Spring is upon us, which means we're closer to BBQs, flip-flops, and lounging by the pool. It's also a good time to explore new fitness routines (cue collective groans).
I'll be the first to admit I have a go-to routine when I need to break a sweat, but I've learned that stepping outside my comfort zone is always beneficial. In fact, last week I finally tried hot yoga (after weeks of pressure from my sister). 90 minutes of 26 postures and 2 breathing exercises in a room heated to 105°F. Oh, and 40% humidity. Sign me up!
It was humbling to say the least. I could barely do a back-bend, while the guy 40 years older than me did a headstand with ease. Show-off.
But I knew exercising different muscles results in better overall strength. This got me thinking about trying new things and the natural resistance that comes with doing something completely new. As the Product Manager of Affinnova Concept Studio, I spend much of my week fielding new feature requests and keeping track of enhancements we want to make. New is the name of the game.
So many of us are stuck in a daily routine that we forget they need to stay current on new things. It’s easy to forget we need to excel at our jobs before we can begin to climb the ladder. To keep on moving and get recognized, we need to stay current and be thought leaders. Now.
People that mix it up tend to know what’s going on in their field. They’re the people that spread the word about a new app, or read the latest articles and books. They’re also, not coincidentally, the ones who get the promotions.
If a regular routine works, why should you change it up? Because you don’t want to get bored, or worst yet–plateau.
Here are some tips to mix up your work routine:
- Quiet the Lizard Brain. This primitive part of our brain has kept us alive for a long time. To the Lizard brain, things we are unfamiliar with represent mortal danger, which may have been useful when our ancestors were living in caves, but in today’s world it’s kind of annoying.
Habit makes it so easy to resist the new. So does fear. Maybe you never sign up for those dance classes because you think you will look silly doing the Salsa. Or stay quiet about that new strategic idea you had at work because you’re not in senior management.
Even if you don’t take to something, at least you learn from it (like learning to balance after tipping over in a hot yoga headstand).
- Be an early adopter. Everyone uses technology, no matter what the job level. Knowing the latest software gives you a better chance of recommending products or services. When colleagues come to you for recommendations it shows your opinion is valued. This has many benefits, including closer work relationships and growth opportunities.
- Explore new methods. Stay current with industry trends and innovations through conferences, seminars and online training. Not only will it help spark new ideas to improve your organization, but will help diversify your skills. Most jobs require multiple skill sets, so it’s good to have some flexibility.
Mixing up your workouts and skills isn’t a guarantee you’ll look like Cindy Crawford or Brad Pitt, or make a beeline for the CEO position. But it is a way to make sure that your skill set matches your goals. Diving into learning a new skill takes a time investment and commitment, but it’s well worth it.
A common theme this afternoon at the Front End of Innovation conference was using storytelling for powering innovation and navigating change. Noelle Chun, Storyteller & Digital Strategist for Yahoo!, provided “a highly tactical, practical useful guide to storytelling in a corporate setting”. In her presentation, she answered some common questions about corporate storytelling.
Why stories? Anthropologists have found that stories exist in every single culture. Something about stories is inherent to how we pass on our values and how we communicate with one another. “While we may dismiss stories as tales of old or scary stories to keep children from making mistakes, we can embrace storytelling as a business discipline. Just as we have in civilization, we can use stories in convey values in our business internally and externally.” Good stories answer the fundamental questions about a business: “Where do we come from? Why are we here? What is our place in the world?” Used properly, stories are an incredible vehicle to help drive businesses forward. We can move stories “from ancient Greeks to modern geeks.”
What comes first? The most important thing first is to set your values, as these will be the platform for all your stories. Which of our values are nonnegotiable? What will we not compromise on? Who are we, and what is important to us? “The most important thing in company storytelling is consistency, consistency, consistency! Find your place in the world, find your heart of being. Then you can use the storytelling process to inform innovation: where are we going, and how will we get there?”
What makes a good story? There are three key qualities that characterize a good story:
- Memorable – An aspect of a good story will have staying power: a particular image, a proof point, an anecdote—“the element of your story that will lodge itself into the hearts and minds of people you are talking to”.
