Creativity And Innovation Driving Business announces the 2008 Innovation and Innovator of the year

Sanjay Dalal, Creativity And Innovation Driving Business announces the 2008 Innovation and Innovator of the year

The 2008 Innovation of the year: http://www.barackobama.com/, My.BarackObama.com
The 2008 Innovator of the year: President-elect Barack Obama and his campaign team

In November 2006, I read Senator Barack Obama's book "Audacity of Hope", and also read
about his experiences working in the Senate. At that time, I believed that he is a leader who will
make a run for the presidency based on the bold opportunities and innovations he wanted to introduce. Senator Obama announced his candidacy for U.S. presidency in early 2007.

Before Senator Obama gave his election speech on the night of November 4, and after Senator John McCain's concession speech, he sent out a brief note via email to every registered supporter:

Senator Barack Obama and his team created these key innovations along the four innovation pillars for this historical campaign that won him the U.S. presidency:

Product - www.BarackObama.com, My.BarackObama.com

Senator Obama's website www.BarackObama.com catered to all citizens of the United States - all states, all nationalities, all age groups, all religions, all
business types, all parties, all ethnicities e.g. People of Faith, Latinos, Rural Americans, Women, Kids, Students, Veterans, Military, Seniors, Sportsmen, Environmentalists, Disabled, Republicans and more.
The website clearly stated Senator Obama's stand, challenges, and opportunities on key issues such as Economy, Civil Rights, Defense, Iraq, Homeland Security, Education, Energy, Healthcare and more - total of 26 different issues wherein Senator Obama communicated on regularly. The website also provided adequate learning about Senator Obama's background, his wife Michelle Obama, Senator Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden, and section devoted to In the News, latest Press Releases and Speeches of Senator Obama.
After a person donated to President Obama's campaign or signed up at BarackObama.com, the service automatically created a My.BarackObama.com page wherein the person can personalize his/her interests, create a profile, and participate in fundraising goals; find and attend local events, search for groups and group activities, and find and meet local people using My Neighborhood; create and find groups all over the nation and by categories, and connect with group members using My Groups; communicate with friends, find friends with like-minded interests, and invite new friends using My Friends; search for events, create and manage events using Events; write emails and messages to your groups and friends using the built-in messaging system, create, associate and publish blogs using the Blog tool; contact undecided voters and participate in callout campaigns using Contact voters; leverage other resources and tools to proactively collaborate in Senatar Obama's campaign. In short, the latest Web 2.0 and social networking tools and technologies were used wherein the person can interact at My.BarackObama.com and also use the latest social networking services such as Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.
www.BarackObama.com and My.BarackObama.com acted as the central communication place for all of Senator Obama's communications to the voters all over the U.S., and citizens all over the world. The combination of relevant and timely information e.g. response to smears, personalization through My.BarackOabama.com, participation through many of the groups, networks and voter callouts, and social networking through events, blogs and the latest web products and services made this a top innovation of Senator Obama's campaign.

Customer Experience - Focus on "You", i.e. "We the people"

It is important to note that in late 2006, Time voted the person of the year as "You", i.e. "We the people". Senator Obama and his team understood this national trend very well in light of the developing Internet social networking technologies and behavior, and capitalized on this. The entire campaign was focused on "You". From the website that carried this theme of "You" everywhere, to Senator Obama's writings and speeches that addressed "You", "Us" and "We the people", and also the personalized communications that were emailed to every member who signed up every few days asking proactively "You" to donate, participate, and recruit voters. This focus on "You" reverberated with the central theme of Hope and Change. The results were fascinating and historic: About 4 million people registered through www.BarackObama.com, donated more than $700 million dollars to the campaign, more than the combined fundraising for the 2004 election by President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, and helped recruit countless of new unregistered supporters and voters. In particular, the Obama campaign won over support from the young voters, students, minorities, first-time voters and Latinos. The total contributions for his campaign, national convention, transition and upcoming inauguration are nearing $1 billion dollars.

