Strategy

What Lies Ahead in 2024?

Published date: January 23, 2024 в 9:24 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

5 Data-Driven, Customer-Centric trends we’ve identified

This is not just another conventional forecast. Over nearly three weeks of dozens of conversations with clients and prospects, we have identified some strong trends for the coming year. These trends are congruous with the actual activities on which we supported our customers during the final months of 2023, indicating that they truly are what one might expect to see in 2024.  So, without further ado, here are five key trends poised to define 2024:

1. Revival of strategy:

As we bid farewell to three years focused on just keeping one’s business afloat amidst unimaginable global changes, longer-term Strategy is making a comeback. Key initiatives we kicked off for our clients in 2023 will mature into implementation by 2024 and 2025. As 2024 begins, more and more organizations are talking about the commencement of a new cycle, where strategic, large-scale initiatives will once again take center stage.

2. Productivity’s enduring presence:

The conclusion of 2023 witnessed a remarkable 50% increase in “Productivity” being listed as a primary objective even in growth projects. Leveraging existing assets is now recognized as a pivotal factor in nearly everything that an organization does. In 2024, we anticipate witnessing this trend to continue extending beyond operational efforts,  manufacturing, and supply chain improvements, making “Margin Innovation” critical in all areas of the business.

3. Consumer Goods flourishing:

After years of hearing from CPG and Durable Consumer Goods companies that they are focusing on creating new services vs launching new products, we witness a return to the core. Truly innovative products are not only being ideated, but actually entering development pipelines, and consumer tests indicate that customers are embracing this direction. Coupled with the increasing applications of AI and Digital, in general, expect to see some cool new features as add-ons to new products that would be considered highly innovative even without them.

4. Integration of new technologies, and Digital Transformation:

Having dedicated the past few years to exploring emerging technologies and dabbling in Digital initiatives most “traditional” industries and companies will transition to true transformation in 2024. Technologies have matured and a deep understanding of how they benefit all areas of the business make this a breakout year. Digital technology, therefore, will be an indispensable component in all our innovation initiatives.

As we mentioned in the Consumer Goods trend, expect to see such technologies embedded even into traditionally low-tech products, so that they will appeal to the increasingly tech-savvy consumer, and provide real value for those who know to use them properly.

5. In-depth, innovative, Innovation Training programs:

2023 highlights significant shifts in our clients’ training needs and requests. Our data indicates that clients are beginning to favor intensive training programs, in which multiple intimate cohorts learn new skills and gain proficiency in them, as opposed to large groups being exposed to an innovation toolkit through seminars, lectures, and mini-courses. Trainings will no longer be uni-formatted, but will include multi-day onsite workshops, live distance learning, and self-paced learning. Emphasis will be placed on translating new knowledge back to the everyday tasks of the trainee, and organizations will build new KPIs and assessment models to understand the ROI (Return-On-Innovation) of such trainings.

Have We Nailed It?

We believe that these five trends will evolve and mature as they accompany us throughout 2024. Have you been seeing indications of these in your organization? Or in others around you?

Fork or Chopsticks – Which Innovation Tools Do You Use?

Published date: January 19, 2024 в 11:19 am

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Category: Innovation,Methodology,Strategy

Imagine a chef, who only uses a spoon.

Imagine a dentist, who only uses a drill.

Imagine an innovation professional, who only uses one method or one tool…

Innovation professionals are expected to have several tools in their innovation toolbox. They are expected to be able to choose the right tool for the job and to demonstrate proficiency in applying it. Hence my surprise, when talking with innovation professionals, to find that most of them focus on a single tool or a method.

This article is a response to that.

The goal is to match the most widely used innovation techniques and tools with the scenarios where they excel. My motivation is to encourage readers to explore and experiment in order to improve and enhance their innovation toolbox.

It is important to say that I have picked the tools and methods that I am familiar with, and that I placed them in the table based on data, essays, and testimonials I found on the web AND based on my own personal experience. Obviously, this is an on-going iterative process that would benefit from more inputs and periodic updates.