- Engaging – A good story will address the audience with both head and heart.
- Actionable – A good story in a corporate setting must be effective: it must leave the audience wanting to do something. What is the takeaway they are going to implement after they hear the story?
How do you make a good story better? Use “the 3 ABCs” to improve a story:
- Always be clear – Make sure the story is as simple as it can be. A simple story will echo around the company.
- Always be concise – “If they can tweet it, they can tell it.” Tell it in 140 characters—or in six words. To refine a story, Yahoo likes to tell it in six words, a meme popularized by The New York Times.
- Always be setting context – Make sure to use industry proof points so that your listeners can understand the significance of your story.
How do you drive adoption of this story in a corporate setting? You have to make it easy for stakeholders and listeners to understand. Then make it easy to find, using existing social media platforms and internal platforms like Salesforce, intranets and mailing lists. Make it easy to say yes to the story – align it with stakeholders and their goals. Make it easy to distribute: create formats of the story that people can easily send, share, copy and paste. “I like infographics – it is very hard to disassemble an infographic, to take the elements out of context, and an infographic is very easy to send over email or to paste into a blog post. We actually devoted a whole initiative to creating infographics around our stories.”
Even if your company doesn’t have a corporate storyteller, these tips will help you tell the stories that can grow your business.
John Hodgson, direct of Innovation Pipeline Management at The Coca-Cola Company, shared his views on balancing multiple innovation needs at the Portfolio Optimization Summit at the Front End of Innovation today in Orlando. “You’re listening to someone who has works for a company that has made the same product for 120 years, and you’re turning to me for portfolio optimization advice?” he joked. While best known for its iconic product, John pointed out that the company has:
- 15 “billion dollar” brands
- 500 brands worldwide
- 3,500 products in 206 countries – more countries than are in the United Nations
So, yes, The Coca-Cola Company does have a product portfolio that needs to be optimized. The strategic goal for the portfolio is to increase consumption from 1.7 billion servings per day in 2010 to 3 billion servings per day in 2020.
Coca Cola and its bottlers have a long history of innovation: the company invented the six pack, coupons and corporate sponsorship of the Olympics. Recently, it unveiled the Plantbottle (30% plant based, with a goal of producing a 100% plant-based bottle) and the Freestyle dispenser. Innovation is fueling the company’s growth: from incremental innovation like Coke Zero, which went from $0 to $1 billion in 5 years to market-driven innovation like MinuteMaid Pulp Ade, a Japanese product that may be the company’s next “billion dollar” brand.
Coca-Cola did not have a common innovation process but over the past 5 years has been developing a global standard stage-gate process across the company and its 300 bottling partners. The resulting “common innovation framework” has 5 key stages:
- Idea Scoping
- Preliminary Business Case
- Full Development
- Launch Preparation
- Market Execution
This is not a project management system but a decision-making system. “It’s about learning at each stage and choosing your next option, not about going from point A to point Z at any cost. Its about learning and asking the question: will I take the next level of investment?”
Now, with a common framework, true portfolio management could begin. The company has since begun tracking initiatives using a dashboarding system developed with Computer Associates Clarity.
Portfolio optimization is not about optimizing to one dimension, but balancing the portfolio of innovation initiatives across multiple dimensions:
- Optimized across stages – With a common language for stages, Coca-Cola was able to identify that it had too many products that had been greenlit for Full Development.
- Optimized across time horizons – The company analyzes its portfolio across delivery times: 0-12 months, 12-24 months and 24+ months. Less developed markets spend less time on longer horizons, instead reapplying what has been learnt in other markets. The company follows the 70/20/10 Model of allocating 70% of effort to core activities, 20% to “near core” and 10% to game-changers.
- Optimized by geography – Is the company investing sufficiently to support growth targets in different regions of the world?
- Optimized by category – Is the company investing appropriately within categories (carbonated beverages, energy drinks, juices, etc.)?
