About this Author
Gwen Smith Ishmael, Sr. Vice President of Insights and Innovation at Decision Analyst in Arlington, TX, has led marketing and new product development activities in the CPG and technology industries since 1986. She also conceived and developed ground-breaking Web-based promotional vehicles, two of which are patent pending. Gwen holds an MBA in Marketing and is a featured speaker on insights and innovation around the world. Her writings have been featured in international text books, most recently in Managing 4 Ps of Marketing FMCG Sector, and Product Innovation: A Strategic Tool for Growth, by ICFAI Publications, 2006 and 2007, respectively.
Founding Author
Renee Hopkins Callahan started IdeaFlow and serves as chief blog-wrangler. She is Director of Innovation Services at Decision Analyst in Arlington, Texas, is a former journalist who worked as an editor and reporter for The Dallas Morning News and the Nashville Tennessean, and was managing editor of D, the Dallas city magazine. She has a master's degree in rhetoric and has also taught college-level English and informal logic.
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Category Archives
February 28, 2007
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
Sami Viitamaki emailed me this model for crowdsourcing. He calls it the FLIRT model. I like this -- it offers a useful way of viewing many crowdsourcing efforts.
I think what would be fascinating would be some kind of meta-view of crowdsourcing in general. In the main it's not new. And some of the "old" methods have their places, still. And some of the old methods have undergone and will continue to undergo change. For example, marketing research is an "old" method that is scoffed at by many today, but it has its uses even in the crowdsourced world.
And crowdsourcing brokers, as Sami quite rightly calls Innocentive, are serving yet another purpose. I don't think there's any one way that's best for companies to open themselves to customer communities, but discovering all the ways to do this and all the ways Web 2.0 is changing this landscape is immensely helpful.
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+ TrackBacks (0) | Category: Crowdsourcing | Customer Co-Creation | Customer Viewpoint | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products | Open Innovation
September 5, 2005
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
My friend Harry Thomas emailed to say he's volunteering to help an innovative Seattle-based non-profit called Community Voice Mail (CVM) get off the ground.
CVM offers voice mail for those who can't afford it, or even afford phone service to begin with, or whose circumstances preclude phone service -- the working poor, the homeless, runaways, abuse victims, foster kids, etc.
CVM is one of 10 finalists in a cool and innovative contest I didn't even know about -- Amazon's Nonprofit Innovators contest. The 10 finalists were selected from almost 1,000 qualified entries by virtue of their "unique approaches and breakthrough solutions that most effectively improve their communities or the world at large."
The 10 winners are up for votes at this Amazon page. The public is invited to vote for their favorites by donating up to $1,000 to each through Amazon.com. All 10 nonprofits will keep the funds they raise; the organization that raises the highest dollar amount through Amazon.com by September 30, 2005, will be awarded a matching grant of up to $1 million from Amazon.com.
CVM's also got a viral marketing effort -- encouraging the spread of this flash video which is a cute, animated explanation of what they do. They are also participating in a Community Problem Solving site where the general public can suggest marketing ideas.
You are all encouraged to click on the Amazon site to donate (and thus vote for) CVM. But, since you are all terrifically creative, Harry wondered if IdeaFlow readers would be interested in generating more ideas on how CVM could possibly move from the underdog position to actually win $1 million from Amazon?
If you have any ideas, email me (renee at ideaflow.com) or just add your comments to the Community Problem Solving site.
I have one idea -- Hurricane Katrina struck after Harry sent me his email, and my first thought was that CVM could provide voice mail services to the refugees. We have thousands of Katrina refugees here in the DFW area, and many of them are saying they won't go back but will try to build a life here. They could use CVM's service as they try to move from the shelters to jobs and housing of their own. And also to try to reunite with friends and family from whom they were separated during the evacuation.
Here's an article about CVM from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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| Category: Marketing
December 9, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
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| Category: Commercialization | Creativity | Customer Viewpoint | Innovation, General | Marketing | New Products | Technology
November 26, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
In previous chapters, The Innovator’s Solution authors Christensen and Raynor explored a disruptive strategy of “competing against nonconsumption.” But in so doing, companies are faced with the immediate challenge of how to find and sell to the nonconsumers who can become your customers. A case study with which many of us are familiar — how Sony scored numerous times with disruptions such as the transistor radio and the Walkman — illustrates the point perfectly.
