Killer Innovations: reblog

Yesterday, Scott Anthony of Innosight (Clayton Christensen's innovation consulting firm) hosted a one-hour webinar on "Mapping Your Innovation Strategy." Drawing on findings from three of Clayton Christensen's books - The Innovator's Dilemma, The Innovator's Solution, and Seeing What's Next - Scott divided the presentation into three key parts: the innovation imperative, how to solve the growth equation, and tips & tricks for innovation. Along the way, he showcased a number of companies full of innovation goodness and offered his take on the future trajectory of innovation.

According to Scott, we've reached the "era of pattern recognition" that serves as a bridge between two distinct eras of innovation. Historically, says Scott, innovation has been viewed as a random event, a bit like rolling the dice. In the current era, companies are learning to recognize the patterns and principles behind innovation. By seizing on these patterns in well-defined ways, it's possible to make innovation a much more structured process. In the future, innovation will be perceived as much more of a "blueprint" and the focus will be on execution, not on idea generation.

Even for companies familiar with the notion of "disruptive innovation," it's difficult to decide how to go about building a truly disruptive solution. As Scott points out, nearly 90% of first strategies are the wrong strategies. The key is being able to build an "emergent strategy" that continually absorbs new information and then re-directs itself in response to these stimuli. He also pointed out that all the traditional tactics that work for existing markets - market research surveys, NPV analysis, etc. - fail miserably when companies are trying to carve out brand new markets. Companies really have to get out and observe the consumer and find out what problems or "pain points" the consumer is facing. He also suggested a few questions to consider when thinking about disruptive innovation.

Pointing to a client engagement with a company in Virginia, Scott showed how a single question - "What constrains consumption?" - led to a massive outpouring of new ideas about how to penetrate the market. Often, it is the people who can't consume your product (not people who don't want to consume your product) who hold the key to future market share gains. Take Southwest Airlines, for example. It wasn't that people didn't want to fly on an airplane - it's that people couldn't fly on an airplane, due to financial reasons. They could only afford to travel by bus. Southwest realized this and changed the prevailing business model within the airline industry to make air travel affordable for everyone. The same thing is true with Netflix - it wasn't that people didn't want to watch obscure films at the far end of the movie distribution curve - it's that they couldn't watch these movies. The shelves of Blockbuster simply couldn't carry them, so consumers couldn't get their hands on them. Netflix solved all that with its DVD-by-mail business model.

Anyway, the folks at Innosight are making slides of the presentation available to people who signed up for the event. If and when they become available on the Innosight site, it's definitely worth taking a look.

Tags: Innosight ClaytonChristensen innovation