- Optimized by risk – Obviously incremental initiatives are the least risky. “Flavoritis – the simple line extension – is something you can do because it is easy, but it doesn’t necessarily create value.” When evaluating risk, consumer acceptance is the #1 driver, and lack of it is the #1 risk, followed by other risks including market risk, technical risk, supply chain risk.
- Optimized by innovation type – The company looks for a balance of incremental (Coca-Cola Cherry Zero) vs. transformational (Freestyle).
- Optimized by core brands – As Coca-Cola implemented pipeline management, it learnt – for instance – that it was developing 28 brands in the energy category – far too small a category to justify the investment. The company has now consolidated to one international brand and a few North American brands. Before implementing pipeline management, the company didn’t have visibility across the global organization. The company works hard to balance local needs and global brands, but there are often tradeoffs. “What is permissible – can India put caffeine in Sprite? NO!” It does depend on brand: “Don’t mess with Coca-Cola, you can do a little with Sprite, a lot with Fanta, after that anything—though we are trying to rein this in a bit.”
- Optimized by consumer need states – What are unmet consumer needs in specific categories or geographies that should be addressed with innovation initiatives?
- Optimized by strategy – This is the toughest one to measure and is an important area of focus. When it comes to trading off strategy and geography, or strategy and stage, always choose strategy, John counseled.
The Coca-Cola Company is still looking to expand its portfolio management. Missing are measurements of capability to execute strategy, the investment needed and efficiency, for instance.
John said, “John Pemberton experimenting in his backyard to perfect the secret formula – we are still making that product despite a little brief interruption in the 1980s! Why? It was the perfect product. Perfumists have told us that Coca-Cola is perfectly balanced. It fascinates me that we have 1 Coca Cola around the world but 30 Fantas?!” As the company implements pipeline management, it will always balance local execution and responsiveness and speed to market against scale and global standards—as well as balancing the portfolio across multiple other dimensions.
From the over 8,000 unique links shared on the Twitter #innovation community in the past few weeks, here are some happy collisions with innovation.
TEDMED: Shaping Healthcare in the World, One Innovation at a Time – “If the future of health and medicine is important to you, and if shaping that future is something you want to do, then you belong at TEDMED.” An interview with Jay Walker, curator of TEDMED and acclaimed entrepreneur, sheds light on his dedication and involvement to the synthesizing of technology, entertainment, design and medicine, otherwise known as TEDMED. Here are some tasty tidbits from the interview series:
- Walker sees TEDMED as a resource; a place to connect, understand and inspire so that upon leaving the conference problems can be solved.
- TEDMED embraces diversity, believing that a dancer, a research scientist, doctor, playwright and architect all have equal contribution in the realm of multidisciplinary thinking.
- To keep the TEDMED community engaged after the conference, Walker suggest a Web tool will provide the necessary platform for “lean-forward-365” degree involvement.
- TEDMED success is determined by a very simple yet driving force; filling the connection void between people.
Asian Innovation: Frugal Ideas Are Spreading from East to West – After the production of The Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car, Western companies began to worry about future of “frugal innovation”. Two new books, Reverse Innovation and Jugaad Innovation suggest this type of innovation is here to stay. For example:
- American infotainment system company Harman, developed a simple car stystem for emerging markets that is now used by giant Toyota
- GE’s portable ultrasound device developed in China is now used in poor and rich countries.
- Walmart “small mart” stores created to compete in Latin America have now reimported the idea into the USA.
It seems then that the new trend for in global innovation is to innovate frugally and create more value for the money. After all what consumer doesn’t like a barging?
“Good” Companies Launch More New Products – New research reveals that corporate social responsibility (CSR) benefits innovation by encouraging activity, competitiveness and growth. In the study of 128 major industry sectors from 2001- 2004, “CSR activities brought out, on average, 47 new products a year, while companies in the bottom third brought out only 12.” How does such a correlation happen? Well, CSR is known to strengthen relationships internally and externally, but did you also consider CSR activities provide a fantastic intersection of thought and diversity. The study also found other contributing factors for companies’ higher innovation/CSR ratio included:
- Greater investment in R&D
- Pioneering “first-of-a-kind” innovations
- A more competitive marketplace
Moral of the story, or study rather, invest in doing good and you’ll get even better results.
