"Innovations had better be capable of being started small, requiring at first little money, few people, and only a small limited market."  ~ Peter Drucker

Product: a Broad Definition

According to Phillip Kotler, a product is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, use, or consumption that might satisfy a need or want. Thus, a product may be a physical good, retail store, person, organization, place, or idea.

Product Innovation as a Team Sport

The myth that products are developed by lone geniuses in their labs, who turn sudden inspiration into practical innovation "wasn't quite true even in Thomas Edison's day, and it certainly isn't true today," writes Michael Hammer.² "Reality is far more complex. Talent and inspiration are necessary but not sufficient. To create and launch nearly any new product today requires many people with many different skills."

• Engineers must envision and design the product, using customer input provides via sales representatives, then

• Marketing experts must assess the product's potential and help shape its specific features.

• Financial types must analyze the cost of marketing it and determine a competitive price.

• Manufacturing specialists must decide how to make the product in volume.

• Lawyers must assess how it can be protected from imitators.

The key to success here are coordination and discipline.²

Steve Jobs' 12 Rules of Success

10. Innovate. Innovation distinguishes a leader from a follower. Say no to 1,000 things make sure you don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. Concentrate on really important creations and radical innovation. Hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that pulls it all together... More

3 Strategies of Market Leaders

The market leader is dominant in its industry and has substantial market share. If you want to lead the market, you must be the industry leader in developing new business models and new products or services. You must be on the cutting edge of new technologies and innovative business processes. Your customer value proposition must offer a superior solution to a customers' problem, and your product must be well differentiated... More

The Jazz of Innovation

The improvisation-driven model for innovation project management doesn’t discard structure, just as there is a clear structure to good jazz.

In innovation, this structure is created through roadmaps, guiding principles, business processes, systems and organizational charts. Strategic-planning and road-mapping processes cannot guarantee brilliant flashes of creative insight, but they can prepare minds and increase the odds that such flashes occur in real time. Thus structure, as chords do in jazz, serves as a basis for improvisation, experimentations, discoveries and innovation.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is not just a valuable creative tool at the fuzzy front end of projects. It's also "a pervasive cultural influence for making sure that individuals don't waste too much energy spinning their wheels on a tough problem when the collective wisdom of the team can get them "unstuck" in less than an hour."⁴... More

Observing People

It is observation-fueled insight that makes innovation possible. Uncovering what comes naturally to people. And having the strengths to change the rules... More

Prototyping

"Quick prototyping is about acting before you've got the answers, about taking chances, stumbling a little, but then making it right. Living, moving prototypes can help shape your ideas. When you're creating something new to the world, you can't look over your shoulder to see what your competitors are doing; you have to find another source of inspiration," says Tom Kelly¹ from IDEO... More

The Art of Innovation: 9 Truths

By: Guy Kawasaki

• Jump to the next curve. Too many companies duke it out on the same curve. If they were daisy wheel printer companies, they think innovation means adding Helvetica in 24 points. Instead, they should invent laser printing. True innovation happens when a company jumps to the next curve – or better still, invents the next curve, so set your goals high.

Radical Innovation

Long term corporate success linked to the ability to innovate. Although corporate investment in improvements to existing products and processes does bring growth, it is new game changing breakthroughs that will launch company into new markets, enable rapid growth, and create high return on investment. Companies that are not bound by prevalent fallacies and rules of conventional wisdom have been able to break out of the pack, create a new highly profitable market niche, and win customers.

Radical innovation should be a continued activity to help your company reinvent itself and maintain its market leadership... More

 Case in Point  Silicon Valley Companies

Adapted from Relentless Growth, Christopher Meyer

Deciding If Your Innovation Portfolio Has Enough Stretch:

1. Balance between revolutionary and evolutionary initiatives. First, Silicon Valley companies assess the overall balance between revolutionary and evolutionary projects. The ultimate arbitrator of portfolio stretch if the innovation leaders’ judgment, experience, intuition, and luck..

Creative Leadership

Creative leaders search for and discover opportunities, introduce positive change and make quantum leaps forward in creating new products and processes... More

References:

1. "Driving Growth Through Innovation, Robert B. Tucker

2. Agenda, Michael Hammer

3. "Best Practices: Building Your Business with Customer-Focused Solutions", Arthur Andersen

4. The Art of Innovation, Tom Kelley

5. ASIT – Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking, Roni Horowitz

6. The Open Innovation Marketplace, Alpheus Bingham, Dwayne Spradlin

7. The Innovative Enterprise, Harvard Business Review