Archive for the 'Business Innovation' Category

What are Your Innovation Metrics?

Published August 4, 2010 Business Innovation , Business Metrics , Customer Satisfaction , Innovation Consulting , Innovation Dashboard , Innovation Metrics , Innovation Reporting , Open Innovation , market research Leave a Comment
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You’re measuring progress in every major area of your company.  How closely are you watching your innovation numbers?

A recent survey of managers in large organizations showed that close to 70% of executives track absolutely NO metrics for innovation on a regular basis.  In a very small percentage, some claimed to manage only three or less statistics in this area.  Realistically, this is just not enough benchmarks to get an accurate picture of how you’re doing innovation-wise.

On the other hand there are companies that track FAR too many numbers.  An innovation consultant cited an example of a company he’d worked with that were using 85 different metrics in their innovation reports.  He admitted it was “mass confusion”;  the end result being that none of the numbers made sense to the majority of the management team.  Furthermore, it was very difficult to regularly collect this data, so it often went unreported or ignored.

Innovation experts say ”make it measurable, but keep it simple”.  8 to 12 metrics seems to be a good sweet spot for consistent, meaningful innovation reporting.  That’s about the the correct number for Samsung.  On the whole, company leaders there manage things like ‘time to market’ and ‘success vs. failure rates of new products’.  Also watched closely  are ‘customer sat ratings for new releases’ as well as ’percentage of revenue from new products’, ‘benefits from internal improvement plans’, and a few more.  They stick to these because they’re useful and relatively easy to capture. 

Of course, all of these are crucially important indicators of how well your organization is doing from a new product and innovation perspective.  It’s just as important, however to NOT get bogged down in too many details.   Keep it straight forward, concise, and meaningful and you’ll be able to better allocate and leverage your innovation resources.   

Take-away:  You can’t improve upon what you’re not even measuring.  What are the ”go-to” numbers on your innovation dashboard? 

www.us-mindmatters.com

www.flagpole-software.com

Source: BusinessWeek

Building Your Own Market for Innovative Products

Published February 24, 2010 Breakthrough Innovation , Broadcast Search , Building Markets , Business Challenge , Business Innovation , Knowledge Sharing , Open Innovation , market research 1 Comment
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The more innovative and revolutionary a breakthrough product is, the more likely that you’ll have to build your own market for it.  Customers don’t come running for products they don’t know they need yet.   However the payoff is huge!  If you can define the market from the ground up, chances are excellent that you will own that market for a very long time.

Back in the 60′s, scientists working at DuPont developed Kevlar – a blend of polymers with five times the strength-to-weight ratio of steel.  Accustomed to their constant stream of success with innovative products, the chemical giant naturally assumed that the market would simply come to them.  After all, Nylon, Teflon, and several other artificial fibers of DuPont’s creation had been adopted by scores of industries and used in successful products that were selling all over the place.

Not so with Kevlar.  It simply couldn’t find it’s place in the world.  All of the uses and products DuPont had envisioned were not feasable and industries were just  not interested in the revolutioary new product.  The biggest failure came when American tire makers rejected Kevlar.  The companies opted to continue using steel belts in their radials, rather than switch to something new, even though Kevlar offered a significant weight reduction.   After all, steel was reliable, easier to source, and still a bit cheaper than the new material.

It took some very creative thinking and marketing on DuPont’s part to find a niche in which to sell Kevlar.   The testing began to find out all the new uses for this new fiber.  They knew they had a miracle solution, now they just had to find the problem it solved.  They went out to some their largest customers asked for their input and shared their research data.   The real breakthrough came when they found it could stop bullets.  Once the US Government caught wind of the findings, Kevlar became the go-to material for making things like bullet proof vests and army helmets.  With the military on board, the police forces across the country came calling and the rest is history.  

Because of this clever market adaptation, Kevlar has since proven itself an extremely worthy material for all kinds of products from better ropes to boat sails to protective devices that workers use.  History has proven it to be one of the biggest selling products DuPont ever introduced.  Quite miraculously, it also totally redefined how DuPont proactively builds a market space for it’s new products before they move forward with developing it.  As a result, they control the markets they create.  Can you think of a product that challenges Kevlar in its own market space?  I’ll give you a hint: In the 80′s  a very similar material called ”Twaron” was introduced by a competitor.  It never put the “tiniest ding” in DuPont’s “armor”.