What Zen Taught Silicon Valley (and Steve Jobs) About Innovation – Jobs himself was hugely successful and greatly influence by the Eastern practice of Zen. For many Westerners this raises a very un-Zen question: Can the rest of us boost our innovation mojo by applying some of these centuries-old principles to modern-day challenges? Zen master Kaye suggests those who embrace Zen for career-advancement purposes are surely missing the point, however, some principles of Zen may be applicable to innovators. Three examples are as follows:
- The “question everything” mindset – This approach encourages people to step back and look at a situation from a fresh perspective. Ask the general questions, strip away biases, and prejudices; find the true nature. The goal is to foster tension “between massive expertise and the ability to see with fresh eyes.”
- Conceptualizing and Collaborating – Conceptualizing takes a lot of concentration but Zen can tame concentration. Zen also encourages working and thinking together in groups by teaching people to listen and ask better questions.
- Strivers not wanted - Zen does not concern itself with outputs; in Zen there is no “better”. Arguably though, after engaging in such practices one may become in tune with listening or asking unbiased questions.
Zen encompasses much more than these three examples however it seems as though Jobs may have failed to notice that. Kaye notes “Steve (Jobs) had an unusual relationship with Zen. He got the artistic side of it but not the Buddhist side--the art, but not the heart.” Be careful when you innovate.
The Neuroscience of Creativity: Why Daydreaming Matters – Finally someone has scientifically proved that “when our minds wander that our brains do their best work–it’s when we’re not trying to think creatively that we’re often most creative.” How do we catch hold of these fleeting dreams though? Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, says it’s the ability to let your mind wander freely while paying enough attention to recognize a sudden insight. Unfortunately this means not all daydreaming is “useful” daydreaming – it is dedicated daydreaming, that leads to un-analytical connection making. In pure moment of insight Lehrer says “It’s the problems that really seem impossible, where there’s no feeling of knowing, no sense of a solution, no sense of progress—…that are most likely going to be solved by long walks, showers, meditation, [and] games of ping pong…”
Until next week, keep innovating!
I have 3 confessions to make. The first is my weakness for whisky. Single Malt Scotch preferably. I have tried more malts than I could name, and though I have my favourite brands, I do like trying new variants, or expressions as we aficionados like to say, from my preferred distilleries.
But what if I could create a new whisky? What would I call it? What type of casks would I use for maturation? And for how long? How would I describe the nose, taste, and finish to my fellow connoisseurs?
Having a large number of dimensions to think about is nothing new to people working in innovations. And so I decided to try out Affinnova Concept Studio to organise my ideas. And so to my second confession. And my third - sort of.
Confession #2: I have had no training on Concept Studio so far other than a short demo presented at a company meeting. I only joined Affinnova last week and my formal training begins this week. But curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to give it a go. And I have to say, I am seriously impressed! By now you may have predicted that my third confession is that I work for Affinnova. So does that make me biased? Maybe. Until I tell you that it was the very idea of Affinnova’s IDDEA (incorporating Concept Studio) that meant their headhunter was the one I called back.
I found Concept Studio to be intuitive, intelligent, and capable of doing everything I would ever want to be able to do to explore different ideas, propositions, and combinations. The 3-minute online intro video provided orientation, and the helpful little 
buttons gave me instant and contextually relevant advice for the more complex functions.
You start with a base concept, which is at least as easy to create in Concept Studio as it is in PowerPoint. Then simply highlight the words or phrases for which alternatives can be considered and just type these variations into the box that pops up. Ditto for age, cask finish, reason to believe. Want to display 3 out of 6 flavour descriptors for the tasting notes? So easy, I made smell, taste, and finish separate variables. And it works in exactly the same way for images.
And now for something really complicated. I wanted to display an image of the bottle… with 3 different bottle designs… and dynamically “stick on” the label design relevant to the name presented (of the 4 options). A quick Google image search and a bit of photoshopping to create my image layers was the hard part. Adding different options for the colour of the closure and the design of the emboss would only have taken a few minutes more. But within the 2-hour limit I had set myself, I already had just under 5 million unique concepts!
