Published on 05.14.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: .

As a Brand manager, your traditional job has been preserving the equity of your brand and keeping your consumers happy. As companies look for new ways to grow their business and put more pressure on their Brand managers to innovate, you have to stretch, and sometimes redefine, your brands to contribute more to the company’s bottom line. Can innovation help you do that? Yes, it can. But, as with all tools, innovation will serve you best if you know what you are trying to achieve. That’s why, before you spend too much time and effort on innovation, make sure you know the answers to these three strategic questions:

1. How much innovation can you handle? Prior to diving into an innovation project, it’s important to clarify to your team, and to yourself, if you are looking for incremental or disruptive innovation solutions. If you are in the chocolate business, for example, an incremental innovation would be a new flavor (a chocolate bar filled with strawberry cream) or a new product form (chocolate sticks instead of chocolate bars). A disruptive innovation, on the other hand, would be a much more radical departure from your current product offering. In our chocolate business example, an actual disruptive innovation, which launched a few years ago, is Le Whif Chocolate – a breathable chocolate product that is meant to be inhaled, not eaten. Knowing how far along the innovation continuum you’re willing to take your brand will help you and your team focus better and produce more actionable ideas.

2. Are you going after a new or an established consumer? Before you begin brainstorming or any other innovation work, make sure you know whom the new product is meant for. Targeting your traditional consumer would be the default. Sometimes, however, you may decide it’s time to stretch your brand and go after a new consumer segment. One such example is Dove skin care, a brand known for celebrating women’s natural beauty, and which launched a skin care line for men in 2010. Don’t wait to see where the innovation project will take you – instead, let your choice of consumer segment determine the direction.

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How to Get The Most Out of Your Innovation Consultants

Published on 04.15.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 1 Comment Tags: .

As the need for breakthrough thinking becomes increasingly critical within organizations, more management teams are turning to consultants for help and guidance in their innovation efforts. Merely hiring consultants, however, is not enough to yield high-potential innovation ideas. Successfully managing the relationship between your internal team and your consultants will ensure that you take full advantage of your consultants’ expertise and arrive at the right innovation solution for your organization. In this post, we discuss four essential steps to getting the most out of your innovation consultants.

  1. Define the Parameters. Are you looking for an incremental or a disruptive solution? Where are you aiming to take your brand? The clearer you are about what you want to get out of the partnership with your consultants, the better chance you have to receive it. It’s not a good idea to expect your consultants to outline your priorities for you. Regardless of how many parties you involve in the innovation process, you remain in charge of the project, and need to set the direction. With this big responsibility also comes ultimate veto power – if at any point of the project you feel that you and your consultants are not absolutely aligned, it’s essential to voice your concerns, and to work together to regain the necessary equilibrium.
  2. Don’t Hold Back. Some managers, when working with innovation consultants, feel that they should hold back their own ideas so that they don’t overly influence the consultants. But to withhold existing ideas is to refuse to give the consulting team a fast start. Because you live and breathe your business, the chances are that your ideas include the seeds of the winning solution. That’s why the consultants’ ideas will be much stronger if they are built upon the ideas your team already has.  Sharing your ideas is also helpful when your team has already started working in a certain direction but needs a little help from the outside to take the project the whole way. While more ideas are always better for the innovation, it’s also critical to recognize that ultimately getting to intriguing ideas is often the easiest part of the process. Moving ideas into successful optimization and commercialization is the true challenge. Continue reading ‘How to Get The Most Out of Your Innovation Consultants’

4 Myths About Innovation

Published on 04.15.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: .

As innovation has evolved in recent years  from a “nice to have” – that a few elite organizations such as Apple and Google have truly championed – to an essential organizational imperative for all companies, certain misconceptions about the discipline have emerged. As with any myth, the misconceptions associated with innovation are often based on fear, confusion and, in many cases, some kernel of truth. Let’s have a quick look at some the common fallacies that we’ve encountered of late.

Myth: Innovation is purely spontaneous, unpredictable and difficult to manage.

Fact: Some people tend to think of innovation as a bunch of ideas that occurred to a few creative individuals when inspiration hit. In its essence, this image is not too far from the truth. Except that, in the world of business, an organization can prescribe what problem the ideas should address, which individuals are on the innovation team and by what date inspiration should have hit. In business, companies can, and should, put a framework around innovation in order to get things done. Adding structure to the otherwise abstract art of innovation is what helps ideas materialize. Company managers should realize that and stop thinking of innovation as an elusive and mysterious process which is outside of their control.

Myth: Innovation is important only for long-term projects.

Fact: Yes, innovation can involve new technologies and groundbreaking products that require time. But innovation can also be as casual as thinking about a problem in a different way or finding a practical solution to an everyday challenge. A quick way to infuse innovation into an organization is to encourage employees to think critically about the job they do every day and to look for easy, practical ways to shave off time and money from current processes. Innovation, done this way, can impact not only an organization’s future but the way business is done today.