The Sony case also illustrates another point made in this chapter, which is that disruptive products often require disruptive channels for sales and distribution. This point is even more pertinent when you use the broader definition of channels that the authors are using: “A company’s channel includes no just wholesale distributors and retail stores, but any entity that adds value to or creates value around the company’s product as it wends its way toward the hands of the end user.” Example: computer makers such as IBM and Compaq are the channels through which Intel’s microprocessors and Microsoft’s operating system reach the end-use customer.
So if a disruptive strategy of “competing against nonconsumption” makes so much sense, the authors point out, why do incumbent companies do the opposite, which is “trying to stretch the disruptive innovation to compete against — and ultimately supplant — established products sold by well-entrenched competitors in large, obvious market applications”? The answer has to do with resource allocation.
Mistake No. 1 is to frame the disruption as an opportunity. Christensen and Raynor’s theory (much of which they credit to HBS professor Clark Gilbert) is that the disruption should be framed not as a potential opportunity for further growth, but as a threat to existing business that cannot be overlooked. Framing the disruption as a threat allows for top-level resource commitments. Then the disruptive technology should be developed by an “autonomous organization” (another division, a spin-off company) that can frame it as an opportunity.
Mistake No. 2 is to promise big numbers in the future in exchange for resources in the present. “The very effort of trying to articulate a convincing case for resources actually forces the entrepreneurs to cram the innovation as a sustaining technology in the existing market,” because the biggest markets whose size can be substantiated are those that already exist. Then when the results fall short of the promised numbers – because the market of nonconsumers is not being effectively targeted – resources are cut.
The authors suggest that companies that try new-market disruption establish a parallel process in which to evaluate potentially disruptive opportunities, a process in which the go/no go decisions are made based not on numerical rules but on how well they fit the pattern for disruption already explicated by the authors. And even then, the best that can be predicted is that “the initial conditions are conducive to successful growth.”
Disruption is, after all, still a risk.
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| Category: Books | Clayton Christensen | Commercialization | Customer Viewpoint | Innovation, General | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products | Technology
November 19, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
Back to Innovator’s Solution – Chapter 3, “What Products Will Customers Want To Buy?” is one that hits close to home for me, considering the business my team is in (and our company). But there’s a disappointment on the first page of the chapter: “Over 60% of new product efforts are scuttled before they ever reach the market, and of the 40% that do see the light of day, 40% fail to become profitable and are withdrawn from the market,” says Christensen. The disappointment isn’t just that the failure rate is high, but that the numbers are sourced (in one of those wonderful endnotes!) from a 1996 publication – the book Wellsprings of Knowledge by Dorothy Leonard (actually, the endnote says the book was published in 1996; Amazon says the hardback came out in January 1995 and a paperback version in 1998). In client presentations we’ve been using similar numbers that we’ve sourced from a 1998 Dun & Bradstreet study, but it’s disappointing to find even older numbers in a hot-off-the-press book.
In any case, Christensen points out that though the new-product failure rate is high, “failures are not really random.” They are a result of the difficulty of the task: How to connect disruptive innovations with the right customers to create a foothold in the market, then grow profitably along the sustaining trajectory. And identifying those disruptive footholds means “connecting with specific jobs your customers are trying to get done in their lives.”
Interesting discussion about market segmentation, which he defines as the “categorization stage of theory building.” And here’s correlation vs causation again – according to Christensen, “attribute-based categorization of either/both products or customers can reveal correlations between attributes and outcomes…but only…circumstance-based categorization (ie., segmentation schemes) tell causality – what features, functions, and positioning will cause customers to buy a product.
In other words, customers “hire” products to do specific “jobs,” so it’s best to segment the markets to mirror the way customers experience life. The critical unit of analysis is the circumstance, not the customer, which to me suggests qualitative, not quantitative, research. My instincts tell me this is right. And it actually also “fits” with the way we already structure our ideation projects, so that makes me all the happier about it!
Bottom line: One disruptive strategy is to compete against “nonconsumption” for “nonconsumers.” Traditional quantitative market research won’t identify these folks or the jobs they are trying to do. The best way to determine this market is to observe what people seem to be trying to do, then ask them about it. And only after you have identified those needs would you then move into quantitative research to determine the size of the market. Until you know what’s needed, you can’t figure out how many people might have that need.
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| Category: Books | Clayton Christensen | Customer Viewpoint | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products | Technology
November 7, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
"Voice of the Customer" will be held Dec. 8-10 in Coconut Grove, Fla. This conference, which is the only PDMA-endorsed "Voice of the Customer" event, incorporates VOC findings throughout the value chain, from new product development and brand strategy to product launch in the B2B or retail space.
