Which brands innovated the most in 2014?

Nielsen did a study of over 17,000 new products that were launched between 2008-2012, and analysed 62 of the them, for how they introduced products that were scalable and loved by the customers. These products were not mere tweaks in packaging, ingredient reformulations, size changes, and re-positioning of existing brands. They had also generated sales of $50 million minimum in the first year, in the US. If these brands had achieved at least 90% of sales in the second year, then it confirmed consumer demand. So the criteria that were being looked into were: Distinctiveness, Relevance and Endurance.

The winners were fourteen US brands that we in India, are mostly not familiar with, but here they are: ZZZQuil, Mucinex Fast-Max, Meow Mix Tender Centers, Tide Pods, International Delight Iced Coffee, Sargento Ultra Thin Slices, Gevalia Kaffe Retail Coffee, Nature Valley Protein Bars, Febreze Car Vent Clip, Nabisco BelVita Breakfast Biscuits, Angry Orchard Hard Cider, Barcel Takis Corn Chips, Bud Light Lime Ritas, and Depend Silhouette Briefs for Women/Depend Real Fit Briefs for Men.

Excerpts from the ‘Breakthrough Innovation Report’ which was published this year (2014):

•        Game-changing innovation is possible in any company or category.
•        Managers offer many definitions of “innovation;” consumers use just one: a new offering that resolves a circumstance of struggle and fulfills an unmet aspiration.
•        Breakthrough Winners overwhelmingly make Category Expansion a criteria for innovation ideas.
•        Demand Driven Innovation is lean innovation in that waste, risk, and time are relentlessly and systematically removed from the system.
•        Innovation success has very little to do with luck or genius – and even less to do with magic.

The report also suggests that “a consumer-centered behavioral definition of innovation turns out to be the only really reliable one when establishing criteria, beliefs, and mental models about what is and what is not “innovation.” 

“The right question and the trustworthy guide is “does the brand offer a benefit bundle that brilliantly performs an important job in consumers’ lives for circumstances in which previously available solutions were unsatisfactory or non-existent?”

Some brands did a great job of answering the above question and meeting needs in a more than satisfactory manner. Which is why Nielsen spotted them among a clutter of 3,463 products that were launched in 2012. Only 71 made the cut - of having sales of over $50 million. These winners paid attention to their existing customers and reached out to new ones by expanding category. They generated 45% of dollar sales on average from this.

The report states that “In our experience, and perhaps because of its inherent attractiveness, companies over-invest in sustaining improvements while under-investing in solutions addressing new user groups or circumstances of consumption.”

But their study has proved that “Innovations that address new users and new circumstances often command premium prices as a consequence.” What’s more, people are more than happy to pay this high price, if the product delivers what they were looking for. Nielsen’s researchers call the discovery of opportunities in unmet/unsatisfied customer needs as ‘demand driven insights’. Such insights are intuitive and cut-to-the chase. Customers don’t mince words if they are unhappy about products. This makes iteration possible and also kills bad ideas instantly. This helps organisations direct their financial resources to the big ideas that will work and bring in the bucks.

The vital point of a complete innovation job spec is to “understand the context, the emotions, and the desired outcome.” This can be done by framing products as services that has been designed for customers because this is the way that they will adopt and adapt products into their lifestyle. It also “guards against an overly narrow focus on the physical product attribute dimensions of innovations.”

The report also suggests that “Too many organizations design risk (and waste) into their processes by listening to innovation pundits who proclaim that bold leaps of faith are required, that true innovators embrace risk. This is bad advice. Successful innovators do not have supernatural risk tolerances. Quite to the contrary: they are systematic risk minimizers. Successful innovation is about minimizing, not embracing, risk. As management guru Peter Drucker wrote 30 years ago when asked about the entrepreneurial “type”: “I, too, know a good many successful innovators and entrepreneurs. Not one of them has a propensity for risk taking.”

Ultimately, listening to your customers and even those who do not use your products, is where you will get your new ideas from. So any demand driven innovation has the potential to make innovation success rates swing from 85% failure to 85% success.