Lots of companies introduce great ideas and products that just can’t quite catch their stride, and many that could perform much better if the company spent more time to understand the marketplace and the needs of potential customers.  By going outside of your company walls to research and investigate trends and feedback you can begin to build better, and in a lot of cases brand new markets for your ideas.  You just need to get innovative with how people are using your products and ask them for their ideas.

You can jumpstart this process with employees and customers - they all have great  ideas and will share them if you present the right challenge.  With Flagpole (www.flagpole-software.com) you can share business and marketing challenges with everyone in and around your organization.  Best thing is, you won’t spend billions on research like the “DuPont Corporations” of the World:  You can get started for free right now.

Finding New Areas for Innovation

Published February 22, 2010 Business Innovation , Crowd-Sourcing , Customer Satisfaction , Feedback , Knowledge Sharing , Open Innovation Leave a Comment
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In many companies, innovation is only focused on finding ways to directly improve the product or service they offer.  In reality, there are many opportunities to innovate that you may not even be thinking of.

By analyzing the entire breadth of the customer’s interaction with your products, you’ll uncover new strategies for differentiating hidden aspects of your offering from your competitors’.  You can begin to do this by asking customers (and employees that interface with customers) key questions like these and analyzing the findings…

  • How do customers discover their need for your products?
    Are customer aware that you can satisfy their need?  Do they even know they have a need in the area that your product or service covers?   There may be a better way to create the feelings of need or desire for your solution.
  • How do customers find and purchase your offering?
    You may need to make your product easier to search for, find, order, or purchase.  Can you make the availability of your product more prominent or your advertising more ubiquitous?
  • How do customers make their final selection?
    Maybe you can find a new way to help your customers narrow down the possibilities, or make it easier or more convenient for them to make a selection in your marketplace.
  • How is your product or service delivered?
    How does it get in the hands of the customer and what happens once it’s there?  Can you make this experience better, faster, or less costly for them or you?
  • What is your customer using your product for?
    Can you change or add new ways for them to use (or reuse) your product?
  • What are the difficult things about using your product?
    Can you make this experience better?  What are the common Customer support issues?  Can you change something to make it easier to use?
  • How is your product supported or repaired?
    Can you change the methods of fixing products or resolving issues?  Can you eliminate some problems entirely?  Would spending money to change or redesign something now save you a lot in support costs?

These are just SOME of the many areas you can improve by learning more about people’s experiences and interactions with your company’s offerings.   It all starts with gathering feedback and interacting with customers and employees.  They KNOW what the problems are and they WILL tell you if you ask.

With Flagpole (http://www.flagpole-software.com), you can present questions like these to your audience to get honest responses that could help you innovate in new areas that your competitors aren’t even thinking about.

Defining the RIGHT challenge.

Published February 19, 2010 Best practices , Broadcast Search , Business Challenge , Business Innovation , Innovation Process , Open Innovation Leave a Comment
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At one large company, there exists a small dedicated Innovation Center, whose role it is to conduct sessions to assist the various business units in solving their problems in new and unexpected ways.  In all of the sessions that they were called on to run, the Center found that not a single business unit had defined its problem correctly before the session.

You can’t solve a problem that you can’t clearly define.  In business, if you focus on the wrong problem, or define the problem incorrectly, then you might come up with many great solutions that don’t apply to your issue, or solve any real deficit.  That’s a lot of wasted effort.

Of all the tasks associated with problem-solving, clearly defining and stating the challenge is the most important because it determines the subject matter on which employees will focus their attention to generate ideas.  Sounds pretty elementary, right?

Here are 3 very basic tips for crafting a challenge statement, which people often fumble:

  • When stating your problem, do so clearly, and always start with a phrase like “How might we (achieve this)?” or “How can we (provide or do the following)?”  These types of questions lead people to start thinking in terms of directly solving only the problem at hand.  Keep in mind, you can include some background information leading up to the question, but don’t include a lot of irrelevant information.  Only share with your problem solver what they need to know: state the problem you’re trying to solve in a clear and concise way.
  • You shouldn’t suggest a solution (or hint at one) within the problem statement itself.  For example, a statement such as “How can we save money by reducing waste?” could better.  It leads your problem solvers to only think of solving the issue (saving money) within the parameters of YOUR suggestion (reducing waste). In doing so, you limit the boundaries of coming up with a creative solution. Now, there may be cases where that’s precisely what you want to do.  Crafting a challenge is all about honing the responses to exactly what you want to get back.  For instance, “reducing waste” is a great solution for “saving money” so if you’re only looking for ways to reduce waste, then let that be your Challenge Statement.  If you must, include the reason (your need to save money) as background information to let folks know why you’re searching for this.
  • Include only ONE problem in the statement.  For example: “How can we improve our product while reducing the cost of production?” Not good - those are TWO distinct problems and should be shared as 2 different challenges.

