June 30, 2009 | By Roy Luebke | Category: Innovation Research

In consumer packaged goods and consumer electronics markets, brand management has traditionally been the driving force behind business growth. Gaining a consumer’s loyalty and connecting with them on an emotional level helped created consistency and certainty for both the company and the consumer.

The summer issue of Strategy+Business, a journal published by consulting firm Booz & Company, included a story entitled "The Trouble With Brands." Booz has been conducting brand research for many years, and they are finding that most consumer brands are not creating value. Where brands ARE creating value is when consumer experience has been greatly enhanced. This combines two major areas of innovation focus (brands and user experience) and requires deep analysis and understanding by a company’s brand and senior leadership teams.

The Booz study indicates that brands which maintain value today posses "energized differentiation," which consists of conveying excitement, dynamism and creativity. This thinking is not just for consumer products companies, but business-to-business companies that rely on their corporate brands to drive revenue growth as well.

Booz states that the key elements of brand equity including trust, awareness, regard and esteem are falling for many brands. Companies are spending tons of money to prop up these values and apparently it isn’t working for many of them. This is a trend that has been building over time and is not a short term blip due to the current economic conditions.

What is this saying? It means that people are not being INSPIRED to buy. The reasons Booz offers for this trend include too much capacity, lack of creativity, and loss of trust. Too many companies are selling too much stuff, people are affected by very high-quality experiences from leading brands, and some business leaders are letting us down with their unethical behavior.

What appears to be happening is that people are being more choosy about what they buy and why they buy it. The gist of the Booz analysis is that brands must step up their efforts to provide what people want, and to have their leaders behave better if they are going to succeed. The question to ask is, "How can I energize my brand?"

Keep in mind that a person’s relationship with a brand has three main areas: attraction, occasion of use, and extension. Attraction is more than advertising and logos, it is more visceral and indicates your level of awareness of the human drivers of your purchasers, where they purchase, and why they buy. People don’t just use a product, they carry it home, store it, and combine it with other products to do jobs you may not even know about. Remember when Green Stamps and Frequent Flyer Miles provided unique value?

Extending your customer’s positive and unique experience will need to combine the internet, social networking, and integrating your products into the lives of your users and consumers more deeply each and every day. Brands must deeply touch human emotional, social, cultural, physical and cognitive drivers if they are to inspire people to buy what you are selling.

Finally, the Booz study identified that market leaders are setting new expectations in the buyers’ mind of the way things should be. They change the rules of the game and align their brands with human value systems. Leaders find new market adjacencies across markets, users and categories.

In short, market leaders find out what their customers are willing to pay for, and it probably isn’t what they originally suspected. Are your brands energized? If not, you can bet that one of your competitors will be.

June 22, 2009 | By Gary Bertwhistle | Category: Creativity Technique

If there's one secret ingredient that separates the successful from the unsuccessful, the innovative from the unimaginative, the forward thinker from accepter of status quo and leaders from followers, it is curiosity.

It's the curious thinker that will push us forward. Its the curious thinker that will solve today's problems for your customers or clients with a new spin that enables both parties to be successful.

If you're not curious then you're not asking yourself questions. If you're not asking yourself questions, then it means that you're satisfied with status quo. In this digital age and constantly advancing world we live in, those who are satisfied with status quo will perish. Clients don't want experts, they want curiosity and problem solving from their suppliers.

It's hard to be an expert today when everything is changing so quickly. In the blink of an eye, what was a hot trend yesterday is cold, off the boil and replaced by something new today.

It's only the curious mind that, once finished with a job, will automatically start to think about the next thing. It's only the curious mind who looks one, two or five years into the future of your industry to ponder where it will be by then.

It's only the curious mind that takes a leading brand or organization and constantly pulls it apart to find the next great idea in administration, technology, sales, finance, logistics or supply. One of the most important traits of any creative thinker is curiosity. It was what made Albert Einstein the creative genius we all admire, and its what makes Apple's Steve Jobs so successful. Its also what makes political leaders, religious heads, the best moms and most successful CEOs great.

