how to structure your innovation process. by sunidee

10 Years SunIdee: sharing innovation best practices

How to structure your innovation

process

© SUNIDEE 2012

the bright way to innovate!

10 Years SunIdee: sharing innovation best practices We want to share our most valuable learnings with you throughout the year

It has been an incredible journey, working on inspiring innovation projects for leading brands. Projects that inspired us and that inspired our clients. In addition to working on innovation projects, we function as a sparring partner for innovation managers world-wide in a joint effort to help their organization reach the next level in innovation. In doing so we have had the opportunity to try out many new tools and methodologies and develop them to perfection. To celebrate our 10th anniversary we would like to share our most valuable learnings with you in several presentations that will be released throughout the year. This first presentation explains the basic principles of setting up an effective innovation process. It provides you with guidelines how to use these principles in your organization. In the following presentations, we will zoom in on these basic principles.


Innovation can be applied to almost anything: products, services, business models, processes, and even organizations.

SunIdee focuses on innovating companies’ offerings. Within this focus we have identified 4 levels of innovation:

Long term effect Mid term effect Short term effect

Strategy!innovation!

Product!innovation!

Service !innovation!

Marketing innovation!

Innovation is the process you undertake to create something new


Defining a clear innovation strategy will enable you to seize new business opportunities before others do.

Step 1: raising the bar •  Vision. In your vision you state how you think the world will change in the future.

Understanding consumer, technology and market trends are crucial elements for creating an inspiring vision.

•  Mission. When you have established your vision on the future, you define your role in this future world. Exploring different scenarios helps to create a future-proof mission. Understanding opportunities and risks and having the guts to make bold statements are critical success factors for an inspiring mission.

•  Ambition. Make your mission actionable by translating it to SMART (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Relevant and Time-specific) goals. A good understanding of how to make things happen in your organization is required to set ambitious yet achievable targets.

An innovation strategy helps you to outsmart your competitors


Step 2: innovating your business model •  Investigate new or different ways to add value and make money. Innovating your

business model will have a huge impact on your organization, so prepare to overcome some resistance. Visually mapping out your business model and letting yourself become inspired by success stories of other companies are essential for seeing the overall picture and identifying new opportunities.

Step 3: restructuring your product / service portfolio •  Understanding your customers’ needs and using this to create a portfolio

framework will become the basis of your customer-focused product portfolio.

•  Plot existing products and services in the portfolio framework and define a plan of action to strengthen your portfolio: reposition existing products, start new product development projects and discontinue products / projects that do not add value for the customer.

•  Create communication materials to communicate the new customer-focused product portfolio.

•  Setting-up a multidisciplinary team and involving some of your best customers are critical success factors for creating a strong customer-focused product portfolio.

An innovation strategy helps you to outsmart your competitors


The right process helps you to create truly great innovations that: •  meet a (latent) customer need •  have an edge that sets them apart from the competition

Step 1: interact with your customer / consumer •  Forget about outsourcing market research to an agency. Train your team to make them

capable of talking to customers (e.g. asking open-ended questions), visit customers in their own environment and see the world through their eyes. In B2C, on-line communities can prove an inspiring way to learn from and interact with consumers.

Bring your innovation strategy to life by developing great products and services


Step 2: formulate customer / consumer insights. •  Summarize your customers’ most important needs and aspirations in clear

statements. Involve your customers in co-creation sessions to fine-tune insights and validate insights in a quantitative test.

Step 3: generate ideas •  The best ideas meet a (latent) customer need and have an edge that set them

apart from the competition. To find the right mix of these aspects requires a two-way approach in idea generation, both from a customer as well as a product perspective. Involving a multidisciplinary team and suppliers in ideation significantly improves the variety and quality of ideas.

Step 4: develop propositions •  Bring an idea for a new product or service to the next level by taking the customer

insight as a starting point and then define the key benefit, reasons to believe, brand fit and differentiator. Keep in mind that a strong proposition is single minded and focuses on added value for the customer. Adding visuals makes your proposition more concrete and ready for testing with customers.

Step 5: create a roadmap •  Plan your different propositions in time, create a story to connect the different

propositions and create a visual overview to easily communicate your innovation roadmap to colleagues. Involving key stakeholders in the process helps to create buy-in and enables you to make a concrete plan of action ready for implementation.

Bring your innovation strategy to life by developing great products and services


C

Boost your commercial success through innovative marketing and sales

Most companies do not get the most value from their existing product portfolios. Innovative marketing and sales offer good opportunities to quickly improve your business results.

Step 1: marketing & communication innovation •  The approach of innovation for marketing and communication is similar to the steps as

explained for product and service innovation (see last slide). The difference lies in what you look for when interacting with customers. With product / service innovation you will be looking for more practical issues, wishes and needs while for branding / marketing / communication innovation your focus will be more on emotional triggers.

Step 2: sales innovation •  Completely reinvent the way your sales force interacts with your customers by

developing inspiring sales tools that facilitate talking about value instead of costs.

•  Especially in B2B there are many forces influencing decision makers. Creating a value net helps to obtain an overview of these forces and helps to find new opportunities to market and sell your solution.


Structuring your innovation process might seem like a no-brainer. However most organizations have not mastered the skill of managing innovation well. Doing so will offer you many advantages. To name only a few:

•  Use resources more effectively Reduce the amount of projects: better insight in the opportunities that lay ahead leads to better decision making.

•  Shorten time to market Avoid pointless discussions and endless iterations: move through the innovation funnel at high speed.

•  Create a rock solid positioning in the market No more lucky shots, but a focused and continuous effort.

Carefully structuring your approach has clear benefits for your business


Contact!Want to learn more? Come talk to us!

SUNIDEE Prinsengracht 739-741 1017 JX, Amsterdam

The Netherlands

t: +31 (0)20 6244291 e: [email protected]

www.sunidee.com

how to structure your innovation process. by sunidee

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