Category — Innovation
Fun With Ford
Global marketing chief Jim Farley makes innovation the powertrain at Ford. By Tim Manners. The phone buzzes and it’s Jim Farley on the line. “Hey, Jim! How’re you doing?” “Me?” says Jim. “I’m high as a kite!” After a deft pause for comedic effect and a mischievous chuckle, Jim says he’s just having fun. “If we can’t have fun,” he says, “then what the heck!”
No question but that Jim Farley, global marketing chief of the Ford Motor Company, is having fun. And if he’s not high as a kite, he has every right to be. Two years after stunning the auto industry by leaving high-flying Toyota for low-hanging Ford, he and his compatriots do indeed seem to be defying gravity.
How did that happen? Well, it’s kind of complicated, but it does have a lot to do with a single, simple word: innovation … read >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
What’s New?
Ideas are only as good as their marketplace salience. A discussion featuring Larry Wendling of 3M, Tom Kelley of Ideo, Lisa Rose of Ciba Vision and Robert Rivenburgh of Mars Advertising.
Can innovation be managed or is it magic?
Larry Wendling: At 3M, we practice a bottom-up, grass-roots model of innovation and so usually it’s very difficult to predict the specific outcome. But we can manage innovation to the extent that we can create an environment that supports the freedom of the individual to pursue new ideas.
Creating that environment is very much about having a clear understanding of how innovation relates to the company’s business model. Developing rewards and recognition is also very important. And you need to tie innovation metrics to business metrics, although we certainly don’t go metrics crazy at 3M … read >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
Failing Forward
Even the most catastrophic debacle can lead to next-generation innovation. By Kipp Cheng. When it comes to consumer technologies, I like to employ a simple litmus test: If it works for my four-year-old son and my 64-year-old mother, it’ll probably work for everyone.
Take the Flip video camera, for instance: Turn it on, point it at something (hopefully interesting), press the big red button and suddenly you’re the next Martin Scorsese. Or the iPad: Press the “On” button, swipe your finger, and suddenly you’re … well, doing whatever grandmothers and preschoolers do on their iPads — playing games, fiddling with apps, consuming media. What these mom- and kid-tested and approved gadgets have in common is that they weren’t necessarily the first to market …read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Eureka Moments
Simple consumer desires create opportunities for innovation. By Randi Moore. For innovation to have an impact, change is required not only in goods or services, but also in the way consumers consider choices, make decisions and do things. This is a tall order, given that consumers are hard wired to form habits to simplify their chaotic lives.
A year ago, Reveries.com surveyed readers about innovation among supermarkets (The New Super, Jan/Feb 2010). We heard back that shoppers wanted innovations in the shopping experience that delivered economy, convenience and entertainment.
This year, Reveries cast a broader net and asked readers to rate innovation in 20 different industries or categories. In reviewing their opinions, similar themes emerged … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Fly, Eagles, Fly!
The Philadelphia Eagles ascend to higher purpose and win both on and off the field. By Dori Molitor. The row of vertical wind turbines that will soon be perched atop the perimeter of Lincoln Financial Field will be just the most visible sign that there’s something different about the football team that plays there. The solar panels will be a bit unusual, too.
The team is, of course, the Philadelphia Eagles, one of the most successful organizations in the National Football League. Under the team’s ownership — Christina and Jeffrey Lurie — the Eagles have made the playoffs ten times in last 15 years. Their fan base, according to Forbes magazine, is among the most loyal in the National Football League … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
The Ecommerce Ecosystem
Brands need new strategies to capitalize on new shopping behaviors. By Paul Kramer. The greatest opportunity to increase consumer packaged-goods sales in the retail environment is not happening in-store; it is happening online with the growing ecommerce industry. The expanding ecommerce channel is also changing how manufacturers, retailers and consumers interact in the buying environment.
To capitalize on this opportunity, brands and retailers need to better understand shopper migration; develop new selling strategies to satisfy the range of emerging online/offline shopping behaviors; and closely listen to consumers, who are the architects of their online experiences … read >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
When Worlds Collide
Integration must be seamless with online and offline experiences. By Beth Ann Kaminkow. The current pace of innovation is hard to keep up with for the marketer, the retailer, as well as the consumer.
Largely fueled and propelled by technology, innovation is now commonplace, expected, cost-of-entry, taken-for-granted, table-stakes and, oftentimes, not differentiating for brands.
We ask ourselves as marketers, what purpose (if any) does innovation most serve today? Where can it provide the most value and growth potential for a business? Beyond manufactured news by brands, how do we harness and leverage the true power and potential of innovation? … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Idea Club
Ideas worth buying are ideas worth fighting for. By Dino de Leon. Welcome to Idea Club. The first rule of Idea Club is: you do not talk about Idea Club. The second rule of Idea Club is: you do not talk about Idea Club! Apologies to Tyler Durden (of Fight Club fame), but the process of creating ideas can be a bit like a bare-knuckle brawl.