Graphic is from the report. Read the full report here: Breakthrough Innovation Report 2014

'Invention is often confused with innovation'

Rita Gunther McGrath is the author of ‘The End of Competitive Advantage’ and an associate professor of management at the Columbia Business School.  She talks about how ‘invention’ is often confused with ‘innovation’ and suggests that not everyone in an organisation should have innovation as their agenda anyway. Only people who are very good at it, should be doing it.

So what is the reward for these innovative mavericks? Surprisingly, many companies don’t reward them.  This is simply because organisations don’t reward people for just coming up with a great idea unless they want to run it. Her experience has been that, people with this kind of talent don’t usually want to be bogged down by mundane bureaucratic ways of running what they start.

She explains in a Strategy& video, that people are very taken by stories of Thomas Edison (and others of his ilk) and his continual fine-tuning of an idea until he got the light bulb just right. But she prefers Scott Anthony’s definition instead, which is “Innovation is something new that creates value.” He is the Managing Partner of Innosight – a pedigree firm with a stellar roster of innovation experts on their payroll. So he should know what he’s talking about, and we should pay attention to what he says.

This “something” could cover a lot of ground. It could be business models, system processes or new products all together. She feels “companies limit themselves unnecessarily by taking such a narrow view (of innovation).”

It is exactly because of this that companies are struggling to innovate. She said “there is a mismatch, where we talk about innovation but actually do other things.” A bunch of factors play along simultaneously as well. For instance, the economy could be acting up. She explained how a colleague of hers, did a study years ago, where she found that about 11% of the economy was in rapid growth and about an equal number was in a rapid decline. So in the final analysis, in this time-frame, very few leaders of large organisations would have had any experience in being in a “high growth innovative environment” themselves.

Rita said, “First, they don’t have much experience doing innovation. Second thing is that to do innovation, you have to operate in what I call a high assumption-to-knowledge ratio world. And that requires making a lot of assumptions, which human beings are not very good at making. So what most executives miss is the need to shift the way that they lead and manage from a low assumption world to a high assumption world. And it has a completely different internal logic to it. Making this shift is problematic for people. “

Then there are the usual suspects like not having enough funding, resources, governance structure and qualified people. She has seen people use the same tired practices being used with everything, whether it’s pitching for a $5000 prototype or $500,000 plant extension.

Breaking the mould in every way, is the best way to begin innovating.

Brilliant ways to generate Ideas

I got this graphic from Futurethink and find their suggestions are great, practical, and very doable.

Click on the graphic to enlarge it.

Seven Chronic Innovation Problems

Bill Poston is the founder of Kalypso, a global innovation consulting firm. His experience has taught him that every company has its own set of challenges since they have their own history and culture, and operate in a certain way. He, therefore, came to the conclusion that while the above factors made each organisation unique, there were seven key chronic problems that ailed all of them, across the board.

He leads us through them in a webinar called: ‘Seven Chronic Problems for Innovation Officers to Address’. He has helped guide companies to generate return on innovation investment, and so here is what the expert has to say:

1.      Organisations lack an innovation strategy:  While the word innovation gets thrown around liberally in ‘strategy’ discussions, they don’t have a set of clear, growth goals that have to come out of innovation.  This starts with setting growth targets from innovation. It should answer questions as to what “we expect in terms of revenue and margin” and to have a clear idea of “how you are going to be able to deliver those returns and create linkages between investments you are making and those expected results.”  So asking questions like ‘what are your goals’ and ‘what risks are you prepared to take’ and if you are ‘going to use internal resources or leverage others outside the organisation’ are extremely vital.

2.      Lack of alignment: Since innovation is inherently cross-functional, there has to be buy-in from all business units and functions involved. Poston suggests it’s important to ‘understand the plan and communicate intent’. He has seen this lacking across R&D budget allocation, technical and commercial functions, marketing. He says all teams tend to undervalue the contribution of each other. A successful manager has to be able to get everyone on the same page and make sure the strategy gets implemented.

