Are you satisfied with your Company’s Return on Innovation Investment?
The fact is that Innovation has a lot in common with Advertising; it requires a substantial investment, is great when it works well and you never know how big the return will be. That’s why it’s so difficult for us to deal with Innovation. We prefer quantifiable investments where we have a high chance of getting our value for money and ROI. Innovation, as an investment doesn’t always translate into profit; yet without it you are left standing still, and with the pace of change today, that means you are in fact moving backwards.
Applied Creativity
Innovation itself is sometimes confused with creativity. Some even call it ‘applied creativity’, but even the best ideas will come to nothing if the culture and the structure do not exist to let the seed of an idea grow to its full potential. Innovation has to be about new or incremental value for the customer.
Value creation requires a solid understanding of the customer: “real customer insights”. To do this you need to make the transition from thinking in terms of “market research” to thinking about “marketing intelligence” and “consumer insights”. You need to understand techniques and processes for capturing these insights; and involve suppliers, channels and consumers in the process.
Product Innovation is just one of the possible areas where you can innovate competitively - to create customer value, in function of your strategy. You can also innovate in other areas such as business model and the customer experience.
The overall innovation process involves many elements, including: understanding the customer; innovation strategy; knowing where to innovate; idea generation, review and selection; resources; culture; leadership behaviour; performance management and strategy implementation.
