Sylver Speaks: New Perspectives on Innovation

As a research design and strategy firm, we know that an organization’s innovation plan is critical. In our recent virtual roundtable, the Sylver team was asked to weigh in on the topic of Innovation.

Innovation continued to be a huge topic in 2011. With innovation quickly becoming a part of every organization’s vocabulary, what do you think will be the biggest drivers of innovation in 2012?

Brianna: Innovation has been all the buzz for many years now. It’s not new but I do think people’s perspective and clarity on what it means for their organization may be becoming a bit more clear, but even that I’m not 100% sure of.

I actually wrote an article on this topic, entitled “What Does ‘Innovation’ Really Mean?” in 2006.  I think many of the points addressed in that article still hold true today.

“Innovation” as a term I think is used in organizations to sum up the following: We need to grow in some manner, whether that means revenues, customer connection, etc., and figure out some way beyond what we’re currently doing to do that. Sometimes those shifts are minor and other times major, depending on who the company is, their risk tolerance, how much their organization is under threat in the marketplace, etc.

As for drivers of innovation, I think those remain the same. Taken directly from the article mentioned above:

Corporations typically seek innovation services in response to one of three situations:

1. They are currently engulfed in the flames of the “burning platform.” Their profits are dropping, their products are not selling and they don’t know what to do about it.

2. They have emerged from the days of the “burning platform” and have come to understand that innovation is not a start/stop process, but an evolving one that requires constant attention.

3. They are a leader in their industry and are determined to stay there. Failure is accepted within their organization because they understand and fully embrace the numbers game in product development.

While Brianna approached the topic from an innovation driver perspective, Rebecca weighs in by suggesting how companies can achieve quality innovations for their organization.

Rebecca: Research is a critical foundation for innovation. In fact, research is the foundation Sylver has built its business on in the interest of supporting innovation. Sure, if you’re Steve Jobs, you might be able to innovate without doing a lot of consumer research. But, most of us aren’t Steve Jobs. We can cite multiple examples where companies either forgot or neglected to do the research and then didn’t get the results they were expecting. Home Depot is a great example. They entered China, only to find out the typical Chinese consumer doesn’t really want to “do it yourself” so the retailer was forced to close multiple stores and reduce its presence in that market. (http://behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/08/6009194-home-depot-fails-to-convince-china-to-diy)

Brianna: Bottom line, companies will have the best success in driving innovation in their organization if they focus on:

• Creating repeatable processes for innovation internally.

• Creating non-traditional metrics for evaluating the value and success of innovations within their organization, particularly those that are departures from their core business.

Categories: Innovation