On the agenda: Professor Gerald Zaltman of the Harvard Business School (author of How Customers Think) and conference chairman Dr. Joseph Plummer, EVP of McCann-Erickson Worldgroup will present - for the first time publicly - their marketing survey findings on the newest corporate top-line priority: Creating Consumer Demand.
Please note: IdeaFlow is a media partner for this conference. That means we're involved with the conference, though no actual money is changing hands! If you register because you saw this, please let them know.
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| Category: Conferences | Customer Viewpoint | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products
October 15, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
"Voice of the Customer" will be held Dec. 8-10 in Coconut Grove, Fla. This conference, which is the only PDMA-endorsed "Voice of the Customer" event, incorporates VOC findings throughout the value chain, from new product development and brand strategy to product launch in the B2B or retail space.
On the agenda: Professor Gerald Zaltman of the Harvard Business School (author of How Customers Think) and conference chairman Dr. Joseph Plummer, EVP of McCann-Erickson Worldgroup will present - for the first time publicly - their marketing survey findings on the newest corporate top-line priority: Creating Consumer Demand.
Please note: IdeaFlow is a media partner for this conference. That means we're involved with the conference, though no actual money is changing hands! If you register because you saw this, please let them know.
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| Category: Conferences | Customer Viewpoint | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products
October 3, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
In previous notes I’ve commented that a recurring theme at Convergence was how customer needs play a very important role in a company’s innovation and new product development efforts. A specific presentation on this theme was “Customer-Centric Innovation: Turning Consumer Pain Into Innovative New Products” by Tom Kuczmarski and Scott Lutz (contact info at link isn't current for Scott, but it's a good description of him!).
Tom quoted a 2003 best practices study his company did: 85% of CEO respondents said conducting customer problem/need identification research prior to ideation is the most important driver of new product/service success in their organizations.
A main reason why research for new product development should focus on consumer needs and an understanding of consumer’s lives – rather than product and service attributes – is that the resulting ideas are more likely to be true breakthroughs.
This makes absolute sense to me. If you focus on needs, you’ll come up with new products that meet those needs. These products may or may not resemble current offerings, but at the very least they shouldn’t be so far out in left field (a common problem with unfocused new product development efforts) that they don’t still meet those needs, since that was the objective.
On the other hand, when you focus on researching what consumers do and don’t like about an existing product, the best you can expect is incremental improvement suggestions.
For those in the B2B world, the exploratory research needs to focus around understanding companies and the roles your customers play in their companies, Tom says.
One more point Tom made about starting with pain – your new products are more likely to be profitable if they enable the solution to a problem on which consumers place a “higher need intensity.”
Scott’s portion of the presentation focused on the “evergreen” themes, ongoing consumer needs that many successful new products address: family, health, pleasure, energy, balance and community.
To uncover more focused needs than these, and to drill down into these evergreen themes and uncover specific needs, you need qualitative, not quantitative, research. In my opinion, these qualitative tools – depth interviews, lead-user interviews and ethnographic research – are the best ways to uncover the fears, wishes, anxieties, desires, frustrations and needs by which consumers express their pain. Quantitative research won’t be nearly as revealing, because it’s not exploratory.
Having noted all of that – you may recall that I had a conversation here last month with Andy Hargadon, author of How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, that takes this idea one step further. Our conversation was about how consumers can be an “open source” for new product ideas. I said then, using consumers for ideation, especially those screened for past product category usage, makes sense from the point of view that the consumers have both domain relevant knowledge (as potential users of the new product) and have creativity skills.
Relating this back to Tom and Scott’s presentation – let’s say you start with some qualitative research around discovering actual consumer pain (cognitive dissonance!). You’d use that as a starting point for ideation, as Tom pointed out in the presentation. But then let’s say you are doing that ideation with consumers who have usage experience in that product category. Their own “pain” is the specific domain-relevant knowledge that keeps them on focused on actual usable ideas, and their creativity is the spark that makes the ideas good.
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| Category: Conferences | Customer Viewpoint | Innovation, General | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products
September 29, 2003
Posted by Renee Hopkins Callahan
Let’s just get this straight upfront: I am not a real-time conference-blogging demon! For that reason I’m just now getting around to blogging my notes from last week’s Innovation Convergence. But what I lack in speed I hope to make up for in value! I’ve got lots of notes and impressions to share.
