I'm Back

I took a break, but now I will be back to posting regularly.

I had an opportunity to attend the 2007 Frost & Sullivan Growth Innovation and Leadership Conference last week and was a featured Though Leader. Here are some key takeaways from the conference:
•Look for mega trends. Listen to for the “weak signals” on the periphery

•Combine the data (market research, voice of customer, etc.) and look for possible intersection points – what are the possible impacts?

•Need to understand the customers’ ecosystem – How do they measure value?

•The best opportunities for growth and innovation come from seemingly unrelated industries or from the convergence of unrelated technologies

•One definition of innovation is “significant movement along a main parameter of customer value”

•Customers know what they want, but they don’t know what’s possible. Therefore, the voice of the customer should be only a small part of what influences innovation decisions

•The reason to innovate is to affect the business result

•HP has a Center of Innovation which proves the viability of new ideas through market and customer validation. Once they determine how the company will make money with the new product or service, they then begin to solicit sponsorship and funding as they continue through the validation process. This helps to facilitate the handoff from ideation to product development

•GE has a dynamic innovation portfolio review process. They actively manage their innovation pipeline with senior management and determine which ideas to continue funding and which to cancel. They have a relatively open set of criteria for determining if projects will continue to receive funding. They feel comfortable taking a long-term approach and depending on the situation, it may be acceptable to be investing in a product that may not begin to generate revenue for ten years. They also allow for flexibility and can adopt new projects mid-budget cycle.

•Several companies talked about experiencing failures due to “rushing to innovate”. They were not in touch with the marketplace, could not demonstrate the value proposition to the customer.

•Several leaders cautioned about anticipating what will occur after the product/service launch