Since we are focusing on innovation, I would like to make a distinction between NEW and INNOVATIVE. While all innovations are new, not everything new can be considered innovative. In my opinion, true innovation requires the new idea, product, or service to introduce original processes or thinking that disrupt existing practices in a good way. In recent years there is a growing number of models that help assess and ‘measure’ the level of creativity and inventiveness to help rate the quality of the outcomes of an innovation process. These models are used to help differentiate between new (and good/smart/big/….) ideas and innovative ideas.

The full list of tools and methods I have collected can be accessed here, or write me a note and I will share it with you.

Although we can identify many different types of applications, it is most practical to focus on the following clusters for innovation tools.:

  1. Inventing or improving– when we wish to create something totally new, that will be very different from what we (or others) can invent, without using a tool. It is also true for improving an existing situation (or product or process or system…) – the current situation is working well, yet we wish to make it even better.
  2. Solving a Problem – When something worked in the past but now its “broken”, and we need to get it back to work at least as good as it used to, if not better.
  3. Managing the Thinking Process – we assume that if you group together a team and let them think together, the outcome will exceed results of the same individuals thinking separately. This is, of course, very wrong. People have different thinking dispositions, thinking styles and fixedness. To get optimal results we need to manage the thinking process. There are some tools designed exactly for that.  (if you wish to learn more, please read here).

Not included in this article are:

Good PR but not innovation – there are many good and effective methods and processes out there, that proved themselves useful in creating business or organizational value. Many of them are positioned as innovation tools, although have little to do with the way we create original, unique, and effective value. We will list those tools and methods separately.

Innovation Management platforms – most of these platforms are sophisticated Excel sheets or digital repositories that collect and share ideas. Obviously, it has very little effect on the type and quality of the ideas captured by these systems.

After completing the list, I tried to answer the following questions:

  1. In what way it affects the thinking process and/or the results?
  2. How it performs compared to other alternatives?

Out of the 164 listed tools and methods, and based on the definitions, clusters and logic presented earlier, I was able to map, “so far”, 31 tools in the table below. I created the table based on over 20 years of experience, knowledge, and expertise, as well as on inputs and testimonials of clients, colleagues, and competitors.

For me, there are 3 main conclusions from this review:

  1. This table presents a very good and diverse toolbox. I am sure that most innovation professionals would be able to find the right tool combination for their needs.
  2. As you can see above, there are only a handful of tools and methods that meet both with the criteria set above and were tested and compared with other alternatives. I am sure that if we keep evaluating and testing, we will be able to add more tools and methods.
  3. We all have favorites!   Some of the tools here are my obvious choice when I need to deliver results, and some are methods that I don’t like to use. Nevertheless, at the end of the day we should be able objectively and professionally justify our preferences.

I would love this article to start a conversation and a communal effort. This table should be dynamic rather than static. Hopefully some of you will join me to turn this into a live project, where we all contribute to create better toolboxes and develop professional standards.

What tools would you add or remove from this list? Why?

Would like to join this initiative and collaborate?

 

The Moat Mentality: Exploring New Frontiers in Innovation Methodologies

Published date: January 3, 2024 в 11:07 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

In investing and business strategy, we often speak in terms of moats. Warren Edward Buffett often uses it, as he loves companies with strong moats. In the book “7 Powers” by Hamilton Helmer, he refers to moats also as “Powers.” There are several types of moats, including cost advantages, economies of scale, brand, network effects, patents, and customer switching costs, which refer to a company’s competitive advantages that make it difficult or costly for customers to switch to a competitor.

All these create a barrier to entry for competitors, allowing the company to maintain a competitive advantage.

Consider the traditional image of a castle surrounded by a moat. This moat acts as a formidable barrier, making it challenging for outsiders to penetrate its defenses. In business, a similar dynamic is at play. A company with a robust moat, metaphorically speaking, is less vulnerable to market fluctuations and competitive pressures. Such a firm can exert greater control over its pricing, business models, supply chain decisions, payment terms, and even the quality of its customer service.