3.      Overloaded pipeline: He has seen budgets go up but the headcount has remained stagnant. So while there is money and hence, the expectations go up for what more can be done, but the ability to deliver hasn’t improved. He feels this “problem is so pervasive that it has become a normal mode of operation.” Research shows that pipelines should be loaded at 80% of the capacity, to give people breathing room to innovate and understand new concepts that may not have been given official sanction. He has seen companies that function well at a 110% level too. But at 200%-300%, it’s just too overloaded. 

4.      Rampant incrementalism: The willingness to assume higher levels of risk for higher levels of growth is very rare. Product portfolios are filled with small, low risk initiatives that have low returns waiting at the end. He said most product innovations are “minor packaging and labelling tweaks that don’t really affect the substance of the product. They may be line extensions which while being nice, are probably unlikely to move the needle on margins, sale or share.”

This problem has got worse in the last 10 years as a result of the financial crises and the short-term nature of the investment horizon.  Poston said, “The irony is that a low-risk portfolio is actually a giant risk to the viability of an organisation.” Such organisations are going to be overtaken by an upstart who disrupts the market.  So allocation of budgets over a mix of high and low risk projects in a portfolio, is a wise move to make.

5.      Unclear accountability: Have a chief innovation officer on board to manage things. He’s got to handle things that need to be done as a team. If accountability lies with the CEO or the chairman of the board, which is normally the case with many organisations, then these men/women are not going to be able to dedicate time from their busy schedules to look into details of every innovation project happening around their company. So the ideal person is one who is comfortable with both the commercial and technical aspects of the innovation business.

6.      Short-term orientation:  If an organisation’s horizon is short term, then it’s very difficult to look at long term initiatives. So an organisation needs to have executives who “elongate the planning horizon and develop a long-term investment view of the innovation priorities.”

7.      Lack of skills:  This is sort of like the overloaded pipeline situation.  There is a lack of key, technical and commercial skills, and people have not been hired who could do more high-end jobs for a while, at most organisations. This downsizing is affecting innovation because critical skills were not developed and in many cases, were not even identified.

These problems are equally present in both – small and large companies, and across industries. So everyone is equally laidback or confused about their approach to innovation.  Finally, Poston believes that revenue projections for a big idea need not be looked into in the early stages of the product cycle. He said, “Any revenue projections that are far out (in terms of time horizon) needs to be discounted by the potential of the organisation to actually deliver them.”

Graphic is from the webinar. This was written for Beyond Jugaad.

Digital Ethics: How Not to Mess Up with Technology

With innovation getting so much airtime in recent years, what is the consensus on how all that innovative technology is being used? To get some perspective, Gartner (a consultancy) hosted a webinar put together by their VP of Research, Frank Buytendijk, which debated Digital Ethics. What is Digital Ethics anyway? Buytendijk defines it as “A system of values and moral principles for the conduct of digital interactions among business, people, and things.”

He realises that most people go along with the ‘guns don’t kill, but people do’ school of thought. Similarly with technologies, it is people who are putting it to wrong use, so the responsibility should lie with them.  He, however, stated that technology has a “moral imprint”, even though it may have been created to solve a certain and usually common-place problem. So he feels that the innovator/s should be responsible for the unintended use that his/her invention is put to.

He used the example of TomTom, which is a bi-directional navigation software that people use in their vehicles. It gives data about traffic conditions as well as where the driver is at any given moment (in relation to the traffic congestion). It does aggregate and share its subscribers data with whoever pays for it. But the data shared is anonymous. The buyer of the data doesn’t know who was driving where, at a particular time of the day.

Even such ‘cleaned up’ data has its uses. It is being used by the Ministry of Infrastructure to map out where its own road-repair works are ongoing, and whether this is further causing traffic snarls. This turns out to be further value addition for TomTom users – even if indirectly. Another user of this data is the traffic police. They analyse the data to monitor speeds on various stretches of road. In doing this, they can plan speed traps to make drivers slow down and drive carefully.