Processes - Nearly flawless campaign

Senator Obama had to run the campaign of his life to first overcome Senator Clinton's insurmountable lead, second win over Senator Clinton and her supporters, and third to win against Senator McCain. Each stage of the campaign tested him and his team. His campaign will go down in the history of U.S. Presidential races as probably the best run campaign of all times. In order to make this happen, Senator Obama embarked on the central theme of Change and Hope. His website captured this message prominently at the top:
"I'M ASKING YOU TO BELIEVE. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington... I'm asking you to believe in yours."
Voters were ready for Change owing to current President Bush's eight year term; Voters confidence, hopes and aspirations were declining rapidly with the decline of the economy. And Senator Obama captured this sentiment with the central theme of Hope and asking voters to believe in him. Senator Obama assembled the brightest people to help him advise and run this campaign, both online and in the media, from the very first day. These people included political advisers, economists, technologists, internet gurus, entrepreneurs, businessmen and more. And he stayed with this exceptional team with few changes until the very end. Key processes and leadership provided Senator Obama the vision and ability towards winning at key junctures along the campaign: Canavassing and getting the votes of super Delegates, getting the Kennedys proactive support and approval, recruiting Senator Joe Biden as his running mate, winning over Senator Clinton and President Clinton and their supporters, and obtaining the support of key Republicans including General Colin Powell. The icing on the cake: Senator Obama bought half-hour of prime-time network television to make a final argument to ask the people of the United States to vote for him using the money that his voters overwhelmingly donated.

Business Model - Donations from "We the people"

Inspiring "We the people" i.e. "You" to donate generously and frequently. This was the hallmark of Senator Obama's campaign. Senator Obama made a key observation: If he was going to win the White House, the long road had to be through the majority of the people helping him get there. And in order to achieve that, he had to have a huge campaign budget i.e. an abundant supply of money. Senator Obama understood technology, growth of online non-profit organizations, and the Internet e-Commerce trends wherein people would donate online for a good cause. He made three key decisions towards creating the largest campaign contribution in the history of U.S. presidency: 1. No donations from lobbyists and interests. This clearly broke the political tradition, and importantly freed him from strict spending limits imposed by the government. Also, this would make more individuals to donate more money because of the resulting image created that "I am like you". 2. Inspire "You" i.e. "We the people" to join his movement for Change and Hope by using the Internet and traditional media, and register "You" online through his website. 3. Ask "We the people" to donate frequently to his campaign any amount of money by interspersing messages of Change and Hope and asking to donate simultaneously. The campaign frequently sent messages asking your friends to donate by simply entering their emails, recruiting equal donations from registered members by pledging simultaneous contributions, creating fundraising goals and asking everyone you know for help and even more creative ways to raise money for the campaign by offering campaign stickers, campaign posters and banners, campaign shirts, campaign mugs and all types of memorabilia, and invitations to join Senator Obama for lunch, dinner or key events to make "We the people" spend more money on the campaign. Big donors contributing more than $1,000 only totaled 47% of all donors. The business model of only asking the people to donate, not taking any money from lobbyists and matching contributions from government, and inspiring everyone to donate frequently through clever messages worked brillantly and helped Senator Obama create that never-empty pot of gold to spend on his campaign.

My personal story

I was inspired by Senator Obama's book "Audacity of Hope" and his campaign promise of Change and Hope. I became a U.S. citizen in 2008 to Vote, registered as a Democrat and registered to Vote, and voted for Senator Barack Obama in the general elections. I wrote about his book and experiences on this blog in November 2006 - Senator Barack Obama, Bold Innovations and Opportunities. Here is the starting paragraph from this article:
"If we act boldly, then our economy will be less vulnerable to economic disruption, our trade balance will improve, the pace of U.S. technological innovation will accelerate, and the American worker will be in a stronger position to adapt to the global economy," states Barack Obama, the Democratic U.S. Senator of Illinois, in his new book "The Audacity of Hope". Senator Obama lays out a vision for reclaiming the American Dream aided by a government built on our best traditions, representing our everyday lives, uniting our common hopes and dreams, and creating an unbreakable bond.

