Radical Innovation is a Proposal, Not a Product

by Thomson Dawson

We've noticed a common thread among many companies these days. When thinking about innovation - most seem to be heavily focused on providing incremental features and benefits as a cornerstone for their competitive advantage. What seems to elude many executive leaders is a lack of understanding that people do not buy products, they buy into meanings.

Maybe the reason for this is simply the physics of most organizations inhibits radical innovation and the competitive advantage that results. What matters the most to people is not the function of a product, but their emotional, psychological and cultural connection to what a product means to them. The key to sustained competitive advantage for companies is to innovate around meanings rather than function and performance. Radical Innovation does not happen when you bring people an incremental improvement of what they already know. Rather, radical innovation (and market leadership for that matter) is the result of 'proposing' an unexpected meaning. This meaning, unsolicited by user needs, once discovered, turns out to be the very thing people were waiting for!

There are countless examples of companies who have mastered this. Of course, Apple is an easy one. And there are other compelling examples. Back in the early 80's, Seiko and Casio were driving technological innovation in quartz watches, believing people wanted technical precision. However, a Swiss watchmaker realized people cared more about self-expression than technical precision. Swatch was born and proved to be a radical innovation of meaning that created radical market success. While Seiko and Casio were closely observing user needs and existing meanings, Swatch created new ones.


Forget User-centered Innovation

With so many such examples in every industry to benchmark from, I am surprised most companies don't seem to "get it". Most are heavily invested in traditional market innovation - finding a consumer need and filling it. From our own experience working in early stage product and brand innovation, seemingly the conversation starts by the client explaining how their new product innovation has more buttons and is easier to use than the leading brand. A radical innovation of meaning rarely, if ever, comes from user-centered approaches.

In my view, this explains why so many high user involvement product categories are being commoditized. Most companies continue to improve incremental performance within existing market concepts leaving only a few visionary companies to gain competitive advantage (market leadership) by proposing new and different meanings. Did I mention Apple yet?


Good and Different

In his whiteboard book "Zag", noted consultant and author Marty Neumeier outlines the fundamentals of good and different. The premise is simple - you can't lead by following the leader. To remove uncertainty and hedge risk in innovation, many companies rely on focus group testing. While useful for certain kinds of learning, people in focus groups have a frame of reference that is based on what is currently known to them. Most people usually want more of what they currently know - only with more features and cheaper. This is not an effective venue for discovering new meanings or competitive advantage.

Today the marketplace is over-crowded with good. Good is expected. Good = the same! Different on the other hand, is more elusive. When a company proposes a radical innovation of meaning, it's no surprise it will be first judged as crazy or impractical idea. Radical innovations of meaning don't test well. A product that is radically different is always radically different than the current dominant meaning in the category. Think back to the Swatch example; personal expression trumps precision instrument. Indeed Swatch is still good and different.

What is your innovation strategy?

In his book, "Design-Driven Innovation", author Roberto Verganti outlines a framework for mapping strategy for innovation as a radical change in meanings. Check out his thinking in the diagram below:



Verganti describes the process of product innovation and competitive advantage as historically being the result of product performance enhanced by disruptive technology advances and intense analysis of users' needs. Radical innovation, on the other hand, is more about baking the more elusive unexpected meaning into the product. People discover something unexpected that, when delivered, is somehow what people have been waiting for, just not asking for. Radical innovation is a proposal to people. Radical innovation is not about function and form, but about function and meaning - never driven by users.

As your company maps its innovation strategy, this distinction of radical innovation of meanings rather than features may be noteworthy in your product development. If you're not thinking about radical innovation right now, you can be sure your competitor is. Lead, follow, or get out of the way has never rang so true.

Please share your thoughts with us.


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Thomson Dawson is the Managing Partner of PULL Brand Innovation. PULL helps leaders and teams gain more insight, clarity and confidence to pursue their most promising opportunities to create new value.

Defining Open Innovation and User-Driven Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

User-driven and open innovation mean different things to many people. So how should consultants guide their clients on this?

This became one of the key issues in a discussion that followed my Why User-Driven Innovation Should Not Be Confused With Open Innovation post.