This metaphor extends to our interactions with businesses in daily life. Often, we don’t realize that our ‘independent choices’ are influenced by these invisible business moats, limiting our willingness to seek alternatives. For instance, consider the inertia you might feel when thinking about switching banks, moving from one CRM system to another, or changing cloud service providers. The cost and effort involved in such transitions often discourage us from exploring other options, even when better ones may exist.

So why am I writing about imaginary castles with moats?

Talking with our prospective clients, we sometimes hear that although they are very impressed by SIT Innovation – Systematic Inventive Thinking ® or other methodologies for innovation and strategy, they are invested to their teeth in Design Thinking. They explain that the organization has trained many people in DT, the teams speak the DT’s lingo, and so bringing another methodology in is almost impossible, like switching between an iPhone and an Android device.

They want to have better results, and they know that if they wish to get different outcomes, they need to switch between methodologies, but the moat of their existing investment in Design Thinking is preventing them from exploring new methodologies. They become paralyzed by change. Talk about breaking fixedness.

We all have been there at some point, facing the challenge of letting go of what is familiar and venturing into the unknown.

The lesson is universal: don’t let your investments, whether in methodologies, technologies, or processes, become a moat that hinders innovation and growth.

Look beyond the moat and consider the potential benefits of exploring new solutions that could lead to improved results and outcomes. If you are so attached to your current methodology or technology that you refuse to consider alternatives, you may be missing out on opportunities for innovation and progress.

If you think you have found a better solution to your challenges, go for it. Build your own canoe and paddle across the moat. If you desire to achieve different results than the ones you had, start looking around and see if there’s any other solution that you can try and use.

As we begin the new year, you should consider how this year is going to play out for you and your organization and how much the unwillingness to take action could make 2024 look like 2023 or 2022…

Was it a Breakthrough or an Adjacency?

Published date: December 31, 2023 в 10:56 pm

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Category: Brand and Marketing,Innovation,New Product Development,Strategy

This year, P&G’s Febreze celebrates its silver anniversary as a brand. But not all 25 years were a honeymoon. Launched in 1998, the fabric freshener quickly hit $100M in sales, but then slumped. In 2002, the brand was in danger of extinction until the company made a strategic decision: the Febreze brand, with its “Breath of Fresh Air” promise, would lead the company into its expansion into “Air Care”, a growth sector. The challenge was that the Air Care category was already dominated by protective goliath brands who would make entry very difficult. SC Johnson led the way with Glade followed by AirWick (Reckitt Benckiser), and Renuzit (Dial). SIT Innovation – Systematic Inventive Thinking ® was called in to help.

We all know the happy ending. Thanks to a successful entry in 2004, the Febreze brand thrived and, in 2011, joined the exclusive “Billion Dollar Brand” club. It has more than doubled those milestone sales in 2023.

So, what happened in 2002?

That was the year when P&G’s perfume chemists, Febreze brand team, and Innovation function members engaged SIT to help identify what breakthrough concept will help them enter this crowded field with an innovative, differentiated offering whose superiority would be obvious. Marketing already understood that price-of-entry into Air Care would require a spray (preferably not aerosol) which would need to be the first product launched. However, they also knew that plug-in air fresheners were the margin play and this is where they would need to win in order to achieve their business goals.

I was honored to be one of SIT’s experts to work on this project, alongside Amnon Levav, SIT’s co-founder. The SIT team was immersed in Febreze (not literally) for several weeks, including an intensive workshop in Cincinnati. The two highest rated plug-in ideas that the team generated through our approach were merged during convergence to form this concept:

Pulsating Plug-in. Habituation to one constant scent or level of scent is a problem that consumers are keenly aware of. They complain that a short while after beginning to use a Plug-in, they fail to notice the scent anymore and have no way of knowing that it is still working. To counter this problem, we will offer a pulsating Plug-in. Electrical heat will vary in strength or different perfume volatilities will be used in order to systematically and regularly alter the amount of scent emitted by the device.

Alternatively, the form will be dual chambered with two perfumes of different scents. So doing, the habituation to the scent will be delayed or non-existent.