Here’s an example of a particularly clunky challenge that one company used: “We need to convince our clients to participate more in designing our products so we can be of more value to them.”

This statement violates all 3 of the above guidelines:

 #1 – The problem is not clearly stated.  The core problem here might be that “customers don’t participate in the design process” or it may be something else.  The real problem more likely lies in that “providing value” part.

#2 – The statement suggests that the solution to “providing more value” can only be achieved by “convincing customers to participate in the design process.”  That might be a fine solution, but it’s probably not the only way to provide more value.

#3 – There are 2 separate problems being stated – A: “How do we provide more value to our clients?” and B: “How might we get our clients to participate in the design process?  Granted, the 2 problems may be connected.  In fact, “B” may be an excellent solution for “A”.  If that’s the case then “B” still needs to be stated as its own problem.   Perhaps use it as a “refinement” statement later on, once you get people to brainstorm around the bigger problem.  Or, just go after “B” if that’s what you feel you’re looking for.

With Flagpole (www.flagpole-software.com), you can immediately start sharing your business challenges with people from all across your organization.  Flagpole’s proven Open Innovation methodology will help you to successfully solve problems by leveraging the knowledge that already exists in your company.

Overcoming Adoption Horrors

Published February 16, 2010 Best practices , Business Innovation , Collaboration & Communities , Feedback , Innovation Process , Open Innovation Leave a Comment
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When it comes to implementing any new innovation, no matter how rock solid the value proposition or business model, there is no guarantee that it will be successful.  That’s because innovation, by definition, disrupts the status quo.  In short, change scares people.   

Customers, employees, partners – they could all resist (or flat-out reject) your latest effort or breakthrough simply because it’s different than what they’re used to.   That’s fear of change, and the way to overcome it, is by educating the “fearful”.

Customers – Companies need to be creative, but forthright about how they educate consumers and clients about new products.  While it’s not prudent to use your new product marketing efforts to explain every implication and nuance of a new offering, that information needs to made available to the public at large, even if it contains some negative connotations. 

Create a space on your website where customers can take a deeper dive into the product, answer their concerns, and learn the details honestly from your company.  Much better to do this that to have a competitor or disgruntled customer exposing bad information that you tried to hide, and simply can’t refute.  Companies need to be proactive and cover all the bases in their communications with the public.

Business Partners – When you introduce a new idea or product to market, your partners may fear consquences that your organization is not even aware of.   If the product is seen as a revolutionary replacement for something they already offer, or something that closes the gap between your existing product and a service that they provide, then you could have a mutiny on your hands.   

Smart innovative companies keep the channels of communication clear with partners to expose any potential oversights or conflicts of interest.  Create proactive communications materials that offer all the facts, explanations and comfort to your partners.  Make sure you have lots of personal contact with them before and during the rollout, and schedule meetings to discuss any objections and feedback they have.  This way you can uncover any unseen negative aspects of your new offering, and smooth over any rough spots before they strike out on their own, or begin looking for another company to cohort with.

Employees – Some of the strongest resistance to change you’ll ever encounter can come from the inside – directly from your employee base.  Trying to implement a more streamlined process in your organization, or taking something away in an effort to save money, is risking serious consequences to morale and productivity. 

Companies that do these things successfully do so by making a concerted effort to communicate to employees that management is fully aware of all the threats a new innovation poses.  Don’t try to enforce an overt “Do it or else” policy, unless you absolutely must.  Instead devise ways to “enlist their willing participation”.  Put employees in charge of projects and give everyone a stake in suggesting or voting on the ideas and programs your company implements.

One of the ways companies have achieved major success in this area, is by implemeting and ”all-hands-on-deck” approach to innovation.  You can easily get this jump-started with a system like Flagpole (http://www.flagpole-software.com) where employees (and even customers and business partners) can have their input, submit ideas, leave feedback, and interact.  You’ll find that by listening to your stakeholders, and empowering them to help you solve internal issues, they’ll feel more invested in the outcome.  Everyone gets excited to see their own seed projects and programs gain acceptance and come to life.

