Monthly Archives: September 2011
Buca di Beppo, you may know, is a chain of Italian restaurants. Their particular focus has been rustic, family-style Northern Italian food. Although it’s a chain and has grown like gangbusters, until recently they seemed to have retained their authentic charm, which included great food, service, ambiance, the whole package. My foreshadowing skills are awful, so you can probably already guess where this is going. Today, Buca feels more like a Cheesecake Factory. The menus on the wall are gone, as are the placemat menus. In their place are slick, spiral-bound and laminated menus. Fewer choices, seasonal offerings. The food isn’t as good, and the service is rushed. To top it all off, they screwed up the Celebration Cake. If you’ve been to Buca, you might know what I’m talking about. It’s a huge slice of, essentially, an Italian flag-colored red velvet cake. …
On the surface, Gillette looks like a model of innovation success. A flagship brand of innovation champ P&G, Gillette’s achieved a remarkable ~70% share of the global men’s razor market, all while maintaining huge margins. The secret to getting so many men to pay so much is a series of new-and-improved razors that – despite making Gillette the butt of endless jokes – has carefully targeted areas of consumer dissatisfaction. Last year’s new Fusion ProGlide was a perfect example: it built on a key insight – men get post-shave irritation due to facial hair “tug and pull” – by using finer blades to slice through tough beard hair more effortlessly. Despite blade cartridges retailing for roughly $4 each, ProGlide sales since launching last summer – backed by a massive marketing campaign – were some of Gillette’s best ever for a new product. They’ve followed their innovation playbook for so long that it looks easy: a great business model + … Continue reading
Why is it that for some firm’s innovation seems to be incredibly rewarding yet for the majority it remains at best an unfulfilled promise. Why does innovation present such a stark choice, often fraught with difficulties for many, yet so simple and successful for the few? Innovation delivery is one of those differentiation points. Let me suggest here nine points needing your consideration when it comes to thinking through the innovation back end delivery part. Execution as I have outlined in a previous blog, is the final rugged frontier- the tough one to truly master as it is so variable in its makeup. Just consider: Point one: the key to successful innovation is not idea generation or putting all your creative efforts into the front end of innovation, ideas are always plentiful; it is turning this myriad of ideas into market …
Innovation cannot happen in a vacuum. It requires customer and product development feedback throughout the product development process. The better you collaborate and engage with your customers, the greater opportunity you’ll have to collect and execute on more refined and clearer requests that address their pain points and align with your business objectives. 1. Align innovation to your business strategy. Map your innovation and product decision-making processes to your business strategy. This ensures product development efforts are supporting your company’s goals. And since ideas from customers don’t always correlate with company strategy, this ensures that ideas — even good ones — that are strategically misaligned are not inappropriately prioritized and acted upon. 2. Center your innovation process around your product managers. Product managers are naturally suited to be the hub of your innovation strategy because they have their ear to the ground when it comes to customer needs and wants, … Continue reading
The secret sauce required for innovation delivery sometimes can be hard to itemize but knowing the ingredients and constantly improving on them will make your ‘sauce’ stand out from others. For many it seems, execution or final delivery of the innovation is simply not given enough attention inside many organizations and that needs to certainly change and not just left to chance or delegated out as the less important stage. For me, clarifying and committing resources on the innovation delivery part is a critical task to get right. I’ve discussed that elsewhere, but if your final delivery is wrong then all your preparation and effort simply ‘goes out the window.’ It is like a restaurant kitchen – correct delivery of the item makes or breaks all the hard work beforehand and if the final garnish or sauces are wrongly executed, the meal itself …
W.L. Gore’s products alone, such as the eponymous GORE-TEX® water- and windproof fabrics, and a multitude of unique medical, electronic and industrial materials, might seem to assure the company’s success. But Terri Kelly attributes the 50-year-old company’s achievements not just to engineering prowess, but to its singular culture. This privately held company, with $2.5 billion in revenue and 8500 staff worldwide, began as an electronics company in Bill and Vieve Gore’s basement. In 1969, their son, Bob, discovered a polymer that was strong, chemically inert, biocompatible and water repellant, with nearly infinite applications. But as Kelly recounts, the Gore family determined not just to develop technology but to grow their company around a set of fundamental beliefs. This philosophy underlies Gore’s flow of innovations and sterling business results, says Kelly. Gore encourages belief in the individual, organization around small teams, recognition that people are in the same boat, and that … Continue reading