This product, P&G’s first plug-in, was launched in 2006 and branded as Febreze NOTICEables, emphasizing the value the innovation delivered, moving beyond technical descriptors like “pulsating” or “dual-chamber”.

Just 5 years after entry, P&G’s Air Care portfolio had secured an impressive market share of 25%. Shortly thereafter, NOTICEables overtook Glade as the plug-in with the greatest market share.  After a few years of sustaining this title, P&G rebranded NOTICEables as “PLUG”. The NOTICEables name was retired after 13 years of hard work, establishing Febreze firmly in the exclusive $1B+ brand club. According to Procter & Gamble’s (P&G) annual report for 2023, Air Fresheners account for 80% of Febreze brand sales.

25 years ago, Procter & Gamble executives realized that the company would miss a market opportunity window if they didn’t act fast. They had many valuable assets in place – strong brand equity, world-class perfume expertise, distribution supremacy, an extremely professional team with senior leadership support – but struggled to find the product expression that would cash in on them. It was a solution that seems simple and obvious in hindsight, but far from intuitive in foresight, so characteristic of SIT’s Closed World-type innovations, that became a blockbuster.  It was a breakthrough solution that facilitated entry into an adjacency. Categorize it however you want; just make sure that you have several of them in your portfolio.

Happy Anniversary, Febreze!

Mapping the Innovation Gap

Published date: December 7, 2023 в 10:48 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

Once you have a systematic and routine way to innovate, you are confronted with a new problem – how to decide how much innovation is enough.  For many, this is an odd question.  If innovation is essential for survival and growth, most people would want all the innovation they can get.  But that is oversimplifying.  Too much innovation can overload the system, confuse the organization, and lead to ideation fatigue.  So how much is enough?

Here is a useful analysis that can tell you how many ideas are needed to reach your specific growth targets called “Mapping the Innovation Gap.” The steps are:

  1. Determine your revenue goals in each year over a specific time horizon. Base this on your firm’s strategic planning time horizon (usually 3 to 10 years depending on the industry).  Use the actual revenue targets from your company’s business plan.
  2. Break these annual revenue targets down over a mix of products, new and existing, in each year. Some firms call this a revenue cascade or revenue waterfall.  It shows for each year how much of the revenue comes from existing products and how much comes from new products.
  3. Estimate your Innovation Yield (number of new ideas needed to produce one new product). This varies by industry and by company depending on factors such as level of investment, core competencies, and access to technology.  Various think tanks and consultancies have estimates such as the curve pictured above.
  4. Estimate your typical idea-to-launch Lead Time (how much time it takes to develop and launch a product once it is conceived). As with the Innovation Yield, this will vary. Take a look at past product development experience and determine an average time (in years).
  5. Plot the number of new ideas needed in each year to produce the necessary new products in subsequent years. Take the number of new products needed in a specific year and divide it by the Innovation Yield.  Then plot this number back in time by the amount of Lead Time to develop ideas.

What you end up with is the number of new ideas that need to be generated each year to have a realistic chance of achieving future revenue growth targets.  It can be a sobering number depending on how aggressive your targets are.  With this number, a general manager can then task the team to “schedule” innovation, and then hold them accountable for generating the necessary number of ideas.

The bottom line:  To grow, companies need a systematic innovation method, and it needs to be applied systematically.

Choosing Innovation Consultants

Published date: November 16, 2023 в 1:32 pm

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

The innovation consultancy landscape has become immensely complex, dynamic, and varied in the last several years, especially when discussing quantity. There are a variety of methodologies, approaches, as well as consultancies of all sizes. Several large accounting firms have made acquisitions of innovation consulting firms, which means the distinction between the mega-consultancies and the more boutique consultancies has become blurred.

Since the innovation consulting firm atmosphere is so dense, there are some common sense rules of thumb one must use when choosing an innovation consulting firm. Luckily, our good friend, Drew Boyd, created a list of criteria that you can utilize when choosing an innovation consulting firm.  However, due to the richness of the current marketplace and the dynamic approach, some of this list is no longer relevant. While this may be the case, it still includes a lot of useful advice. The below advice and tools will help you make an informed and educated decision when choosing an innovation consulting firm.