In summary, President-Elect Barack Obama and his campaign team are the Innovators of the year, and www.BarackObama.com and My.BarackObama.com are the Innovations of the year 2008.

About Sanjay Dalal
Sanjay Dalal is an innovator and entrepreneur with over fifteen years of experience in Silicon Valley and High Tech companies. Dalal is the founder of India Business Network. Dalal is the author of theFaculty eBook and Definitive Guide on Innovation, and has published over 200 articles in the last year and a half on the real-time state of innovation in business at his blog Creativity and Innovation Driving Business. Dalal introduced the Innovation Index in December 2006. Dalal was the president and managing director of the innovative investment company, Innovation Index Group, that systematically invested into the Top 20 Innovators of The Innovation Index. Dalal has launched innovative products to market and grown businesses to the tune of $70 million plus a year. Dalal holds executive certification on Leading Management Teams from Cornell University, and is an engineering scholar graduate in Electrical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. Dalal attended Arizona State University for graduate education in Computer Science. Dalal secured the first position in the 50th William Lowell Putnam Math Competition. Dalal, a philanthropist, volunteered as a basketball coach for Irvine NJB - 7th graders, as an art master for 2nd graders, and is currently the secretary in the School Site Council. Dalal is an appointed member of the Dean's Leadership Circle of The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine.

About Creativity And Innovation Driving Business
The mission of Creativity and Innovation Driving Business is to provide no-nonsense insights, strategy and solutions with proven processes that drive Creativity and Innovation at your business, create real market growth and success for your products and services, and achieve market leadership. We have considerable experience and expertise in working with small, growing and established companies, various departments and distributed teams.

Creativity And Innovation Driving Business is the leading Business Innovation Strategy, Consulting and Services organization.

We offer our industry leading Innovation eBook on Creativity And Innovation in Business that contains over 55 best practices, case studies and insights on the current state of Innovation in Business at Top Innovators.

We launched the Innovation Bootcamp to help would-be innovators and entrepreneurs jumpstart innovations at their business. By leveraging online web conferencing technology, we are able to share our insights and best practices to business professionals wherever they are in real-time. Signup for bootcamps today.

References:
http://www.barackobama.com/
Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope. Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream
Chicago Tribune

Originally published: December 31, 2008, Re-published August 10, 2009

Ten Questions with Erich Joachimsthaler - Hidden In Plain Sight - Demand-first Innovation And Growth

What do Allianz Group, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Axe, GE Healthcare (NYSE: GE), bmw, Proctor & Gamble (NYSE: PG), Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), and Netflix have in common? These innovators consistently and successfully bring to market winning innovations, achieve profitable new growth, and reinvent their business for the future.

Erich Joachimsthaler, founder and CEO of Vivaldi Partners, a strategy, innovation and marketing consulting company, in his newly published book - Hidden In Plain Sight : How to find and execute your company's next big growth strategy - provides us insightful answers to real questions facing businesses today: on creating successful innovations and driving profitable growth - by introducing a new methodology “demand-first innovation and growth” (DIG). Joachimsthaler purports a poignant view of the misplaced state of innovation in the broader market.

I was able to obtain a copy of Hidden In Plain Sight from Harvard Business School Press publicist Michelle Morgan. Michelle also introduced me to Joachimsthaler. Rather than indulge you with my analysis and thoughts on this must-read innovation book and the three-part method of the DIG model, I wanted to share with you something even better: Top Ten Answers from Erich Joachimsthaler himself on my most pressing questions.

One lucky person will win a FREE hardcover book in an “Innovation Raffle” on behalf of HBS Press (ended)

Without further ado:

Top Ten Questions and Answers on Hidden In Plain Sight with Erich Joachimsthaler:

Question #1: Why are key opportunities for innovation and growth hidden in plain sight? Do companies even know about this?