So he asked, is this a good or a bad thing? Actually, both customers of the service and the media made a hue and cry, along the lines of ‘big brother is watching’ scenario, when it came to cops being given access to the data. TomTom’s share price fell and they had to rewrite their terms and conditions – to analyse their data for traffic jam patterns…and nothing more.

The reality is that ultimately, one cannot undo knowledge and pretend ignorance of the unexpected consequences of technology. Buytendijk suggests that monitoring is required. Here’s a framework to help you decide whether you are going to be indifferent or take a stand:       

• Black Hat: Is your main goal to make a buck. There is no place for ethics in business.
• Grey Hat: You just want to do your job and avoid an ethical discussion. If and when pushed into one, you make it up as you go along.
• White Hat: You think through the ethics of technology. Ethical responsibility outweighs business responsibility. 

Which category you want to belong to, is entirely up to you.

Buytendijk does agree that the organisation you work with has to take a stand, but since an organisation is a collection of people, it has to start with someone who has to initiate the ‘ethics’ discussion.

In a sense, just like a good idea, even taking an ethical stand does begin with an individual…and then spreads out to others.

Graphics are sourced from the webinar: Digital Ethics: How Not to Mess Up with Technology. This was written for Beyond Jugaad.

Communicate your way to Success

Do you want to know the secret sauce that can improve your career? Communication. If you do it well, you have a chance to make an impact that will help propel you to success. Feeling nervous is normal, and Kristi Hedges has shared the secret of how to deal with it. (See graphic.)

She is a Senior Leadership Coach and Author of 'The Power of Presence' and she has done extensive research to come up with these five criteria that makes for a compelling communicator.

1. Presence: She suggests this is the basis for everything. It should also come from within and not be a "superficial fix". Kristi says this quality is when a person is able to connect with others and inspire them. It's not about assertiveness or charisma. There is no point in showing up pretending to be someone else because no one can sustain that and people can see through it. So to make sure your presence is all about 'You', it has to be intentional, individual, and inspirational.
You could ask these three questions and pay attention to the answers you get:
- What do I want my presence to convey?
- How do I want people to feel?
- How do I need to show up as a messenger?

2. Buy-in: You need to work with a team/s and to do this, you'll need cooperation from everyone. The usual approach to get people on board is describe the project and demand they help. Kristi calls this the 'describe and demand' tactic. The better one is what she calls the 'Dial in' approach.

This tactic works when you take your idea out to people when it's not "fully baked". You describe it and then invite comments on it. Then acknowledge their feedback and then leverage that to fine-tune your own original idea.

3. Executive Briefing Skills: This is about presenting ideas confidently to senior management. Kristi suggests some good ways to get good at this skill. (See the graphic.) Also check out the webinar to see her suggestions on how to handle a difficult Q&A session, if they come up, at the end of a presentation.

She suggests asking the other participants if they feel the same way about a question that has been asked. So throw the question open to the audience. Another way to handle this, is to ask for time and people usually give it to you, when you are discussing new ideas/proposals anyway.

4. Virtual Presence: There are a lot of teams that now work virtually. And this is where issues pertaining to working 'virtually' becomes important. So to get people moving and pumped about what is expected from them, on those boring conference calls, (where most people are likely to be napping rather than engaging with others), you need to bring in energy, humour, and some improvisation to this. Also, keeping a lone ranger handy, to ask all the unwanted or unasked questions will help.


5. Feedback: You need to ask for it and give it. Though many companies are moving to asking for this "in-the-moment" and in a "proactive" manner, rather than a hindsight version of it.

So if you want to give and/or get good, workable feedback, Kristi suggests that you can go with giving constructive feedback. Or don't give any at all. It should also be given with positive intent. She emphasized that the quality of the feedback (whether receiving or giving it) depends on a person's presence.

Yes..it truly begins and ends with You.

Graphics are from the webinar. Click here to watch it: Communicate your Way to Success

Trust: Missing in action where it counts

Whom do you trust? That's a big, loaded question. And at least one organisation has been putting out a Trust Barometer for 14 years now. Edelman has looked at 27 markets globally and checked for 16 attributes. While the report is spread over a few links that I think you should look at - the findings are disheartening, and not surprising.