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5 Massive Barriers to Innovation

Published on 02.22.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments

If you are an Innovation manager, you will testify that, contrary to popular belief, you don’t spend most of your day brainstorming, doodling and browsing websites in search of inspiration. Instead, you are advocating new ideas to your skeptical managers, you are recruiting your elusive colleagues for in-house brainstorming sessions and you are fighting for more resources. Why is it that, despite the fact that everyone admits the importance of Innovation, your job still feels like an uphill battle? Below, we have listed five of the main barriers to Innovation in most companies. See if you recognize any of them.

  1. Fear. It’s human nature to fear what we do not understand. Although many managers proclaim that Innovation is vital to their company’s success, when the time comes to truly embrace Innovation, these same managers hold back. There are many Innovation-related questions they can’t seem to answer. What exactly is defined as Innovation? Who do you hire to “do” your Innovation? How do you evaluate the employees working on Innovation? How do you measure success? Indeed, Innovation is not as straightforward as the core business and its impact can’t always be measured in hard numbers. Still, there are management methods to ensure that Innovation serves the practical needs of the business, while preserving its creative and spontaneous nature.
  2. Short-term focus. Most businesses are in a constant race against time. There is so much to do that is due tomorrow that dedicating time to Innovation, which will “pay off” in a year or two years, seems like a luxury. Yes, your Innovation efforts can be dedicated to a big, far-away-in-the-future product launch but Innovation can also serve your immediate business needs. It’s totally up to you. Innovation is not just a process, it is a way of thinking and can be infused into everything – that’s the beauty of it.
  3. The intimidating “creativity factor”. Although they won’t admit it, many people, including your managers and your colleagues, believe that they are not very creative. This is why, every time your managers encounter a creative challenge, they outsource is to their agency partners. This is also why, when you ask a peer to attend an ideation session, they try to squirm out of it. However, whether they realize it or not, and regardless of function or tenure, all employees have a lot to contribute to their company’s Innovation efforts. Continue reading ’5 Massive Barriers to Innovation’

4 Innovation Lessons We Can Learn From Entrepreneurs

Published on 02.22.2012 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

It is safe to say that the business community has a soft spot for entrepreneurship. Large companies declare that they strive to be entrepreneurial. Startups vow not to lose their entrepreneurial spirit no matter how much they grow. Recruiters court candidates with an entrepreneurial mindset. What makes entrepreneurship so special? Quite a few things, actually.

Every successful new venture is a triumph of an idea or a series of ideas. It is a celebration of the desire to make life better, easier or more interesting. It is made of fresh perspectives, clever solutions, drive and determination. Entrepreneurs are the ultimate innovators. They play with ideas, create value and drive the business forward. Let’s take a closer look at what entrepreneurs do differently and how it can be applied to the world of corporate innovation:

1. Entrepreneurs see clues everywhere. Entrepreneurs look at reality differently. Hungry for fresh ideas, they see opportunities even in the most mundane daily activities. A city dweller’s occasional need for a car led to the car-sharing concept of Zipcar, and the hassle of lugging groceries after a busy day inspired Peapod. An innovator’s mind functions in much the same way. Often, the most ordinary things can spark an idea. If you and your company are on the hunt for a big idea, perhaps you don’t have to look too far. Instead, look at things from a new, fresh perspective. Ask questions more often. Observe closely. Can a shopping cart better accommodate a baby car seat? Is there a way to instantly track your lost luggage? (Or whatever question applies to your industry.) Once you find your idea, run with it.

2. Entrepreneurs don’t fall in love with an idea too soon. Few ideas remain unchanged in the development process. Usually, as product prototypes are created and the first consumers share their reactions, the original idea goes through many iterations. Entrepreneurs know this process all too intimately. In his book, “The Lean Startup,” the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Eric Ries talks about the process of modifying an idea through many course corrections, or “pivots,” to end up with a final successful offering. Innovators, especially those operating in a large organization, should take notice. Having room to pivot is crucial to the success of an idea, so it’s important not to get hung up on the idea’s original version but to allow it to evolve naturally.

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The US Needs Innovation: Why Innovation Could Address Some of our Nation’s Biggest Challenges

Published on 12.01.2011 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Resisting the temptation to see innovation as a panacea, we can nonetheless identify the tenets of innovation as providing a solid blueprint to drive strategically sound, creative and actionable solutions across so many diverse categories – from Consumer Packaged Goods, to Health Care, not-for-profits, finance, entertainment and so on. Because of its’ malleable approach, innovation has proved highly effective in addressing so many of the challenging obstacles to marketplace success – including fragmentation, globalization, and slow and ineffective commercialization.

The United States is certainly facing all these issues – and then some. With the increasing perception of government ineffectiveness, partisan gridlock in Washington, economic stagnation, and the Tea Party and “Occupy” movements reflecting a growing discontentment amongst the electorate with both economic realities and government’s role. However, for the country that almost defines innovation – the land of Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs – a lack of imagination has seemingly stalled our leadership, operations and policies.

The deeper causes and potential ramifications of the current state-of-the-union has been brilliantly framed recently by TIME columnist and CNN international affairs program host Fareed Zakaria in an article entitled “Are America’s Best Days Behind Us?”