Now if only I can persuade Marketing that funding a concept optimization to find the best of these ideas would be good for PR purposes!
As for any other confessions, those will have to wait until we share a glass.
Ben likes to help organizations make better marketing decisions by including consumer wants, needs and behaviour alongside the corporate agenda. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @BenLangleben.
From the over 8,000 unique links shared on the Twitter #innovation community in the past three weeks, it appears that the “How-To”s of innovation can be as easy as following these tips and tricks.
Three Rules for Innovation Teams – Harry West, CEO of Continuum, has some rules that will dramatically increase your team’s ability to innovate.
Rule 1: Manage Creative Friction
Creative friction, unlike normal uncomfortable friction, creates results. To ensure this type of friction occurs:
- Include the entire team and the client throughout the ideation process so that the whole group shares a common foundation and sense of purpose.
- Remove those pesky communication barriers and let the conversation flow—understanding how others communicate will only enable the innovation process.
- Get in the project room and have at it; a team will be able to debate, create and think critically all at once because there is only one agenda.
Rule 2: Bring Creativity to the Center
Your project room should be well equipped to aid the team with any material resources they might need (white boards, AV equipment etc). However, this room should not be a silo—put it in the center of the company (literally or figuratively—your choice) and make creativity a core aspect.
Rule 3: Stand for Delivery
When it’s time for the innovation team to pass their innovation to production, make sure there is some one there to pick it up. An overlap in teams helps ensure ownership and understanding of the idea. The last thing any company wants is the launch of an idea dissimilar to the approved original.
Stop Inbreeding Innovation – Innovation inbreeding occurs when efforts are led by the same group of people, are in the same geographic area or occur along the same product lines. To stop these recessive ideas from debilitating your organization:
- Force new internal connections – Bring people together from different functions, geographic locations, levels and units.
- Bring in outsiders – If you’re entering new market, ask the professionals from that market for their thoughts before you dive in headfirst. Proctor and Gamble seek external help when exploring new markets.
- Involve customers or other stakeholders – Surprisingly, customers innovate faster than the companies they buy from do. Consider bike enthusiasts who modify their bike frames after a purchase. Co-creation can pay off.
5 Principles of Creativity – Greg Satell breaks the bad news: we can’t all be Picasso or Mozart. However, we can all follow some simple guidelines to enhance our ability to think, create and innovate.
- Define and distill the problem so that there is a space to target your innovation.
- If you want to create something truly new and different, you should start by learning your field extremely well.
- Cross domains to broaden your search for answers to your questions and problems.
- One innovation or creative idea is nice, but take a lesson from the most creative minds in the world and produce lots of ideas; large, medium and small.
- Keep at it; the more work you do, the better your work gets.
What It Takes To Innovate: Wrong-Thinking, Tinkering and Intuiting - Taking a look at creators past and present, author Jocelyn Glei identifies core traits any inventor would do well to develop:
- Be persistent and productive and you will produce and test more ideas
- We’re all taught the right way to do things. If you want to discover something other people have not, think wrong.
- Embrace failure for it is an opportunity for learning.
- Sketching, putting ideas to paper gets them out of your head and onto something tangible.
- Trust your intuition. As Einstein said “All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge. I believe in intuition and inspiration…” “Imagination is more important than knowledge."
- A love for tinkering, a fascination with understating how things work and how to make them work better.
- Possess a boundless curiosity to know more, do more, see more, experience more, to make more.
Dr. Feynmean’s 6 Principles of Trend spotting – Richard Feynman dreamed up nanotechnology and quantum computing decades before they existed. But how did Feynman do it?
- Curiosity about everyday things – “It is ironic that often the greatest thinkers who see the farthest are also the ones who pay the closest attention to what is going on around them.”
- Amalgamation of facts into principles – “Take one concept and see where else he could apply it, think about what would have to be improved and how it could be.”
- Acknowledge the messiness of the world – “Every solution changes reality a bit and that creates more problems to solve.”
- Rigor – “Focus tremendous energy on a problem over a long period until it [is] solved…leave no stone unturned.”