- CEOs and government leaders were at the bottom of the 'Trust' list. Academics and experts got far better ratings than them. Obviously, those fat salaries aren't fooling anyone.

- BRIC countries suffered from a trust deficit. India, China and Russia came out even worse than Brazil. Countries like Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Canada were rated highly.

- Small and medium enterprises won over government ones all over the world. In Asia, big, publicly traded companies scored higher over state enterprises.

- The technology sector was most highly trusted. Followed by automotive, food and beverage, and consumer packaged goods. Media and banking didn't make it highly on this list.

- Businesses were considered to be under-performing on high priority attributes like engagement and integrity, and performing well on low priority things like operations.

Well, this is some sort of guide for businesses to look at and correct their actions as they go along, if they want to. I'm hoping they add information about trust issues in the workplace in future studies. Along the lines of how to spot untrustworthy people? Or how to deal with untrustworthy people (the top 5 successful strategies) etc. After all, these things matter to me on a daily basis, at any place of work and in life, than the macro issues.

If you are like me, and know more untrustworthy people than you would like to know, then you'll look forward to such an index too.

Read more from the report here: http://www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/2014-edelman-trust-barometer/trust-around-the-world/

Will Big Data solve your business problems?

I saw a webinar on Big Data and it was certainly educational and informative. The words 'Big Data' is meant to emphasize the sheer volume, variety and velocity of the data now available to businesses. But one particular slide stood out, while the presentation was being made. Here it is..

1. The table shows what each industry's big problem areas are, and how Big Data will, hopefully, help address them. So media and communications firms (37%) want to use it to enhance customer experience, 41% of the insurance sector wants to do the same and 40% of the retail industry has the same plan.

2. A fairly huge 42% of the education sector wants to use all that data to improve process efficiency. Healthcare (40%) and transportation (38%) are the next two sectors which wants to do the same thing.

3. Surprisingly, when it comes to using data for introducing new services or business models, the transportation (31%) and education sectors (25%) beat even the services sector (24%) and retail sector (8%) hands down.

4. All that data should help with better and more targeted marketing, and that's just the expectation of the media (21%), retail (31%), and banking sectors (21%).

5. How about cost reduction? The top three sectors are education (17%), government (15%) and banking (13%). Well, the latter two sectors can start by trimming salaries and keeping them at a more realistic level!

6. Predictably, the banking sector (11%) wants to look into improving risk management and so does healthcare (10%). But again surprisingly, the insurance and transportation sectors seemingly don't want to do anything about it. Even manufacturing is at a low 5%.

7. On regulatory compliance, the banking (18%), healthcare (10%), and government (8%) sectors want to get proactive.

8. Monetising information is something that is a top priority for the government (8%), services (8%), and the media (5%) sectors. Banking is at 3% and for retail, it isn't an issue. (Really? Then what's all that tracking with cameras and apps all about??).

9. Enhanced security capabilities is an issue for the government sector (12%) and both banking and media sectors tie at 5% each. It doesn't seem to worry the retail and manufacturing sectors at all.

Let's hope all this Big Data usage makes businesses more efficient and profitable, and it isn't a one-time fad that everyone is latching on to, in a half-hearted way. I don't feel just having all this data on your hands will help solve a problem. You need to be able to make sense of it too, and then use it to put together a coherent, workable strategy. The webinar states this too.

To see the webinar, click: http://www.gartner.com/technology/topics/big-data.jsp and here's another one that you should see too: 'Making Big Data Actionable: How Data Visualization and Other Tools Change the Game': http://stream1.krm.com/Mediasite5/Play/31ea89ff1cff47bc9271f4e6d2b33f801d Reading this whitepaper might also help: 'Product Development in the Age of Big Data: What you Need to Know' or watch the webcast here: http://innovationexcellence.hs-sites.com/big-data-new-product-development

How some pros get their marketing right

I get mailers and newsletters, and pamphlets in the snail mail..and just about every attention - seeking communication (and downright annoying ways to get me good and mad), about so many services and products. I do want to know about all the fascinating things, every business has lined up for me to spend my money on, but I'm usually not excited about the way it's presented. Also often, I'm not sure what value they add to my life.

