About jobs and customers Phillip Kotler and Clayton Christensen are among the most famous names in marketing and innovation. The former popularized the “4 P’s” of Marketing, the latter revived the concept of “jobs-to-be-done” in Innovation. The “4 P’s” constitute the marketing mix and refer to four broad levels of marketing decision: product, price, place and promotion. The “jobs to be done” (JTBD) concept is derived from the Outcome-Driven Innovation theory that people buy products and services to get jobs done. Following are a few examples of Pharma marketing innovations, combining both concepts. Product Innovative Pharma companies that do not frequently invent new products disappear. That is because medicines have…
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FEI – BEI
What’s the difference? I got a couple of questions about what both acronyms mean. It’s simple: FEI is the Front End of Innovation, BEI stands for the Back End of Innovation. They represent the two big blocks of the innovation journey: the early stages and the late stages. There are many different definitions of each block and the blocks often overlap. Typically, they include the following stages: FEI: the more unstructured stages, like ideation and experimentation; BEI: the more structured stages, like pilots and commercialization. The specific definition of each is not that important. The main value of defining these 2 categories is that innovation broadly requires 2 kinds of…
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No new normal
Innovation Leaders, unite! This year, tens of times every day, someone refers to the “new normal”: in publications, on TV, in webcasts. But what is normal? One definition is “conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern“ Because of COVID-19, we have certainly stopped conforming to some regular patterns. We do things we never did before like wearing a mask. We changed habits like going out for dinner in restaurants. We changed our shopping routines and replaced some of them with internet shopping. But we still do many of the same things we always did, like watching TV and listening to music. Long after COVID-19, some things will stay different…
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Who to get on board and when
Keeping innovation lean Large corporations excel at creating efficiencies and managing risk. This is accomplished through established processes, like repetitive project reviews and engagement of experts, including finance, legal and compliance teams. Obviously, this approach may limit internally generated innovation, as innovation is characterized by a limited process (“agile”, “lean”) and taking risks (risk of failure and risk inherent to “boldly go where no one has gone before”). Innovators in corporations usually have to experiment with their ideas on top of their full-time, regular job. They may be discouraged by the time it takes to follow rigid processes, like filling in multiple forms, preparing for in depth project reviews and…