Brainstorming, ideation, concepting — whatever you call it — is fraught with unpredictability. Even with a creative brief and clear objectives, there is no way to guarantee that you will emerge victorious. But we battle on in pursuit of ideas and innovation, blissfully ignoring conceptual skinned knuckles and black eyes … read >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
Edison Illuminated
Inventors and marketers must be joined at the hip. By Sarah Miller Caldicott. Thomas Edison, known in history books as the man who invented the phonograph, the light bulb, the storage battery, and the movies, stands as one of the greatest innovators of all time. But few business aficionados realize that Edison also possessed a marketing genius that would be the envy of any chief marketing officer today.
Edison received a record-breaking 1,093 US patents and 1,293 international patents over the course of his 62-year career. The six industries he pioneered between 1873 and 1905 — and their offshoots — are estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion today … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
The Fourth Circle
Innovation in execution is the quickest route to victory. By Al Wittemen. I’m sure you’ve read The Art of War, written by Sun Tzu in the 6th century. What? You haven’t read my favorite marketing book? It framed a lot of things for me early on in my career, and there’s a famous quote in it that says: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.&rdquo
This wisdom speaks to me because, as marketers, we too often overlook the importance of execution. Innovation is typically lavished on the development of a big idea, but we need to apply the same level of creative thinking to the execution of our campaigns — especially shopper-marketing campaigns because the field is growing so rapidly … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Why Not Success?
New products require behavioral insights and organizational support. by Jim Doucette and Paul Thompson. For many years, 3M has achieved volume and profit growth well above industry norms with its thirty percent rule: Thirty percent of business unit revenue must come from products introduced in the last four years.
Many firms have sought to emulate the 3M model of new-product driven growth. So, why do 75 percent of new products fail to meet $7.5 million in revenue during the first year of availability and less that one half of one percent ever meet a $100 million dollar threshold? Maybe it’s because too many of the new products looked like these … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
When In Doubt
Our questions reveal truths that drive innovations. By Paul Lavoie. I have always been a little wary of anything that points decisively and conclusively to one answer. Because our role as marketers is to connect with human beings in ways that inspire or educate, it seems wrong that any part of that process resemble shepherding lambs along a singular path into a corral.
At first blush, a philosophy based on doubt can raise some eyebrows. It sounds so … well … doubtful. In fact, this approach has proven time and again to be 100 percent right by being 100 percent undefined … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Purposeful Partners
Marketers can — and must — help stores captivate shoppers in new ways. By Nick Jones. The earliest example of the voluntary exchange of goods can be found as far back as 10,000 BC, when, archeological evidence suggests, people traded flint and obsidian.
By 3,000 BC, Ancient Egyptians were trading with their neighbors for, among other goods, precious metals for jewelry. Fast-forward to the third century AD and you’ll find the Persian bazaar, which contained arguably the world’s very first stores.
Regardless of when you choose to date the beginning of “shopping,” people have been at it a very long time. Today, though, the shopping landscape looks at first glance much different than at any point in history. The reason, of course, is the ever-increasing shift of physical store sales moving online … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Small Planet Packages
Navigating the sustainability maze of product packages. By Brad Scott. Acting “sustainably” means maintaining a balance and not depleting your available resources. In business, this often translates into balancing costs against a product’s impact on the community in which you operate. Some companies refer to this as “the triple bottom line,” which takes into account profit, people, and planet.
Another term we often hear is “cradle-to-cradle” or “closed-loop” product management, meaning that products have more than a single life or can be reborn in a new form. Nike Grind is a dazzling illustration of this concept: To date, some 25 million pairs of used athletic shoes have been collected, ground up, and turned into surfaces for playing fields …
read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Innovative or Not?
Who is the most innovative? Who is not? An executive summary of a Reveries.com survey. If you’ve seen The Social Network, you’ll know that Mark Zuckerberg’s first attempt at social media was a website where Harvard men rated the comparative attractiveness of their female classmates.
This survey was a little like that, only without the sexism. 
The way it worked was, we listed a series of product and service categories and asked readers to choose whether it was “innovative” or “not innovative” … read >>
January 1, 2011 1 Comment
Cool News
Organic Lightbulbs, My Eco Bag, The Fourth Quadrant, The StringBike, 3M Ubiquity and Puzzleheads. Organic Light Emitting Diodes — OLEDs — are being developed “as a potential successor to Edison’s bulb and fluorescent tubes.” OLEDs are different from LEDs — or Light Emitting Diodes — which are “discrete points of light, or basically very small light bulbs.
Looked at directly, they glare.” The OLEDs “emit light evenly across a thin panel of glass, producing more diffuse light than an LED does.” So far, OLEDs are used mainly in cellphones and car stereos. Manufacturers have yet to figure out how to use them in larger formats, like televisions … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
Cool Books
The Secret of Chanel No. 5, What Technology Wants and The Man Who Invented the Computer. The most famous fragrance of all time is not nearly as “French” as we might think, reports Pia Catton in a Wall Street Journal review of The Secret of Chanel No. 5, by Tila J. Mazzeo (11/20/10).
For starters, the formulation of Chanel No. 5 has its roots in Russia, as “a scent that was intended to celebrate Catherine the Great.” That idea never took off, so its creator, Ernest Beaux, offered up the aroma as a starting point to Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, who wanted to launch a fragrance line following her success in sportswear … read >>
January 1, 2011 Comments