Erich Joachimsthaler: In the book, I discuss four reasons why opportunities are hidden in plain sight. First, is the fact that growing a company requires establishing processes, systems, and procedures. Growth requires that work is divided into divisions or business units which fragments a company’s view of the customer. Second, are strategic considerations. Company often follow mantra’s like: stick to the knitting and therefore continue to invest into a direction that has proven to be right in the past. Third, and this is the most important reason is that American companies today live comfortably in the world of either the product perspective or the customer perspective. That is, there is either a mentality of looking at the world from the product perspective or the customer perspective. Both of the perspectives have one central tenet that underlies them. It is the need-fulfillment paradigm. Find a need and fill it. The problem is that this model is not only obsolete, it is generic and geriatric – time to retire it and send it to Florida. We are facing a dilemma in mammoth proportion in America. Companies need to learn and accept that we are in a world of product proliferation where we already have served nearly every need several times over, where there are over 50 varieties of bottled water, over 78 different Lay’s chip varieties, over 29 varieties of Pop Tarts and over 20 different milk types – no longer the company is in charge, but the customer. Fourth, success begets success. Success also infuses a company with an inside-out perspective. Often times, companies not only don’t see the opportunities, they often don’t know about them in the first place.

Question #2: "We are differentiating our products from competitors' offerings, segmenting the marketplace to identify new customers or consumers, growing through mergers and acquisitions, developing brand new products and extending brands, and actively listening to customers or consumers. We have everything in place to be successful." Is this a fallacy?

Erich Joachimsthaler: Yes, this is exactly and precisely the problem. These practices are the practices that have worked in the past – they have worked during the years where consumers were in search of products and services, where consumers found the station breaks on TV a form of entertainment. Companies are wrong in thinking that listening to consumers is equal to understanding. The problem of huge proportions that American businesses are facing is the fact that our fundamental paradigm of business, the very essence and foundation of what creates the success for business until today is now in question. You have to abandon the simplistic notion of the need-fulfillment paradigm. The complexities of today’s consumers can no longer be measured in terms of a set of attributes, product or brand attributes, that need to be fulfilled or exceeded and that ensures commercial success. You follow this paradigm and you are more likely competing based on features in commodity hell than building a profitable growth business. We have got to retire the outdated notions that the need-fulfillment paradigm serves any useful purpose today in the day and age where over 95 percent of all new products fail within the first year. You have also got to retire the basic notion that consumers can tell you what they want. I am of the opinion that consumers can not know what they have not experienced. It is important that we are not consumer-led, not marketing-led and not product or technology led – we have got to find a new approach to growth which is described in my book.

Question #3: Why is it important for a company to look from the outside in and let go of existing processes and models?

Erich Joachimsthaler: It is a natural human tendency to pursue patterns that have worked and that have made us successful. It is only natural, therefore, that Sony looks at the world in terms of finding more customers for the Walkman. After all, the Walkman has been a huge success and why would hundreds of millions of Walkmans sold be wrong. But this very success can blind executives in not seeing the biggest opportunities in plain sight.

And outside-in perspective, and be mindful, I do not mean a customer perspective, can provide an unbiased and untainted view of the opportunities that a company has. It is a hard thing to do, though.

Question #4: What is Customer Advantage? Is it the same as profitably serving the needs and want of my customers - aka maximizing gains from customers?