- Trend spotting as a discovery – “What’s missing in most efforts is the desire for discovery – a yearning to uncover just a little bit more about how the world works each day. That requires being wrong far more often than being right and testing your ideas far more rigorously than a casual observer would.”
- Watchmaking vs. Time-telling – “The true and valuable trends are those that don’t reverse themselves. They point to the future because they represent real progress.”
Until next week, keep innovating!
How To Be Creative - Too often, people find creativity a challenge to be beat, a contest to win or a code to crack, because the expanse that the term creativity covers is so vast. But when people are not fighting against it, a moment of insight can occur. Author Jonah Lehrer reminds readers that creativity is not as intangible as it often seems to be, with these 10 Creativity Hacks:
- Surround yourself with the color blue- “it leads to more relaxed and associative thinking”.
- Get groggy – it can help you perform better on creative puzzles
- Daydream –this helps imagination and creativity
- Think like a child – 7 year olds are better divergent thinkers then we are!
- Laugh it up – you could solve 20% more insight puzzles after hearing jokes
- Imagine you are far, far away – who doesn’t have great ideas on vacation?!
- Keep it generic – simple problems allow more room to explore, deviate and create
- Work outside the box – to think outside the box, think outside the cubicle
- See the world – cultural experiences open your mind and keep it open
- Move to the city – there’s more to stimulate your senses
The Innovator’s Mindset – A mindset “is a belief in one’s self, one’s own abilities and one’s own capabilities”. For innovators, this means they are guided by the belief that their self, abilities and capabilities can grow through hard work and dedication. Author Bradley Bendle emphasizes six reinforcing attributes of the innovator’s mindset:
- Alertness
- Curiousness
- Willingness
- Joy
- Desire
- Drive
Uncork Your Brain With Mind Maps – “The real effort in coming up with a great idea is all about getting out of your own way so that your great idea can reveal itself.” According to Rick Chin we get in our way because we are either trying to do too many things simultaneously, or we aren’t relaxed enough to let our thoughts flow freely. He has four suggestions to help you “uncork” your brain:
- Slow down the overall process – Breathe! Don’t demand the right solution be found at given meeting; create multiple scenarios and revisit your original thoughts.
- Speed up the individual idea release – Go, go, go! Before you have time to evaluate and organize your ideas, let them out; get as many as you can out so that later you can evaluate, extrapolate and narrow it down to that gem of an idea.
- Maintain a relaxed state of mind – Breathe again! When you’re stress-free your mind can wander more, think more, and create more winning ideas.
- Make a mind map – Draw! Give yourself some direction. When you want to do it all quickly, at once, you are likely stressed and in need of some help. Use a mind map to generate, evaluate and organize your ideas.
To become a great idea uncorker, idea releaser, creator, or innovator, you must practice, practice, practice.
Creativity Does Not Equal Innovation – Robert Brands wants to make a clear distinction: “While creativity is about coming up with the big idea, innovation is about executing the idea and making it a business success.” Fears of dampening creativity and innovation have resulted in a lack of structure within organizations. However, Brands disagrees: structure can free creativity, giving it something to stand on. How so?
- Hold ideation sessions with a diverse and highly creative group of people. Make sure to keep any and all restraints off as to not hinder input.
- Keep track of meeting decisions and next steps.
- Give team members some incentive for contributing and achieving.
- Create an environment where mistakes are tolerated and free of punitive measures. Remember failure is a learning experience.
- Provide regular feedback to keep communication channels open.
Until next week, keep innovating!
From the over 8,000 unique links shared on the Twitter #innovation community in the past three weeks, here are some not-so-scary scary stories of innovation.
Innovation Hell: Saving Good Ideas From Premature Death – Branding expert David Brier and cartoonist Tom Fishburne have come together to illustrate why so many ideas grow weaker in the very process that is supposed to bring them to life. Their innovation lessons include:
- Understating that though it is easier to critique than create, a creative idea should not be necessarily shut down because it is “Not in our budget” or you’ve “Tried it before”.