Choosing Innovation Consultants

Choosing an innovation consultant is challenging for two reasons: the client is not always clear what type of innovation they want, or they are not sure what type of innovation a consultant offers.

Here are three factors to consider when choosing an innovation consultant:  1.  TYPE of consultant, 2.  METHOD used, and 3.  ROLE of the consultant.

TYPE of consultant

The innovation space has become so crowded that I group them into four types (I-D-E-A):

INVENTION:  These are consultants that help you create new-to-the-world ideas.  They have a particular expertise in creativity methods or idea generation tools.  Their main focus is generation of many new product or service ideas.

DESIGN:  These are consultants that take an existing product, service, or idea and put some new, innovative form to it.  They have a particular expertise in industrial design or human factors design.  Their main focus is transforming the way a product is used or experienced.

ENGINEERING:  These are consultants that help you make the new idea work in practice.  They have a particular expertise in technology, science, research, and problem solving.  Their main focus is building it.

ACTUALIZATION:  These are consultants that help you get the innovation into the marketplace.  They have a particular expertise in marketing processes, brand, or commercial launch of a product or service.  Their main focus is selling it.

The challenge is many consultants claim to be all of these.  While true for some, my sense is that all firms started off as one type and then expanded to cover the others.  The question to ask yourself is: would you be better off matching your need to their original core expertise, or would you be better off going to a one-stop shop…a firm that can do it all even though their core expertise is, say, design.  How do you know what type the firm really is?  Study the biography of their founder.  What was the founder’s education, experience, work background, interests, etc.  The founder is where the core orientation of the firm begins.  The other practice types get bolted on later.

METHOD used

Step Two is understanding their method.  The first question I ask consultants is, “Do you know how to innovate?”  The second question is, “How?”  I want to understand their method of innovation, and I want to be able to explain it to other people.  I want to know the efficacy.  Has it worked in the past and will it work on my project?  Show me the data.

ROLE of the consultant

Step Three is understanding the role of the innovation consultant.  Is this a DIY (do-it-yourself) approach where you are given some software or other resource to create innovation on your own?  Is this a DIWY (do-it-with-you) approach where the consultant leads and facilitates groups of your employees to innovate together?  Is this a DIFY (do-it-for-you) approach where the consultant takes your problem specification and comes back with their recommended solutions?  Or, is this training?  All of these roles are valid depending on your need.

I am impressed with the talent and variety of the consultants in the innovation space today.  It becomes even more impressive when you select the right one for the job.

Launching Innovations: The Do’s and Don’ts

Published date: October 19, 2023 в 1:21 pm

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Category: Innovation,New Product Development,Strategy

At some point as an innovation leader, you and your team will launch new innovations into the market place. Those could be new products and services, it could be a new advertising campaign, or simply displaying your products at a trade show. These initiatives are an important test of your leadership. So here are my tips – the DO’s and DON’Ts for launching new initiatives.

First, lead through people. That means delegating to your team rather than trying to take on these projects yourself. Your first priority is to create a team of A players. So now is the time to use them. Thoroughbreds like to run and run fast, so put them to work on these initiatives. If you’re thinking that “it’s easier to do it myself than to explain how to do it,” forget it. When you assign a new initiative to a person, tell them what you need done and what success looks like. Let them figure it out from there.

Next, be visible during the launch of any new initiative. There’re a lot of reasons for that. First, it motivates your people when they see you care enough to be part of their event. Second, it never hurts to have another pair of hands in case a team member needs help. As an innovation leader, don’t put yourself above the team when it comes to the dirty work. Hey, a good leader needs to pick up the broom and sweep the floor just like everyone else.

Finally, hold people accountable for the outcome. It’s critical that you give people constraints up front so they know the boundaries of what they can and can’t do. Measure those results and reward people for what they achieve. If they exceed the boundaries you set for them, you gotta point it out to them.

Now, let’s look at the don’ts.

First, whatever you do, don’t micromanage your people. Details are important in any initiative, but if you get in the habit of pointing out every last detail of a project, you’re telling your team that you don’t trust them. That will eventually undermine your leadership.

