Innovation by numbers

The Economist writes about Reckitt Benckiser, a UK-based manufacturer and marketer of numerous household, health and personal products, and the role innovation has played in the company's recent good results. The article quotes Bart Becht, the company's current CEO:

"Mr Becht attributes his firm's success to its innovative and entrepreneurial culture. Up to 40% of Reckitt's sales come from products that are less than three years old. Innovation is not driven by high expenditure on research and development, but by the company's insights into consumer habits. Controversy is encouraged. The company's multinational staff come from very different backgrounds, which 'creates tension in the system,' says Mr Becht."

We don't know if this 40 percent refers to "new" products (i.e. less than three years old) from the company's perspective or the market's perspective. It could well refer to the many new brands that it has brought into the Reckitt Benckiser house. The most interesting part of the above comment, though, is the reference to the "company's insights into consumer habits" -- ethnography. This requires taking the focus of innovation well beyond the core product into such areas as the brand, the packaging, the smell, the channel of distribution, pricing, availability, container design, among many others. You can basically capture any element in the product space (i.e. the 4 Ps, the 7 Ps, the 22 Ps, whatever) and label your innovation according to that. One thing's for sure, the terms product innovation and process innovation alone are just too broad and limiting -- there needs to be a much more sophisticated vocabulary.


A truly American brand from a UK companyCompanies like Reckitt Benckiser have to be pretty good at innovation as they are not really selling anything that is particularly advanced in a technical sense. Also, they are often selling a product that probably hasn't changed much over the years. For example, has the recipe for its popular hot sauce changed from the original? Beyond the obvious brand innovations, many of the other types of innovations can be seen in any outlet in which the products are sold -- and anybody can learn from these innovations.

Take a walk down any supermarket aisle with a little notepad and record anything you see that catches your attention and write it down. It's better to do this activity with a member of the opposite sex, as you'll be able to see things you'd otherwise never notice. Once you get home, you can attach a label to the innovation -- not always easy as the boundaries tend to overlap. What examples of package design innovations do you see? What about price innovations?

The real question of course is how any of these non-core-product innovations can be applied to your own product or service?

Designed to fail

I recently bought an LG mobile phone as part of a Verizon contract. Unfortunately, though, the phone no longer works: the phone had gotten wet, according to the guy in the store. He even showed me a little white sticker inside the phone that has turned pink as proof that moisture was present. Fair enough, I cannot argue with that -- somehow, somewhere, the phone must have gotten wet. So out of the store I go with a new, full-price phone. Verizon must be laughing all the way to the bank when people like me accidently get a teeny-weeny bit of moisture in the phone from normal, day-to-day use and the phone fails. (I had put the phone on a damp kitchen counter.)


The above example is a classic case of where an available technology is not incorporated into the product in order to increase sales of that product. Here are a couple more:

1. Those toothbrushes and razors with the little blue strip. (Oral-B/Gillette, both brands in the P&G house of brands)

2. Car tires.

3. Ink jet cartridges.

4. Bars of soap.

If the company doesn't get you at the product design stage, they might just try some of the following tactics:

1. Tell you to use more than you need on the packaging: "Rinse and repeat" with shampoos.

2. Emphasize sell-by or expiry dates.

3. Bring in a new model.

4. Suggest new uses for the product. (Recipes for Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup/dozens of uses for bicarbonate of soda)

This type of innovation deserves a name all of its own!

Creativity and problem solving: the same thing?

The book Adaption-Innovation: In the Context of Change and Diversity treats creativity as a subset of problem solving, with all of us being creative, but at different different levels (how creative we are) and with different styles (in what way we are creative). In any act of creativity, problem solving and decision making will be in very close proximity: A hair stylist, for example, during her "flash of insight" for a new cut, will pretty quickly have the problem of choosing the best tool for the job. Razor, scissors or thinning scissors?

It's important to remember that individuals have different styles when solving problems: we will tend to have a "more innovative style" or a "more adaptive style." It's not a case of either or (similar to the well-known cultural dimension: more collectivist/more individualistic).

The book includes a table from Ikasen et al. (2000) that sheds some light on the differences between creativity and problem solving in terms of problem/task definition; solution pathway and method/desired outcome.

PROBLEM/TASK DEFINITION

Creativity: Fuzzy, ill defined and ambiguous

Problem Solving: Well defined and clearly structured

SOLUTION PATHWAY or METHOD

Creativity: Unknown, complex and non-determined

Problem Solving: Known, pre-determined and relatively simple

DESIRED OUTCOME

Creativity: Not currently or readily available, needs to be "invented" [original italics]

Problem Solving: Readily available, already exists

What's really fascinating about the above is that you start to appreciate that creativity tends to be more internally driven whereas problem solving is more externally driven -- often just a reaction to an already present resource. With creativity, by contrast, whatever is produced becomes itself a resource (think chefs in a kitchen combining ingredients or a producer of a new electronica song combining sounds). But the question still remains: From where does the desire to create come from when there is no apparent problem?

There's a very interesting video about problem solving styles on the Kai Center Web site. Here's the link to the Windows Media file and here's the Quicktime link. You need to use the pause button to stop the movie in order to read the slides.

SOURCE: Isaksen, S. G., Dorval, K. B., & Treffinger, D. J. (2000). "Creative approaches to problem solving: A framework for change," 2nd ed. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Publishing.

An unusual lead user innovation

Anybody familiar with Eric von Hippel's work on lead user innovation knows that many of today's mass-produced products had their origins not in companies' R&D departments but outside the firm (e.g. in a different industry, in a different geographical location or from a lead user). Lead user innovations are not always mass produced, though, because the market for the problem that they solve is perceived as too small by manufacturers.

When a mover came to my apartment in Taipei recently, I noticed he had made his own trolley-ramp to help him wheel things like washing machines and fridge-freezers over the three-inch thresholds found in some Taipei apartment buildings. He was obviously so fed up with lifting the heavy objects over the obstacle, and with no suitable ramp currently available from manufacturers, he built his own.



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