The Nine-Step Innovation Process

2008-10-09

The Nine-Step Innovation Process calls for alternating exploratory and concentrated thinking at each step. In this regard, exploratory thinking includes expanding thinking to look for new ideas, withholding judgment, accepting all possibilities, and looking for a quantity of ideas through new connections. In contrast, concentrated thinking includes contracting thinking to be more direct, making judgments and evaluating options, and looking for quality in line with overall strategic objectives.

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Characteristics of Winner-Take-All Markets: A Change in the Basis of Competition

The lure of being the dominant player in a winner-take-all market has led many a strategist to throw caution (and money) to the winds. Boo.com, Excite!, ValueAmerica.com, the Citibank point-of-sale venture, Iridium, and WebVan are but a selection of disastrous strategies aimed at securing a dominant position. What could the executives involved have been thinking? Clearly, they believed that the markets they sought to enter were winner-take-all markets, in which the leading player captures a dominant share of profits. They also clearly believed that entering aggressively on a large scale would generate valuable first-mover advantages. Unfortunately, it is easy to attribute winner-take-all characteristics to any new market, when in reality there are specific conditions that are essential for a winner-take-all environment to emerge. According to Prof. Rita Gunther McGrath, there are three characteristics that winner-take-all-markets appear to have in common: (1) a change in the basis of competition in a category; (2) the potential for customer lock-in; and (3) the potential for competitor lock-out. This post will present the first characteristics: a change in the basis of competition.

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Steps to Build a Business Model to Take Advantage of Blue Ocean Opportunities

In order to take the advantage of blue ocean ideas, companies need to build a robust business model, which means that their blue ocean strategy must be built in the sequence of buyer utility, price, cost, and adoption.

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Innovation Challengers and Leadership Imperatives

Creating bandwidth. Maximizing diversity. Connection and conversation. These are critical preconditions for spurring innovation. But is that all there is to enhancing a company’s innovation capability? Is the challenge merely to give employees 15 percent of their time to spend on pet projects, invite a rich mixture of different people co join the innovation effort, and ensure that a lot of interaction and collaboration is going on, both internally and externally? Not if a company really wants to get serious about building a high-performance innovation system. The truth is, you can bring diverse people togerher, you can give them time and space, you can have them connect and converse and hope that they produce some new ideas, but if those people are starting with the same old data, the same old orthodoxies and the same old perspectives, you will never get anything very radical coming out of the other end. Asking people to innovate in a breakthrough way without first building a foundation of novel strategic insights is mostly a waste
of time.

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2nd Step to Turn a Risky Competitive Situation into a Fresh Market Opportunity: Hold Reserves to Exploit Opportunities

When you are ready to implement your plan or encounter a competitor, do so by using a systematic approach. The following pages provide details about the five preliminary steps you should take before any decisive action. These include: (i) Make reliable estimates and calculations; (ii) Hold reserves to exploit opportunities; (iii) Assess levels of creativity and innovation; (iv) Evaluate the ability of your personnel to deal with friction and (v) Limit the negative effects of friction. This post will present the second step in the process: Hold reserves to exploit opportunities. The purpose of holding reserves is to ready yourself for unexpected opportunities, such as repositioning some resources to take advantage of sudden openings in previously neglected or poorly served market segments. Additionally, you open up options to react confidently when faced with a sudden threat from a competitor.

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How Mountain Dew Became an Iconic Power (Part 1)

2008-10-08

Some brands become icons. Think of Nike, Harley-Davidson, Apple, Absolut, Volkswagen–they’re the brands every marketer regards with awe. Revered by their core customers, they have the power to maintain a firm hold in the marketplace for many years. According to Douglas B. Holt, the most successful icons rely on an intimate and credible relationship with a rebel world: Nike with the African-American ghetto, Harley with outlaw bikers, Volkswagen with bohemian artists, Apple with cyberpunks. And even before these, there was the soft drink Mountain Dew. Let’s take a look at how, back in the 1950s, a small bottler in Tennessee succeeded with a rebel myth that addressed one of the most potent ideological contradictions of the day.

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David Neeleman’s Rules for Succeeding in Any Business (Part 1)

David Neeleman has spent his life learning and practicing a set of rules by which he’s built his many successes. Some he’s developed on his own. Others have come through trial and error. Many have been learned from the smart people he has surrounded himself with over the years. Whatever the source, all have been evident in his many business ventures—including three successful airlines and a technology company. He applies them to his personal life as well. Neeleman is now putting these rules to work at JetBlue. As he often points out, these principles don’t just apply to the airline business. They are applicable to all industries and can benefit every businessperson. And while most may sound like common sense, it’s amazing how few businesses actually live by them in their daily operations. While Neeleman has clearly articulated several of these rules, others can be inferred through observing the deeds and strategies he has employed over the years. In this post, first 7 rules of succeeding are introduced: (i) Follow your passion; (ii) Think outside of the box; (iii) Work with and learn from the best; (iv) Ready to move on; (v) Build a better mousetrap; (vi) Be well capitalized; and (vii) Take good care of your people.

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