Next, never upstage your team members responsible for the event when the initiative is launched. If they do all the work but it’s you that gets in front of the camera to take all the credit, your team won’t ever be loyal to you again. Now it’s okay to manage up a bit and keep your bosses informed about the initiative, but just be sure to give credit to your team for their hard work. And by the way, when you give credit to others instead of taking it all yourself, your bosses look at you as someone who’s going to move up the ladder.

Finally, avoid playing the blame game. If the initiative doesn’t go well, take responsibility. Don’t start naming others on your team as the guilty party. You want to give that team member feedback about what could have been improved. But publicly blaming them for the failure is a mistake. As the leader, stand up and take full responsibility. But then go back and understand what went wrong. What were your assumptions? What unexpected things happened that hurt the initiative? And most importantly, what are you going to do about it next time? And that’s what great innovation leaders do. They create a competent team that continuously learns, and gets better every day.

Corporate Innovation Strategy Template

Published date: August 31, 2023 в 2:55 pm

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Category: Innovation,Organizational Innovation,Strategy

I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.

          Rudyard Kipling (1902)

 

Here is a simple template to create your company’s innovation strategy:

WHAT:

  • Determine what business lines are to be innovated.
  • Determine what products or services within those business lines need innovation.
  • Establish a portfolio model that compares innovation output from one business line to another.
  • Rank order business lines based on the strength of their innovation portfolio pipelines.

WHY:

  • Determine how much innovation is needed.  Use a tool like Map-the-Gap.
  • Tie innovation to a strategy framework such as The Big Picture.
  • Focus innovation exercises to link directly to the strategy framework.
  • Use the framework to identify market adjacencies.

WHEN:

  • Schedule innovation workshops at the front end of the business cycle to help determine what projects will get funding in the next budget cycle.
  • Schedule innovation workshops after the planning cycle to jump-start new initiatives for the upcoming year.

HOW:

  • Choose specific methods of innovation to be used based on efficacy and results.
  • Combine different methods to leverage the strengths of each.
  • Integrate the methods by using the output of one as inputs for the others.

WHERE:

  • Set aside space with the specific purpose of conducting innovation workshops.

WHO:

  • Form innovation “dream teams” to maximize the success of innovation efforts.
  • Schedule training on how to use innovation methods.
  • Examine the company’s innovation culture to diagnose where it is weak.
  • Establish an innovation competency model.
  • Designate and empower commercial leaders to drive innovation efforts.

M&A Innovation

Published date: August 9, 2023 в 11:25 am

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Category: Innovation,Strategy

Relying on Mergers and Acquisitions for growth sends a signal that you don’t know how to innovate or how to manage it. M&A has other problems, too. Companies tend to overpay which actually destroys shareholder value. At best, firms end up paying full value, neither better or worse off financially. The firm grows in size, not value, and pays in the form of distraction.

What if you could use the tools and processes of innovation in mergers and acquisitions?

How could it help?

  1. Would you select acquisition targets better?
  2. Could it help understand the valuation better so you get a better deal?
  3. Might it help you implement better?

I believe innovation techniques could be applied to all three.

Here is one example: targeting – deciding who to buy.

Imagine you are the CEO of a bank, perhaps headquartered in Europe. You and the other board members have decided its time to deliver more value to the shareholders by growing the business. You decide to acquire another bank with all the spare cash you have accumulated (rather than just give it to its rightful owners.) The question is: Which bank? Should we buy one in Europe to expand our share while eliminating a competitor?  Should we expand to the U.S. market and buy one there?  Should we buy a struggling bank, get it cheap, and restore it to profitability?

No, no, no. Too simple and obvious. Nothing innovative here at all. Let’s instead apply the Subtraction Tool from Systematic Inventive Thinking and see how we can re-frame the question. Start by listing the components of your bank.