Build Your Own Innovation Factory

Published February 12, 2010 Best practices , Breakthrough Innovation , Business Innovation , Collaboration & Communities , Crowd-Sourcing , Idea Management , Incremental Innovation , Innovation Process , Invention 1 Comment
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When it comes to keeping innnovation and creativity moving in your organization, we can all learn a thing or two from history’s greatest inventor, Thomas Edison.  While everyday corporate innovation usually doesn’t entail coming up with new inventions on a regular basis, one can easily draw a few parallels between the prolific inventor’s company and your own business.

Arguably, Edison’s greatest innovation was perhaps not any single invention, but his own laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ.  Edison set up an “Innovation Factory” of sorts , which demonstrated that anyone could produce a promising stream of innovations and ideas, if organized and executed correctly.

First he built a process for keeping himself and his workers on track.  He created goals that stated that his shop would produce “a minor innvention every 10 days and a major breakthrough every 6 months.” 

You could do the same with your business innovations by setting realistic goals for the number and quality of ideas you want to find .  Then, implement a tool to help you deliver on it:  Issue challenges to your “workers” to drive a constant, but focused flow of ideas through your “factory.”

Another hallmark of Edison’s constant innovation cycle was the fact that he reused (and sometimes re-purposed) good ideas and proven smaller inventions over and over.  His phonograph used wiring that he created for telegraphs and an electric motor design that his shop had used in several previous inventions.  Good old Thomas wasn’t afraid to blend a few small, already tested elements to create a larger breakthrough concept. 

Your organization could do exactly the same thing.  By “warehousing” and regularly revisiting “not-ready-for-primetime” ideas that you capture along the way, you’ll begin to identify opportunities for combining two, or maybe several, ideas into larger projects like a breakthrough product or huge time saver.

You don’t need to build a laboratory in New Jersey, though.  You can create your very own “Innovation Factory” right now with Flagpole (www.flagpole-software.com).  Just set it up, publish your own business challenges, and let your innovators get busy solving problems, submitting ideas, and collaborating right away.  

Soon you’ll be meeting your goals of constant innovation.  Thomas would be so proud!

Invite Others to Solve Your Problems

Published February 11, 2010 Best practices , Business Innovation , Collaboration & Communities , Crowd-Sourcing , Customer Satisfaction , Feedback , Idea Management , Open Innovation Leave a Comment
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Up until recently, the standard formula for most companies to innovate probably consisted of a closed-loop, if not clandestine, team of individuals to brainstorm and develop ideas.  While some great projects will undoubtedly come out of this approach, the ‘innovation group’ can only do so much.  That fact alone could become a barrier for a very large organization trying to solve a host of internal problems.

In the software arena, of course, there exists the movement of Open Source development.  It’s powerful because it invites users themselves to get involved and to essentially become “co-producers” of the products they are consuming.  The pride of ownership that comes from seeing the project as “your baby”, and watching it grow and develop, is fulfilling and inspires a sense of loyalty among participants.  What if you could do that, in some respect, for your company and its products?

Although Open Source has never become the industry coup some may have predicted, the concept is a strong one that can be applied to other industries:  By letting “outsiders” get involved, you’re able to pool the talents and unique experience of the best people you can reach, in addition to the specialists in your own Innovation Team or R&D group.

When companies open up the innovation process, great things start to happen. You increase the likelihood of finding the “good” ideas: the ones that are viable, core to your business, and will produce ROI.  Now you’re gathering input from folks that offer unique perspectives on your business – maybe an approach to a problem that your “usual suspects” would never even think of.  Finally, and no less importantly, you’re spreading goodwill and increasing loyalty among the participants.  Customers continue to buy from companies that understand their wants and needs, and employees need to know that their input is valuable.

Invite others to help solve your problems and contribute to your products with Flagpole (www.flagpole–software.com).  Flagpole is an easy-to-implement web tool for gathering ideas and feedback from your audience: employees, product users, partners, and suppliers. Flagpole guarantees that our product will provide you a return on your investment (ROI), or we’ll refund your costs, 100%.  We also offer a free version so companies can get started immediately with absolutely no risk.

Implement a Simple Innovation Process!