Erich Joachimsthaler: Precisely not! Profitably serving the needs and wants of customers is a notion that is reminiscent of the need-fulfillment paradigm. The corollary is that one can profitably serve consumers needs and wants if one has something that is different from competitors and competitors can not right away copy it. Today, the notions of competitive advantage, of differentiation for the sake of differentiation and of serving customers to delight them need to be questioned. Remember the highly differentiated Iridium phone service, a brick-size phone that had an antenna the size of a base ball bat. It came with a 3,000 dollars basic plan plus 7 dollars per minute of calling. Calling of course required that one needed to step outside a building as it would not work inside, and one needed to be clear of buildings after all. Motorola spent billions of dollars in it and there was an enormous conviction that there will be a big market. And it was extremely differentiated. Or do you remember and equally highly touted and buzzed up, hyped up new product, the Segway Personal Transporter, it was highly differentiated and was to change the way we walk and stroll or transport ourselves from point A to point B. There was also a conviction from study after study with consumers that there was a big market. Right? Now, we live in an age where the iPod has become the big success. Now, if differentiation is so important? Can you tell me what the No. 2 MP3 player is? Or No. 3? Then, iPod is differentiated from what? How about the so important iTunes downloadable service? If iTunes is the No. 1 downloading service for music? What is the No. 2 or 3? Have you ever bothered comparing any of the services? That’s my point. I bet you can’t give the answers, because when you achieve customer advantage, the comparison is irrelevant. People have absorbed and assimilated the iPod into their lives. We live many more minutes of our 1,440 minutes we all live from midnight to midnight with our iPods – and that is customer advantage – it is how your product fits into the everyday life of consumers. It is not the simplistic notion of how much my product or brand is different from competitors.

Question #5: What is the changing ecosystem of demand? How do Procter & Gamble and GE address this?

Erich Joachimsthaler: The ecosystem of demand paradigm changes the simplistic need-fulfillment paradigm. It maps the complexities of the everyday lives. Importantly, is the mapping process itself. It does not start with identifying needs and wants using some sort of ganglion marketing research procedure. Instead, it begins with mapping the everyday life of consumers in the case of P&G or customers for GE. The starting point is the GAP or Goals, Activities and Priorities of people. This is the gap that the current product perspectives and the current dominant consumer perspectives totally miss. The GAP is what really matters, here and now, today in the everyday life of consumers. The GAP is however only the starting point. It is only useful if one sees the GAP in the context, the social-cultural context in which one lives. Context is everything! The GAP then focuses on behaviors and we study the behaviors in the context in which they occur. This is a crucial aspect of our model. We believe that the best predictor of behavior is behavior, not attitudes and not opinions or brand reputations. It is as simple as this and it is as complex as this. Starting with this behavioral perspective – what really matters to consumers in their everyday life, we explore unarticulated needs and wants, but also urges, passions, fantasies and desires. As you progress with putting layer and layer of complexity on understanding the demand landscape from this perspective, the contours of the ecosystem of demand emerge. It is powerful rendition of where the opportunities for the business lie. So, you think this is a bit too complex, everything has to be simple. Frankly speaking, I disagree. Remember, we are talking about your wife or your husband or your next door neighbor, would you agree with me that we do not live around simple people? We have got to abandon the simplistic notions of consumer demand that exists today.

How did GE or P&G do it? To begin with, both companies began observing their consumers without the biases of their own products and brands. This has been a near revolution at these companies. Both stories are well described in the book. GE Healthcare for example studied anesthesiologists and their behaviors during key surgical procedures in the operating room. P&G studied people around their everyday lives around their home, not simply when they were scrubbing the bathroom floors. These companies also learned that they needed to reframe their existing businesses and categories and pursue entire new thinking routines in order to really understand their businesses better. An important aspect of their success has been that the new insights from the research led to an entire new search of helping consumers or anesthesiologists that involved multiple businesses inside the company and even communities from outside the company. And even more importantly the entire strategic blueprint for action – in the case of P&G, its marketing model has changed. Today, P&G seeks one to one relationships with over 60 million households in America (more than every second household), it has established their own presence on Second Life, it has established their own social networking sites, it is revamping the entire marketing success model that it itself developed and perfected over the last fifty years.

Question #6: What is DIG, and how is it different from my company's innovation model?