1.    Employees

2.    Customers

3.    Assets

4.    Property plant and equipment

5.    Brand

6.    Systems

7.    Management

Now, one at a time, let’s remove a component, then ask ourselves which bank we should acquire.  Imagine you had no customers. You still have all the other components, just no customers. What bank could you acquire that had the ideal customer base for YOUR bank given what it’s all about? Would you want customers who were more diverse, higher income, more profitable, lower cost to serve, more loyal, etc.? In other words, acquire a bank that delivers the perfect complement of customers. Now remove employees. You have all the other components, just no staff. Now what bank would you buy? Which has the ideal employee base for who you are? Would you go after employees who are smarter, less costly, more diverse, younger, older, etc.?

The same process, done for each component in succession, gives you a whole new innovative perspective on who to acquire. It helps you understand why you are buying, what you are getting, and how you expect to create new value and competitiveness. It helps you understand The Bet – what the deal is really all about.

M&A is an expensive way to grow. By adding the gift of innovation to the process, shareholders stand a better chance of seeing more value.

(Originally published in 2008)

Driving Automotive Innovation: maybe it’s time to change gears

Published date: June 21, 2023 в 1:08 pm

Written by:

Category: New Product Development,Strategy

In the 1st part of this article, I named the main forces that drive car innovation today and listed the main areas of focus for this industry.

In this part (2) I will share some recommendations for where, in my opinion, the industry should channel more attention and resources.

From the point of view of someone who studies and analyzes innovation, and after arguing that large parts of automotive innovation are too common and obvious, it is only fair to identify other areas for innovation that could lead to interesting results.

Here are some possible directions to explore. Some of them are applicable for all businesses and some are more specific to the car industry:

  1. Finance and Business Model Innovation: Often overlooked, this realm presents immense promise. By revolutionizing financing options and business models, companies can unlock new avenues of growth and profitability.
  2. Evolving Customer Dynamics: As the demographic landscape shifts, so too must our perception of value. Understanding the changing needs and expectations of different generations can lead to disruptive innovations that resonate deeply with customers.
  3. Ownership Redefined: The traditional ownership models—full, shared, and partial, as well as leasing and renting, have served us well. However, it’s time to think beyond these boundaries. By creating new models of ownership that provide greater flexibility and opportunities, we can reshape the way people interact with vehicles.
  4. Challenge the status quo by reimagining vehicle design and functionality: By breaking free from structural fixedness, we can create revolutionary concepts that enhance user experiences and redefine the purpose of vehicles.
  5. Modular Assembly: Introducing greater modularity into vehicle assembly and component design enables flexible customization, efficient production, and cost-effective maintenance. This modular approach promises a more agile and adaptable automotive industry.
  6. Spare Parts On-Demand: The ability to rapidly produce and supply spare parts on-demand is a game-changer for both manufacturers and consumers. Leveraging advanced manufacturing techniques and supply chain innovations, we can minimize downtime and enhance customer satisfaction. Tesla led the way by making upgrades and repair easy, simple and inexpensive, but this is more of being best in the game instead of changing the rules of the game.
  7. Technological Enablers: Embracing blockchain technology opens new avenues for secure data sharing and transactions within the automotive ecosystem. By harnessing the power of blockchain, we can build trust, streamline processes, and accelerate innovation.
  8. Accessibility for All: Let’s strive to make vehicles more accessible to individuals with disabilities. By developing adaptive technologies and inclusive features, we can empower a broader range of individuals to enjoy the freedom of driving and car ownership.
  9. Enhancing Productivity: Innovation can significantly enhance productivity by enabling firms to achieve greater output with the same inputs or maintain the same output with fewer inputs. This focus on productivity gains can fuel competitiveness and sustainability.

Innovation thrives when we foster a conducive environment. To truly unlock the potential of innovation, we must manage it as a robust business process. This entails embracing iterative approaches, holding management accountable, allocating time and resources for creative thinking, and fostering a culture that values both attempts and results.

By exploring these uncharted areas of innovation, we can revolutionize the automotive industry and shape a future where mobility seamlessly integrates with societal needs and aspirations.

If you found this article insightful, I invite you to engage in a discussion and share your thoughts on the potential areas for automotive innovation. Together, let’s shape the future of mobility.

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