Published February 8, 2010 Best practices , Business Innovation , Open Innovation Leave a Comment
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When it comes to getting started with Open Innovation, don’t get carried away with complex processes.   A “simple” axiom:  The more complicated you make it for people to submit and review ideas, the less activity and participation you are likely to get.  It’s human nature, especially for folks for whom innovation is secondary to their core job description, to be turned off by overly-complicated processes.  So keep any websites or software you decide to implement for this purpose very intuitive and make the review process as streamlined as you can.

If you’re using Open Innovation to drive your product development efforts, things can quickly get out of hand. Many companies feel that because their products are highly complex, the ideas they receive, and therefore the process by which with they must review them, must be highly complex, too. While there is some validity to the notion that complex products beget complex suggestions, some of the best improvement suggestions you receive will be simple ones.  And the process you go through to capture and review said ideas can be quite simple, as well.

Try collecting simple ideas at first. If this is done in a focused way, you’ll receive a lot of good ones. review them quickly and use the approved ideas as “sparks” to ignite projects and move them through your product development cycle. If you make it easy for folks to collaborate and interact with the ideas, the ideas will become richer in a short time as folks leave comments, have discussions, and brainstorm around the concepts.

If you decide to review ideas by “committee” then keep the process simple for committee members. If they have only a few ideas each week to review, then the process can be slightly more complex.  But if their function is sifting through a lot of ideas in a short amount of time, as in most large organizations, the review stages and evaluation criteria must be fairly straight-forward and easy to execute.  Otherwise, this process will surely become a bottle neck of time resources.  Filter ideas down by using public opinion, or crowd feedback to limit the number of ideas they must review.

Flagpole (http://www.flagpole-software.com) has created a product that embodies a straight-forward, yet very powerful workflow for gathering , socializing, and reviewing ideas.  It’s extremely quick to implement and easy to adopt, and it can can help your organization get a jumpstart on the innovation process and keep it vital for a long time.

Incremental Innovation

Published February 5, 2010 Best practices , Business Innovation , Collaboration & Communities , Idea Management , Open Innovation Leave a Comment
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How would one go about eating an elephant?  “One bite at a time”, is the standard reply.

Well, this is the jungle, and making your business succeed over time is a “mammoth” job.   But it’s one that can easily be tackled with incremental innovation:  Finding small, “bite-size” ways to impact your organization.  Implementing small, but constant, changes will aggregate over time to make a huge difference in your business.

A fantastic, breakthrough product innovation can immediately boost the bottom line, but those don’t come along every day.  Incremental innovation, on the other hand, can also build success, and is a lot more dependable than relying on the “next big thing” each quarter.  Successful companies are ones that do this well, and they do it by putting a repeatable innovation process in place.

One easy way to get “sure-and-steady” innovation bubbling is by regularly broadcasting problems that you’re trying to solve to your employees.  You will regularly and predictably start to get the solutions, suggestions, and projects you need in a constant flow. 

Flagpole (www.flagpole-software.com) employs this methodology with quick, straight-forward ”Timed Challenges” that inspire employees to get involved in solving your problems.  You can even hold regular ”Idea Drives”, or deadlined events that reward the best, most popular, or most talked-about submissions.  

Being able to do this quickly and repeatably is the key, though!  Doing it only sporatically, or not following up with results is simply not enough.  We all know “Slow and Steady” will certainly win the race, but become “Fast and Steady” with incremental improvements and you’ll leave all the competition in the dust.

Economic Help from Innovation

Published February 5, 2010 Best practices , Business Innovation Leave a Comment
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Today, the US Labor Department released its unemployment report for jobs lost for the year ending March 2009.  As expected, the number was substantially higher than originally forecast, setting employment at the highest level in decades. 

With consumer and business spending depressed, now, more than ever, organizations are struggling to not only compete, but to stay in business.  To survive, organizations are turning up the pressure on anything and anybody that can increase revenue and reduce costs.  Not surprisingly, much of this has fallen on employees, who are responding by increasing productivity and sacrificing salary increases. 

At some point, the obvious reductions are completed and further staff reductions are considered.  However, this is probably the wrong place to look. Research has shown that almost 70% of business knowledge is in the minds of the employees, and general employees are 3X more likely to generate good ideas than a specialist.  You could be cutting the very people who have the answers to your problems. 

With this in mind, the obvious question is:  Why not ask your employees (customers, partners, and other stakeholders) how you can increase your revenue, reduce your costs, and improve your competitiveness?

Flagpole Software (www.flagpole-software.com) has embodied innovation best practices into an easy-to-use website for exactly this purpose.

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