- Innovation should, and must be encouraged within the organization from both a fundamental and reward view. “Too often, companies create or encourage a culture where those who take risks are often penalized. Yet truly great companies (with the accompanying customer loyalty and confidence) thrive in the presence of it, while potential superstar companies die for the lack of it.”
- Knowing where and when to innovate separates the good from the great.
- Challenging the status quo is the rule when innovating. “…it's not price but value that separates true innovation from little band aids designed to cover up bigger issues.”
Why Companies are Betting Against Big Ideas – Individuals, and in turn firms, “…do not make decisions rationally by selecting options with the highest expected value”. Author David Aaker outlines four interrelated reasons for the bad investment pattern:
- Firms and key decision makers are simply risk-averse.
- Lack of data for new innovative ideas makes trusting consumer insight and assumptions of technological advancement difficult.
- Getting a budget for new, untested, incomparable ideas is a challenge.
- It’s easy to kill an innovation project
The solution, according to Aaker, is keeping a balanced portfolio of both major and incremental innovations.
The Silver Lining to Scarcity: It Drives Innovation – In times of trouble, smart companies shift focus from efficiency to effectiveness, says Sohrab Vossoughi. Scarcity creates innovations because:
- Scarcity forces focus
- Scarcity gives one the “excuse to get on with it”
- Scarcity forces genuine creativity
The End of Teaching as We Know It – Alvaro Gonzalex-Alorda has taken a new look at the future of education; one that centers on experimentation, technology and innovation. Identified in the presentation are “6 Key Drivers of Educational Technology to Watch”:
- People expect to be able to work, learn and study whenever and wherever they want to
- Cloud computing. We will want our information to be accessible on any device
- The world is increasingly collaborative, driving changes in the way students projects are structured
- Since information is everywhere, the quality of mentoring will make the difference.
- Embracing hybrid learning models (face to face +online), can leverage the online skills students have already developed independent of academia
- Shifting from teacher-centered to student-centered education and engaging them by connecting the curriculum with real life issues.
The Opportunity Costs of Not Innovating – Jeffrey Phillips argues, even though it may be difficult, there is an opportunity cost of not innovating. In this case the opportunity cost comes in the form of missing “…out on new customers, new markets and most importantly, new revenues streams and new profits. Those missed opportunities come at a cost – usually in disruption or product or service obsolescence.” Phillips describes a personal experience when short-term risks stunted an idea taken, used and found successful by a competitor. Readers are left to ponder:
- What is the cost of not innovating?
- What if another competitor releases a product or service before you do?
- What are the costs of being forced to respond, rather than forcing other firms to respond to your great ideas?
On average, a typical U.S. superstore like Walmart, Target, Meijer, Wegmans, SuperValu or Safeway can have north of 100,000 distinct SKUs on their shelves. Nirvana for these retailers is uncovering ways to drive more traffic to their stores and drive more items off their shelves. It’s a complex problem to identify retail traffic drivers, which can include:
- Products made exclusively for one chain
- Items from the retailer’s most recent circular
- Products in portion sizes that may be best for your household
- Item that best reflect the retailer’s brand promise.
Some retailers are using Traffic Driving Potential (TDP) research to proactively determine precisely which products should be featured in their circulars. The most effective circulars are created by knowing marketers who use consumer feedback from research studies to optimize the content of each circular.
Since retailers spend millions on color circulars, featuring the right products at the right prices is more of a science than art. At Affinnova, we conduct this quantitative, choice-based research to help retailers determine the products with the highest Traffic Driving Potential (TDP), products with highest price sensitivity and products with highest potential for In-Store Conversion:
- “Price Aggressive Motivators” are items like brand-named chips or cola at a discount
- “In-Store Converters” might be a cool new cleaning gadget at a decent price point
- “Supporting Cast” could be jeans for your son at an aggressive everyday price.
Back to school? Black Friday? Holiday shopping? Spring? Summer? Depending on the theme of the circular, different products will be the most captivating.
And how about me? Aren’t I resistant to those circulars? Nirvana for me is to get the shopping off my ‘to do list’ (TDL) so that I can provide for my family but get back to whatever activity I’m most needed for. Can circulars captivate consumer recall and desire enough that they alter the direction of consumer’s cars…including mine?