I argued that these two types of innovation are related, but not the same. I also argued that open innovation and user-driven innovation already have too many different meanings and definitions making it useless for academics and consultants to drive ONE definition for these terms.

As a comment to this, Ellen Di Resta suggested that we should "view user-innovation and open innovation as approaches. Thinking of it that way, then it's the application of an approach that needs to be tailored to each specific context."

Ellen also mentioned that the terms can be ambiguous, and asked whether this might not be the point as it keeps us from being boxed too narrowly into a corner when we may need our tools to be flexible enough to handle a broad range of challenges.

I fully agree with Ellen when she argued "that consultants should take a more practical approach on this and help their clients define innovation towards their situation."

Rikard Waero agreed as well, but he brought in some perspective on this by stating that "the customer is right, we just need to help them understand where they are acting wrong. The theoretical work behind open innovation and user-driven innovation can help us lead them in the right directions, but the correction should not be communicated to them in a language they may misinterpret."

Jeff Murphy, a corporate guy from J&J had this statement: "I prefer to view open innovation as a broad enough term that also includes what you have referred to as 'user-driven innovation'." Different than above, but then he also mentioned that "...rather than getting tangled in semantics, and see it as more productive for an organization to select and use the right types of open innovation - those that are best aligned with their organization's specific needs, objectives, and business/technical complexity."

Looking at the bigger picture, I think we are pretty aligned on this. What do you think? And how do you see the role of consultants when it comes to making open innovation happen?

By the way, Graham Horton noted that open innovation is a two-way process which allows both inbound and outbound movement during all stages of the innovation process. He has mentioned this earlier to me and he is of course right.

However, I believe companies have plenty of challenges just making the inbound process work and they need to focus on this. As they get the proper mindset and processes in place, then they can start looking into the outbound processes in which they out-license or sell technologies, ideas or intellectual property not being used internally. But focus is important in order to get it right in the first place.

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Don't Confuse User-Driven Innovation With Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Denmark has its share of world-leading companies on user-driven innovation. Lego, the toy company, is a great example of this through their Adult Fan Of Lego groups and many other initiatives.

Another example is Coloplast which develops products and services that make life easier for people with very personal and private medical conditions. Their business includes ostomy care, urology and continence care, and wound and skin care. They are considered by many as a global pioneer of user-driven innovation due to their work with doctors, nurses and users of their products.

Last week, I read an article on how Coloplast has set-up communities for their users to share experiences and ideas. You can use Google to translate the Danish article and you can check out one of their communities here: International Stoma Innovation Community. In the article, Coloplast claims that they have halved their development time over the last couple of years partly due to the external input and they also mention that they are now using many more external partners than previously.

It sounds good, but nevertheless, I think Coloplast is a nice example of company that is still stuck in the user-driven mindset. The main idea of user-driven innovation is to get input from the users - and perhaps even the eco-system - of your products or services.

Open innovation is about integrating external partners in the entire innovation process. This should happen not just in the idea or technology development phase but also in all other phases towards market acceptance. User-driven innovation is great as it directs your innovation efforts towards market needs. Open innovation takes you to the next step by providing more opportunities through external partners as you address those market needs.

Which red flags did I pick up on Coloplast? First, take at look at their corporate website. I cannot find any guidelines on how to approach Coloplast with ideas or other contributions. Compare this to Procter & Gamble where you can find a very visible link to their Connect+Develop initiative.

Another red flag is the stoma community itself. It really gives you the feeling that it is about how Coloplast can tap into users rather than how they can work together and build relationships with external partners. This is what user-driven innovation is about. It should just not be confused with open innovation.

Furthermore, if you search for "innovation" on Coloplast' corporate website nothing shows up besides a links to their international stoma community. This is actually a bit scary for a company that perceives itself as being quite innovative. It makes me - and perhaps many others - wonder how serious they really are about innovation...

The reason for writing this blog post is that I want to caution Coloplast - and other companies - not to be confused by the two types of innovation. This can be misleading and damage the possibilities for a company to become the preferred partner of choice which is a key objective on the open innovation game. However, I also think user-driven and open innovation can be a powerful combination and hopefully we will experience great cases on this in the near future.

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.