Innovation = Sales activity
This paradigm usually appears when a customer tells you that he “misses innovative proposals from you”. As you might have figured out, this is a Sales activity but not an Innovation one: Proposing something is selling, not innovating.
Anyway, we must question ourselves who is really innovating just in case we’ve successfully sold something innovative:
- We? If we are distributing a third-party solution or selling items from our own Portfolio, obviously not. However, if we are involved on a Solution Sales process, there is room for innovations as part of the Solution Design.
- Our customer? Not necessarily, but most likely. We will revisit this point later on when the paradigm “Innovation = Catching up” paradigm gets commented, though.
- Both? Any combination of these two previous considerations.
These situations, though, are usually very nice opportunities to grab feedback that could be used to enrich your Innovations. So, we should better not turn them down!
Innovation = “What we have never done before”
This paradigm can show up when there is something new that has to be done.
Continue reading …
Let’s spend some time on this last topic because it can have very dangerous effects.
There is nothing wrong with the intention of maintaining high price levels and significant markups. Innovations, as opposed to commodities, meet these characteristics. That’s the reason why everyone wants to position their offerings as Innovations to achieve these goals. However, as you may have noticed, “position” something as an Innovation doesn’t turn it into a real one …
The problem is that, once we have missed the point of what an Innovation really is, we can completely miss our direction in the market. For example, if we operate in a volume market and approach our customers with price ranges and strategies of value markets, we are, more than likely, going to fail. In other words, not because you “want” (and try) higher prices it means that it is a good idea. In fact, if your prices are out of range, you won’t be competitive at all.
Does it mean that we cannot fight for value in a price-driven market?
Continue reading …
Over the past two years I’ve had the opportunity to meet many people over many different contexts, both professional and non professional, and degrees of personal involvement. One interesting aspect of these conversations was observing how different people address the problem of how to define Innovation and, more interestingly, how they avoid defining it even though they have to deal with it.
These observations have made me think a lot about the concept of “Innovation” and the implications of failing to face it the right way. I’m not sure if I have the right answer, but I’m pretty convinced about what the things are not. That is why, I would like to share my thoughts with you and, may be, we could reach to some conclusions together …
Let’s start from the beginning …
Wikipedia defines Innovation like this:
Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas that are readily available to markets, governments, and society.
Continue reading …