Now what do I consider great advertising? Here are three that I know make the cut with me, and I'll tell you why.

Perfect match of Disney princesses with gorgeous engagement rings, which would sentimentally turn on many women.

BodyShop's mailer has this in it, which appealed to my 'conscientious consumer' core. (Click on image.)

A Pepsi commercial that rocked because it showed empowerment, even if it is selling something as lightweight as a soft drink.

So if you marketing types want to impress me, then get some things right. Make the message your sending across to me, resonate with me. Let it be about my personality and aspirations, and not just about my wallet. I must say that Flipkart and CaratLane do this well. The former will actually see the things I browse and suggest others that I might like. So, when it comes to books, I end up picking titles I would never have noticed otherwise.

CaratLane has mastered the art of wooing customers really well, and I've said this in two other posts too. (Read them here: Eternal words that make you feel cherished! Words that could be great pick-up lines! and CaratLane: A shiny, classy online beacon). Take a look at their latest e-mailer.

The rare great exception in the financial services sector, has been the Professor Simply Simple series which is the brainchild of Tata Mutual Fund. They make boring financial and economic facts come alive.

May be, these examples will make you sit up and take note of what you are doing wrong, at such great expense!

Indian & US startups: Not an even playing-field

There are startups popping up almost every day, and of every kind. But we are nowhere near to being as fertile as the US ecosystem. I found an interesting graphic showing the huge gap in population numbers-to-startups ratio.

So yes, the US beats us hands down but it's pertinent to point out that:

1. Their manufacturing sector is almost non-existent and startups are filling in the gap of providing employment to people and revenues (taxes) to their government. Therefore, they are encouraged and things like rules and regulations are made as butter smooth as possible. In India, it's the other way around at the moment.

2. Quantity doesn't equate with quality. So having large numbers breathing in India doesn't mean all of them will have brilliant ideas. Not because they can't think. But because they are all not educated enough to execute ideas. With a majority of India's population living in villages on meagre farming incomes or daily wages, education isn't considered a priority...surviving is.

If we switched populations around, I think you'd see the same disparity. At the end of the day, everything is about being given the opportunity to flourish and do your best. And if your denied that, then it's not an even playing-field at all.

Anyway, for people who are going down the startup route in India, here is a tool that you can use to validate your idea "without wasting time or money": http://www.javelin.com/experiment-board.html

Eternal words that make you feel cherished!

I got a card from CaratLane with these lines...they were lovely enough to share.

"I'm gonna tell God everything"

Lately, I've chanted this line to a lot of my male friends, that "their gender has made this world an unsafe and unfair place for everyone else but themselves." Except when they are at the receiving end of such behaviour from other men, or through their own sheer stupidity, I don't think many of them even notice or care because normally status quo suits them just fine. Usually when others are getting hurt or being trampled over, or killed, it doesn't pinch them.

But I suggest, they take a look at this picture. Some of that smug nonchalance might get wiped off because this innocent little boy is just the perfect example of what I have been saying all along. And look what he has threatened to do!

A lot of you men (and any women who happen to be like you) deserve to get some special attention from God, for this kind of atrocity, and a lot else.

- For the everyday kind of 'emotional atyachaar' that you put people through, when you live or work with others.
- For the 'chuna lagaoing' that you do in the name of dating (and marriage). When you don't and won't conduct an honest relationship. How you expect your hollow relationships to work is anyone's guess.
- For the ass-licking (and the cheap office politics) that you indulge in, to climb up the corporate ladder, when you have neither the abilities or the intelligence to become successful on your own merit.

I'm only sorry that a little kid had to die to take these overdue messages to God.

(Here's a video dedicated to the child that Sunny sent me) 

                                                         
I also found this graphic that lists monetary compensation, country-wise, for victims of armed conflict. Hope this helps someone.