If you, your company or your organization want only to be good, then stop asking questions. But if you want to be truly outstanding, then develop a curious mind. Don't settle for status quo and how things are today. Think about the ways in which things could be different tomorrow in every aspect of your world. This simple "sleight of head" will unlock more opportunities than you could ever imagine!

June 17, 2009 | By Paul Williams | Category: Best Practices

"If you want someone to be on time, buy them a watch." - Unknown

This is perhaps one of my favorite quotes. I am a huge believer that if you need something done correctly, then you need to use the right tool for the job. That is as true for digging a post hole as much as it is for operationalizing an innovation management system.

I've seen too many occasions where eager executives "talk the talk" regarding innovation initiatives, willing to convince anyone who will listen that their organization is innovative, creative and inventive. Unfortunately, they just as often fail to "walk the talk" when it comes to providing the most important resource in innovation/idea management (people) with the tools necessary to move ideas forward. And...innovation can only occur when you move ideas forward.

So what are the tools you should use as you establish/cultivate/support your idea and innovation management systems?

Leadership: This is the most important tool! Without strong and supportive leadership, your innovation initiative will fail.

Imagination: Your organization, or more importantly, the people within your organization, must be allowed to imagine. Imagine what's next. Imagine what customers need/want. Imagine the next big thing. Inspire imagination!

Idea/innovation management processes: These process sets can be as formal (or informal) as your organization. The bottom line is to establish some kind of logical path for ideas to follow.

Culture: Foster a collaborative, supportive, risk-tolerant and failure-accepting culture.

Resources: Time, money, people, software, collaboration tools, conference rooms, facilitators, consultants, consumer focus groups, etc.

Measurements: Establish metrics (keep them simple) to lock in where you've been, map out where you are going and set a course with regular milestones to make sure you are still on the right path.

So the next time you declare, "We should be more innovative," make sure you provide the tools that your team needs to succeed. In other words, "buy your team a watch!"

June 16, 2009 | By Roy Luebke | Category: Innovation Trends

During some recent research, I came across some very interesting innovation developments now happening in England. The British government has established innovation as a central economic focus. It has created organizations to serve as catalysts or as network connectors between investment sources, education, industry and public agencies to stimulate advances in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in order to drive long-term economic growth.

The government's goal is to help make the connections that will make their business base stronger and their public services more effective. In the UK, science and innovation is a cabinet level position; the leading department was called the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DUIS). In June, 2009 the DIUS was reorganized into the Department For Business Innovation and Skills (BIS). A DUIS white paper named, “Innovation Nation” was published in March 2008 and set out the government's aim to make the UK the best place in the world to run an innovative business or public service. The interactive version of this report can be found here. 

The DUIS has begun publishing an annual innovation report that details progress in the following areas:

• National innovation performance
• Research, Knowledge exchange and business innovation
• Internal investment and international collaboration in science and innovation
• Skills for innovation
• Public sector demand for innovation and procurement policies
• A series of innovation case studies.

The innovation community should be asking ourselves what role governments have in innovation. BusinessWeek’s Bruce Nussbaum has written multiple times about this topic. While I am an advocate of smaller government, I do believe that with the complexity of society today and the globalization of economies, government can play an important role in stimulating collaboration and focusing education programs on producing higher skilled people that will enter a complex work environment.

This doesn’t have to mean bigger government, but could mean re-focused government. A June 15, 2009 BusinessWeek cover story discussed its view that U.S. innovation has failed to realize its promise and may be a major contributor to the current economic crisis.

As stated in its documents, the DUIS/BIS is working with partners from the commercial, public and voluntary sectors to accomplish the following:

• Accelerate the commercial exploitation of creativity and knowledge, through innovation and research, to create wealth, grow the economy, build successful businesses and improve quality of life.
• Improve the skills of the population throughout their working lives to create a workforce capable of sustaining economic competitiveness, and enable individuals to thrive in the global economy.
• Build social and community cohesion through improved social justice, civic participation and economic opportunity by raising aspirations and broadening participation, progression and achievement in learning and skills.
• Pursue global excellence in research and knowledge, promote the benefits of science in society, and deliver science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills in line with employer demand.
• Strengthen the capacity, quality and reputation of the Further and Higher Education systems and institutions to support national economic and social needs.
• Encourage better use of science in government, foster public service innovation, and support other Government objectives.

