One innovation triggers another Once the innovation mindset gets traction in a corporation, it can create a snowball effect. Innovations that are successful in one country can inspire another and be copied or adapted. This can also happen across brands. A micro financing innovation for Hepatitis C patients in India increased access (affordability) to a life saving medicine. This created a win-win-win situation: a win for patients (treated and cured), a win for the bank that provided the micro loan (new customers), a win for the Pharma company (increased access to their life saving medicine). Thousands of patients achieved access – read more about this in my earlier blog. A…
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Staying alive!
Innovating faster than competition Not all innovations create a Blue Ocean*. Sometimes you just have to work in a Red Ocean. In that case, it’s important to stay ahead of competition. When sharing innovations from across the organization at inspirational sessions, I was often faced with the critique that it’s easy for competitors to copy some of those innovations. That is of course correct (if one cannot patent the innovation). However, don’t underestimate the advantages of being first. When you’re first, you go through the learnings first, so you have an execution and scaling advantage. When you’re first and your innovation succeeds, your confidence grows, more innovative ideas emerge and…
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Reverse innovation
Innovating from less to more developed markets In multinational corporations, marketers in emerging markets typically have much more limited resources than their colleagues in the more developed markets. They are forced to solve their challenges more innovatively and experiment with new, unique customer and business solutions. As teams in emerging countries are much smaller than those in large western countries, marketers meet more frequently with other employees and innovators to ideate and to share learnings fast. Small markets also offer an excellent testbed for innovations, as failures have limited impact on the overall organization. There are numerous types of small markets and very diverse combinations of talent. Experimentation is also…
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BEI
It works! What now? The Back End of Innovation (BEI) is about implementing successful innovations. A unique benefit of large corporations is that innovations that reach success in one part of the organization, e.g. in one country can be copied, adapted and executed across the rest of the organization. There are many barriers to overcome of course, especially the “not invented here” syndrome: “this will not work here, as our country, customer, environment is very different”. I learned, after a couple of failures, how those barriers can be addressed. A business team in Asia had developed an innovative solution to help patients take their diabetes medication appropriately and consistently. They…