Yes, when my eye got stuck on those darn Lay’s Potato Chips on sale at one of the big retailers! Did I really go out of my way to shop there because two bright yellow bags of chips were going to cost me a buck less if I went to that store? That’s the power of price aggressive motivators derived from sound research. The minute I saw those chips, I found myself combing the circular for all the other things my household might need—that circular all but drove my car to the store!
For retailers, what’s going to happen when summer comes? Is it as easy as just pasting a grill on the front page of a circular or are other products the ones with the true TDP (Traffic Driving Potential)? Which retailer will increase the number of trips we take to their stores, simply because they’re paying attention to the details? And once we walk through the door, what end caps and other in-store promotional activities are they working on from the results of that research to be the in-store cart builders they dream about?
As for me, those two huge bags of Lay’s Original Potato Chips rode in the cart’s kid seat so they didn’t get mangled under the weight of the 60 other things I bought!
Follow Julie on Twitter: @julie1research.
From the over 5,000 unique links shared on the Twitter #innovation community in the past two weeks, here are some stories of exemplary innovation.
The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies: 24. Starbucks; for infusing a steady stream of new ideas to revive its business – Author Jon Gertner talks with executive members of Starbucks to discover how the company reinvented itself after the troubles of 2008, when experts were telling consumers to save money by giving up their Starbucks. To rebound, Starbucks “introduced risky ideas quickly, systematically, and sometimes idiosyncratically, much like a startup.” Some of those innovative ideas included:
- New Blonde Roast – the company’s first ever light roast, created to reach the 40% of U.S. coffee drinkers who prefer milder roasts
- Jobs for U.S.A. project – a community involvement program that raises funds for jobs in economically hard-hit communities
- Roy Street Coffee & Tea – an experimental Seattle store that has undergone “local-washing”, i.e. the only visible affiliation with Starbucks is a small stencil of the emblem on the front door.
Nike Unveils Its Big New Paradigm: Shoes Knit Like Socks – Nike has yet again created a sneaker worth a second look, and not just for its eye-popping colors. The sneaker giant spent four years on R&D to create the perfect shoe for their 2012 London Olympic athletes. The shoe was entirely powered by athlete input; however a team of programmers, engineers, and designers was needed to pull off the revolutionary and truly innovative “shoe knit like a sock” – the Flyknit.
Creating an Innovation Entity at Société Générale – Richard Hababou, Head of Innovation Group, shares his methods behind setting up and managing a brand new innovation division at Société Générale, a major player in the Russian banking industry. As summarized by Nicholas Bry, Hababou created the division in 2009 when the company underwent a transformation to incorporate three new goals: create a more innovative culture, capture disruptive innovation through market intelligence and lab activities, and to become an innovation enabler. The spirit of innovation is diffused through the organization, as the innovation division ties in with current business lines jointly working on innovation projects.
True Innovation – Jon Gertner does it again, this time profiling Bell Labs. According to Gertner, Bell Labs was the first innovative scientific organization in America. Bell Labs utilized “…a more encompassing and ambitious approach to innovation than what prevails today. Its staff worked on the incremental improvements necessary for a complex national communications network while simultaneously thinking far ahead, toward the most revolutionary inventions imaginable.” Bell Labs innovations include the transistor (the building block of all digital products used today), the silicon solar cell, the laser, digital communication theory, satellites and—of course—the telephone system.
Los Angeles Shines in Collaboration for Capacity Building – Los Angles has become a city of collaboration and, in turn, innovation. Curtis Chang profiles the city and examines:
- The constructing of an online marketplace for service providers and nonprofits to match up
- Planned bequest and giving programs
- Training programs for non-profit board recruitment and fundraising with rewards provided by other foundations.
“A successful collaboration requires someone to step forward—but not too far forward,” wrote Chang. “It needs someone to own the effort—but not exclusively. It takes someone who’s willing to take the risk—but who won’t give themselves full credit.”
Until next week, keep innovating!