Erich Joachimsthaler: The DIG model is a systematic, systemic and repeatable process to identify and executive innovation and growth strategies. It replaces the existing model of SAV or screwing around vigorously, sometimes also called the fuzzy front end of existing innovation models. In the fuzzy front end, one searches wildly for ideas that then can be put through the classic stage-gate process of new product development. In the DIG model, the focus is not on the product, it is on finding ways of creating a transformational change in consumers’ everyday life. Therefore, the innovation can be a product, a solution, a new technology, a business model, or no product at all. And because it is a process, there is a chance of winning again and again, of repeating the success. It does not rely on the occasional brilliance of one particular executive.

Question #7: Can a company still succeed if it cannot create a complete demand landscape? How did Frito-Lay stay on top of high-profile customer trends by creating a complete demand landscape?

Erich Joachimsthaler: Yes, in reality, we cannot completely map the entire ecosystem of consumer demand – it is an evolving process. We prefer to get a very good rendition of the contours of the demand landscape, then dig deep – hence the acronym DIG. We do always focus on a specific component of it first – what we call the demand landscape. At Frito-Lay we identified the moments around which Lays is currently consumed during the 1,440 minutes we all live. We then identified other moments in everyday life that are relevant. We then analyzed the trends in each of the moments. For example, a moment in the office is impacted by different trends than a moment at home or on the go. And mind you, we did not begin with deep dive of people’s psychology around snacking and studying product attribute configuration or emotional drivers of the Lays’ consumption experience.

Question #8: How and why did Allianz reframe the opportunity space? Was this needed? Was Allianz successful?

Erich Joachimsthaler: In the case of Allianz, the emphasis was on reframing the opportunity space. This was so because in the insurance business, particularly the personal liability insurance business, there was the feeling that there were no innovations possible. It is an old and very traditional business. It is a business that matured and consumers simply buy based on the lowest price or annual fee.

At Allianz, the personal liability business was important to the company. Allianz was by far the leader in the market with a significant price premium. Where do you go from here? The feeling was that new competitors only force the market into the wrong direction - lower prices and cheapened services through telephone trees and outsourcing arrangements in low-cost countries.

Allianz was able to rethink the entire personal liability business and it was done not simply based on largely visionary ideas but forty concrete innovations that the executives in part themselves came up with, by looking at the demand landscape in totally new ways – using the 12 BIG (breakthrough innovation and growth) lenses that are described in the book.

Question #9: How does BMW create sustainable Customer Advantage? What could BMW do differently?

Erich Joachimsthaler: The BMW story in the book describes how this company has understood their demand landscape and how it has developed a portfolio of cars ranging from the BMW brand, the MINI brand to the Rolls Royce brand – a premium car manufacturer that sells over a million automobiles! The chapter in the book describes how the company has developed a strategic blueprint for action (the third component of the DIG model), that captures a relevant part of the ecosystem of demand. In this example, the component of the blueprint described is the company’s world-class brand management system. You will learn how the company adopted an entire new model of branding for the MINI than the success model it used for the bmw brand. And hence, they have drawn in different consumers for the MINI brand than for the bmw brands. The chapter illustrates how the DIG model opens up strategic options for building profitable growth that one would not otherwise see from a traditional business as usual perspective. At bmw, the innovation, the breakthrough was not another technology, but the innovation was about the brand management approach and how it created a deeper affiliation and hence customer advantage.

BMW has done a lot of things right and what they can do differently now is never ever forget and be mindful that innovation – even at BMW where innovation has such a strong technology core – goes far beyond its habitual technology domain and into brand management, design, and new business models. I think the story in the chapter vividly describes this BMW difference.

Question #10: What drives Apple's innovation and growth? Is Apple better at connecting with and engaging consumers?

Erich Joachimsthaler: Apple’s innovation and growth is first and foremost driven by inner conviction about the outer world – a conviction that is manifested by Steve Jobs and largely led by him and people around him.

This conviction is about changing how consumers live around music or entertainment. It is not merely a product focus, although it might appear this way. Apple has created the transformational change that I talk about in the book, it has created the customer advantage as I define it. It has changed the way we find out about music, the way we select music, buy music, listen to music, store music and discard music – in short, it has changed how we manage music in our lives (something that is fairly important to all of us), it also has changed how we manage video, etc.