Another UK organization to watch is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), which is in the process of creating an innovation index. NESTA delivers practical programs to help British innovation flourish by providing innovators with access to early stage capital and by driving forward research into innovation, with a view to influencing policy.

NESTA is not only focused on the UK but is also supporting innovation efforts throughout Europe. In my opinion, this current economic recession is an inflection point across the entire global economy. All countries are inter-related now, and I believe this trend will continue to grow. There are flows of relationships, capital, intellectual property, supplies, workers and other resources that span the globe, and it is probably a good idea to see the U.S. learn from its allies and competitors in supporting its innovation efforts.

June 16, 2009 | By Charlie Alter | Category: Innovation Strategy

In this article, we'll cover step three in using demand innovation techniques to find sustainable growth opportunities for your business focuses on how to leverage an understanding of customer problems and your own Hidden Assets. The first two articles in this series can be found at my Manufacturing Line on AllBusiness.com.

A brief review of these principles covered so far:

No growth zone

Adrian Slywotzky, author of How to Grow When Markets Don’t, says many companies have been stuck in this zone for the last decade or more because their businesses have moved from a past of strong growth into a future state of low or no growth. Very few companies have figured out how to break this cycle and move beyond this No Growth Zone.

One reason for this is that most companies have relied on traditional "product-centered" strategies for growth. The problem is that today most markets are saturated with minimally differentiated products. This is the case for companies of all sizes, not just large ones. Think about how differentiated and distinctive your products really are compared to your competition.

Hidden assets

Both Slywotzky and Chris Zook, author of Unstoppable, advise companies to understand what their "hidden assets" are and find ways to leverage them to generate new opportunities for profitable growth. Hidden assets include the following:

• Undervalued business platforms
• Unexploited customer assets
• Underused capabilities

Understanding your hidden assets will help you to uncover potential new businesses to enter, new or improved products, valuable market segments that can be mined, customer knowledge that can be leveraged and new ways of combining your capabilities that yield new value to your customers.

Developing a profitable growth plan

In most cases you and your colleagues will need to shift your understanding of where top-line growth has come from in the past to a new model that better fits the challenging times in which we all live today. The following points should help expand your understanding:

• Shift from a “Product Centered” sales growth strategy to an “Economic Centered” model that looks for new ways to deliver real value to customers, solve their most difficult problems and develop better ways to identify and meet their unmet needs.
• Stop relying on developing the latest blockbuster products and develop a series of evolutionary, customer-focused market growth strategies that rely on leveraging your company’s creativity and ability to deliver for your best customers.
• Look at the size of your business, no matter how large or small, for the advantages it represents and leverage this as a competitive advantage to your customers.
• Make sure profitable growth is driven through every level of your company so that managers, supervisors, line workers, engineering, finance and clerical staff are all engaged (and rewarded) in seeking out new pportunities for growth. An example is by employees finding ways to innovate and drive costs and waste out of operations related processes, cash can be redirected to support emerging growth opportunities, wherever they come from.
• Develop lots of small or even maverick ideas for growth rather than a few large ones. It is critical to view innovation as a process and not some mystical science, and to manage this innovation process.
• One simple rule is that the more ideas for growth the better, particularly if they come from the people in your organization that are closest to your customers. But this process must be supported. There are terrific ways to generate lots of new opportunities for growth by engaging with outside consultants that can help your develop a process that works for your company. The key is having a formal review process to evaluate ideas using elements of a stage-gate process that work for your company.
• Form a small cross-functional team and visit your best customers to determine what types of challenges and problems they encounter during their business processes that “surround” the products or services they buy from you. This is a non-traditional sales call. Come back to the ranch and evaluate what your team learned and how you can use your hidden assets to solve your customers’ problems and find new ways to deliver value to them and generate new sales at the same time.

By applying these techniques on a continuous basis aimed at leveraging your knowledge and Hidden Assets your team will find sustainable ways of growing profitably and develop new ways to enhance your company’s competitive advantage.

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