In his provocative essay Zakaria questions whether these challenges are more than a simple rough patch, but the indication of an inevitable downward slide. Make no mistake: this isn’t US or capitalism bashing. The piece clearly acknowledges what makes the US truly exceptional, but also examines why those strengths are neither inevitable nor unassailable.

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5 Keys to Evaluating New Ideas

Published on 11.03.2011 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience, Multi-Sensory, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: .

The innovation process can generate a myriad of ideas—in fact, it usually results in more ideas than could reasonably be acted upon.  One of the more difficult challenges we’re often tasked with is deciding which ideas to move forward with and which ones to discard.  How do you determine when to take an idea from a vision to a reality?  We’ve outlined some techniques you might use to evaluate your ideas below.

Create an “Idea Bank”

Before narrowing down the ideas you’d like to advance with, consider cataloging all the creative output from this series of innovations.  Not only will this help you eliminate duplicate ideas, it will also help prevent you from losing valuable work product that might come in handy for another project down the road.  “Banked” ideas can, among other things, be re-purposed as thought-starters for brainstorming sessions and ideations.  Keep the Idea Bank open and accessible to all employees within your organization—encourage them to re-visit and flesh out concepts on an ongoing basis.  Your Idea Bank can serve as a perpetual laboratory for innovation and concept development.

Solicit Internal Feedback

Break down the “silos” within your organization and make your innovation product visible to the other departments early on in the innovation process.  Solicit feedback from outside of the marketing and creative departments, including such areas as research and development, finance and manufacturing.  Ask for their input at this stage of the innovation process.  Is there something they would tweak to make a concept easier to manufacture?  Are there areas that need to be firmed up to make a product more financially viable?  Obtain buy-in from a broad range of constituents within the organization before advancing with a concept.  Bringing a new product to market will necessitate their cooperation and input, and therefore vetting your ideas through their various perspectives could prove invaluable.

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Finding Innovation Nooks in Your Business

Published on 11.03.2011 in Dynamics of Innovation, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: , .

While the term “innovation” is nearly ubiquitous in business today, many marketers still focus mainly on filling the innovation funnel with new products.many Marketing executives still think of it in a narrow sense – focusing mainly on filling the innovation funnel with new product ideas that are expected to grow the business in a few years’ time. As important as product innovation may be for your company, there are many other areas of the business around which you can innovate and achieve results faster. Here are a few areas where you will most likely find room for new ideas:

  1. Customer service. Customer service is an often overlooked nook in the business that directly impacts your relationship with your customers. Little improvements in this area can have profound positive effect on your business. What are some innovative ways you can improve your customer service and turn disgruntled customers into fans? Look at the example Citrix set: they adopted a Twitter tool called TwitGift that collects complaining customers’ addresses and sends them chocolate chip cookies. Now, isn’t that a sweet way to change someone’s opinion about your company?
  2. Business process. Look at the ways you do things inside the organization through a critical, unbiased lens. And by “things” we mean everything from how you approve new ideas to how you evaluate and reward your employees to how you solve your manufacturing challenges. We bet there is room for innovation in any of these areas. Yes, shaking things up will not be easy but it will be good for the business. Take P&G, for example. For years, the company was known for believing that the best ideas came from within until the legendary CEO A. G. Lafley challenged this belief. He paired the company resources with the power of open innovation and turned the then-stagnant P&G into a dynamic, vibrant culture, doubling its sales figures over the course of his leadership. Continue reading ‘Finding Innovation Nooks in Your Business’

4 Ways to Foster Innovation in Your Company

Published on 11.03.2011 in Dynamics of Innovation, End-User Experience, The Power of Collaboration and The Tenets of Innovation. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

There are many examples of companies that have successfully created flourishing innovation cultures. P&G, Lego, 3M, Apple and Google are names that are often mentioned as shining examples of organizations that have turned innovation into the purpose and the means of their business. And then there are numerous other companies – large and small, local and multinational – that vow to foster innovation and yet somehow end up with only marginal product improvements or short-lived, ultimately forgettable product launches.

So, what are the secrets of the big innovators? What does it take to create and foster a culture of innovation and creativity in a company? While great innovation can take place anywhere, it can be more difficult in a large organization that is rife with innovation “hurdles.” Creating and nurturing a culture of innovation will take time, but these few tips can help the company leaders lay a solid foundation:

Always put consumer before product. It’s mind-boggling how many companies today still follow the traditional R&D model – the lab develops the new feature, ingredient or flavor, and passes it over to Marketing to define the reason why the consumer wants it. Too often companies looking strictly internally for breakthrough innovation end up with a bunch of unwanted and unneeded products being thrown at consumers. Even if you don’t expect consumers to articulate the next big idea for you, it should be your priority to understand consumers’ needs first and then work to define a solution. Some companies successfully take their relationship with consumers even further, allowing users to co-create and customize products for their individual needs. For example, RedMoon gives pet owners the ability to create fresh pet food specific to their pet’s unique needs and Element Bars urges consumers to create an energy bar that fits their individual nutritional requirements.

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