First, my overall main impression was that Capital I-Innovation has arrived. Last year’s Convergence had just 70 attendees. This year there were 220, and new conferences on the subject are springing up like mushrooms after a thunderstorm, including this December’s Return on Innovation, at which IdeaFlow contributors Joyce Wycoff and John Wolpert will both be speakers.
Convergence’s very first keynote speaker, Mark Turrell of Imaginatik, referenced a famous (in innovation circles, anyway) Gary Hamel quote that seems to be on its way to becoming reality: “Innovation must become what quality was 20 years ago.”
Turrell sounded another common theme in his keynote, “Measuring the Financial Impact of Innovation: Calculating Your Innovation Gap.” That common theme was to make a differentiation between innovation and creativity, and pretty much every speaker I heard did this. Boiled down to the basics, the difference seemed to be that innovation is a process and creativity is not. Devotees of a process approach to creativity might beg to differ, but for the purposes of this conference, the distinction allowed most speakers a productive platform from which to dive into their take on the innovation process.
My notes on Turrell’s innovation/creativity definitions: Innovation’s a much more corporate thing than creativity, much more of a process. People who don’t get creativity are the ones who control the budgets, the ones you must convince to fund innovation.
Innovation is the process of handling new things; creativity is a one-off, invention is a one-off. Invention and creativity are part of the innovation process.
The main point of his talk was to expound on IOI, or the financial Impact of Innovation. He defined this as the proportion of current and future revenue and profit that is dependent on the company’s ability to innovate, and defined IOI components as revenue growth, revenue protection, productivity, and disruptive change (unplanned activities, or risk).
He then said the innovation gap is the difference between the target level of innovation (IOI) and the current innovation capacity, which is based on the ability of a firm to handle new things.
Idea management is important, because too many new ideas block the pipeline. You could expect him to say that, since Imaginatik is in the idea-management business, but this was another theme that was sounded by many speakers, including the other opening-day keynote, Dr. George Land of the Farsight Group.
First, Land's innovation/creativity definitions: At the beginning of his talk, “A Systems Process for Innovation,” he defined innovation as “organized creativity.”
Land’s Advanced Innovation Method is a process for bringing innovation to a corporation. Most important is the first part, determining what strategic innovation would be for the company. Seventy percent of time and budget should go to the first three steps, he says, which doesn’t even get you to the generating concepts stage. The important first three steps encompass alignment, an innovation audit, and a determination of an innovation strategy. A big part of this is determining internal and external customers’ “deep needs” – what does the customer really want or need in the future? Land says his company actually puts a large number of resources into training a client company’s customers in creativity to get them to articulate their needs. I of course found this fascinating in light of our own consumer-based approach, which has been discussed here recently.
And, connecting to another discussion we’ve been having here lately, this time on the Copyright Wars, Land dropped something of a bombshell early on in his speech by declaring that “product innovations are very easy to copy, and patents are an invitation to a lawsuit.” Sure enough, the first question in the following Q&A was about this assertion. Land explained further: Patents are very easy to go around. The issue is a flow of innovation, and what’s in the pipeline to develop after what you’ve got now has been copied. Always assume you’re going to get copied, and try to discover where you can innovate that it will be invisible. Developing intellectual assets – documented current and past knowledge that can lead to the creation of new knowledge through systematic innovation -- is better than developing IP, which he defined as “knowledge with legal ownership.”
According to Land, only 15% of corporate innovation comes from R&D departments, so that’s not the most important place to be innovative in a corporation. The companies most successful at innovation are stealthily innovating their process, distribution, or some other aspect that’s hard for competitors to grasp and copy.
But in any case, he echoed Turrell by saying, “don’t bust the dam of ideas until you’ve got somewhere for the water to go. Innovation efforts must be targeted or they create chaos. It’s a duty and an obligation NOT to collect too many ideas, to be ruthless with idea management.”
Finally, and this is another theme that was echoed over and over again: The CEO must drive innovation, and financial gap analysis is essential on the front end. You must arm yourself with the facts. Land also felt that a company should have an EVP or C-level innovation executive heading an innovation department that would integrate all functions – marketing, technology, business development, etc. And a company’s biggest barriers to innovation, in his view, are lack of leadership to drive innovation, and lack of strategic alignment regarding innovation.
And this was just the first part of the first day!!! More to come.
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| Category: Collaborative Creativity | Commercialization | Conferences | Corporate Climate | Creativity | Disruptive Innovation | Innovation, General | Law & Policy | Marketing | Marketing Research | New Products | Open Innovation | Patents | ROI (Return on Innovation) | Technology
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