It is not merely a better experience from competitor X, but it is a transformation of our lives, a part of our lives and Apple moves on doing the same with our entire digital lives, watch the launches of iTV and iPhone.

If Apple merely would define a set of needs and wants and then seek to fulfill it, they would ask consumers what they like or dislike about the Walkman and then create a better Walkman. I think that model of need-fulfillment paradigm is NOT at the core of the Apple process. Instead, Apple develops a notion of the changing consumer landscape. Think about around 2000 or 2001, there were already some consumers who downloaded songs from Napster and Kazaa. They see how the demand landscape is changing and they develop their own thinking, what I call structured thinking, around how to create a transformative experience for consumers. They don’t rely solely on consumer input and focus groups. In the process, Steve Jobs reframes the entire opportunity space for Apple – from a computer company, to a music company (Apple happens to be now one of the largest music retailers), to be an entertainment company. You ask about connecting with consumers? What would Madison Avenue recommend you? They would say: you need to find an emotional message that creates a connection with the consumers – touting functional and emotional benefits and achieve a clear positioning relative to competitors. How would that look like? Most likely a message, communicated over TV that clearly explains the principal benefits and the reasons to believe this benefits to targeted consumers. What would a marketer recommend? He or she would recommend that Apple segments the market into those who like more noisy music versus the sophisticated music lover who perhaps listen to classic music. And if you look at what Apple did, it seems they have followed little of the standard advice from marketers or advertising professionals. Connection and engagement does not happen on the small screen, the TV set or the large screen, but it happens in the 1,440 minutes where consumers live and work and play. Engagement and connection for Apple has nothing to do with emotionalizing the difference of iPod over the Walkman or touting superior product attributes. Look at their advertisements. Their marketing program or advertising program cannot be printed on paper or shown in little films called TV or cinema spots. Their program of connecting with consumers is about the 2,000 accessories that they have licensed to Bose and other companies so that we can absorb and assimilate the iPod into our 1,400 minutes we all live every day.

All Important Question: What are the top three takeaways from Hidden in Plain Sight that help companies internalize the DIG agenda?

Erich Joachimsthaler: The important takeaways are:
1) Innovation and growth is not a fuzzy process of screwing around vigorously (SAV) but can be a systematic process,
2) Innovation and growth is not something that happens in a department like R&D or product development – innovation and growth is a company-wide activity and only if you have a process can you also engage the entire organization,
3) Innovation and growth is not about products or solutions – it is about creating a transformational change in the way people live, work and play – and in order to achieve that, the innovation can be a product, a solution, a technology and new business model like at Netflix or no product at all. It could even just be a management innovation like brand management at BMW or a better supply chain management process.

If you follow these three takeaways, there is a chance to win again and again and to achieve a larger transformation of your company, and reinvention of the business for the future.

Selected references:

Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business

Creativity and Innovation Best Practices

Creativity and Innovation Case Studies

The Innovation Index

Top 50 innovative companies in the world

References:

Erich Joachimsthaler: Hidden In Plain Sight - How to find and execute your company's next big growth strategy

HBR IdeaCast with Erich Joachimsthaler

Apple, GE, P&G and Starbucks are 4 of the Top 20 innovators of The Innovation Index

Co-Creation driving Innovation

What does Doritos chips, Starwood hotels and Timex watches have in common? According to Gerhard Gschwandtner, Editor and Founder of Selling Power, they are all engaging their customers to co-create. In the latest issue of Selling Power, Gschwandtner talks about the role of co-creation driving innovation in mainstream businesses.

What is Co-Creation?

Gschwandtner summarizes: "Information (online) technology has empowered consumers to share ideas, documents, images, and movies across the forever- expanding digital world. The Internet allows businesses to engage customers in a creative workshop experience." This online engagement with the customers that creates new innovative solutions is Co-Creation.

Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world

Doritos and The Super Bowl

What is Doritos doing to co-create with the customers? How about a "story about eating your first Doritos chips or what life is like for the spices on the surface of the chip"? Consumers are invited to submit their 30-second homemade videos on stories about Doritos. Talk about whetting consumers' appetite for Doritos with the growing appetite of homemade videos - it appears that Doritos has created the perfect match. And the best part is the grand prize: the top video will be aired as a commercial during next year's Super Bowl (2007). Five finalists will also be awarded $10,000 each. Doritos wins by rallying hundreds of thousands of consumers to create playful videos about its chips, creating the consumer buzz around Doritos at time of the Super Bowl, and finally showcasing the advertisement in front of about a hundred million people watching the Super Bowl. Co-Creation in motion.

Aloft at Starwood

The next time you want to go to a great hotel, how about just logging online and typing in: www.virtualaloft.com. No need to leave home. Welcome to Aloft Hotel, the new futuristic hotel from Starwood. The virtual hotel invites guests to tour the hotel and get a 360 degree view, walk around the lobby, check into a room, swim in the pool, and even watch a sunset on the rooftop terrace. Starwood has taken the concept of co-creation to the next level (literally) by creating the first virtual hotel online, and simultaneously encouraging the customers to provide feedback and engage with the designers and architects who are building the real hotel.

The real hotel will not open until 2008 - plenty of time for Starwood to gather all the customer inputs and creating something that customers really crave for. What a great concept? For instance, at their website, the designers heard one question a few times on "why there wasn't a door in the bathroom." They immediately responded that "there will be a sliding door in the real hotel" and explained why it was missing in the first place. Co-Creation at work.

Timex and The Future of Time

Timex, as part of its 150th Anniversary celebration, and to demonstrate an ongoing commitment to design and innovation, conducted a global design competition: Timex2154: The Future of Time (2004+150 years=2154). Designers from more than 72 countries explored and visualized personal and portable timekeeping 150 years into the future and submitted 640 entries. An assembled world-class design team evaluated the entries in three categories: wrist-based, wearable, and conceptual, and chose the winners. Timex could not have done this alone (if they would have tried to design a futuristic watch). Instead, they were able to obtain 640 creative ideas from some of the world's best designers in a timely manner. Further, Timex created a leadership position as a Watch company by creating such a campaign and getting the inputs from some of the best designers. Co-Creation driving innovation.

Diversity drives Innovation

Gschwandtner compares the past and the present of customer innovations: "In the past, customers have been limited to communicating their wants and needs in surveys and focus groups; today, brands deploy existing technologies to map their customer’s imagination. Brands no longer view consumers as targets with a wallet, but as co-creators of exciting and profitable solutions." This is a tremendous shift. Rather than simply aiming customers for profits with obsolete products, now you are learning from them in real-time and creating better products that will in turn create profitable customers. And today's customer who is digitally engaged and enjoys personal service would not have it any other way. Gschwandtner aptly quotes the term "Diversity drives Innovation" from the book The Medici Effect by Frans Johansson to demonstrate the effect of Co-Creation.

Bottomline

As Co-Creation demonstrates tangible results, more mainstream businesses will experiment and adopt it - not just technology companies. The best side effect of Co-Creation is it brings you that much closer to your customers and creates a positive business environment. The business should not become overzealous about deploying Co-Creation. It has to make observations and decisions based on sampling size and customer type on whether to go all out with customer inputs or experiment.

Selected references:
Leading eBook on Creativity and Innovation in Business
Creativity and Innovation Best Practices
Creativity and Innovation Case Studies
The Innovation Index
Top 50 innovative companies in the world

If you enjoyed reading this Creativity best practice, I recommend the complete list of Creativity Innovation Best Practices.

Acknowledgements:

Gerhard Gschwandtner - Selling Power - October Issue
Doritos
Starwood – Aloft Hotel
Timex