Why to define the innovation target well.
Horizon 1 & 2 innovations build on the core business. Therefore, obviously, the problems that innovations aim to solve should be related to the core business. If the problem statement is too vague or too broad, innovative ideas to address these problems may not be targeted enough either. How can aspiring innovators across the corporation know the core business problems well enough to come up with a relevant innovative idea? And how can Innovation Leaders play an important role in this?
Let’s take a few examples, for different brands.
A diabetes brand.
- The business objective was to increase market share. However, that’s too vague as an innovation target.
- The business team had identified that a key issue for “brand choice” was adherence: most patients did not continue to take their medication of any brand. If the team could come up with an adherence solution for their brand, more physicians would prescribe their brand and thus their market share would increase. “Adherence” was already more specific than “market share”, but still too vague: why didn’t patients take their medication?
- Initially, the belief was that patients just forgot to take the pills. However, more in depth research revealed that most patients stopped taking medication, initially because they worried about side effects and later on because they thought that their disease was cured once their glucose levels normalized with treatment. That was a specific enough problem: the need for effective patient education.
- Now ideas could be solicited to address this patient education in innovative ways. The traditional ways like brochures that were handed out at the start of treatment or passive educational web sites apparently did not work.
- Innovative ideas emerged, like call centers (calling patients that did not fulfill their prescription timely) or geolocation (when non-adhering patients passed by their pharmacist, a message appeared on their mobile phone with a recommendation to discuss their diabetes medication with their pharmacist). All this happens with patient consent, of course.
A Hepatitis C brand.
- The business objective was “fulfillment”, i.e. patients did not fill the life saving prescription from their doctor. This is too vague as an innovation target.
- The team discovered that for 90% of patients the treatment was too expensive, as they needed to pay it out of pocket.
- The traditional approach would have been to lower the price of the treatment. Lowering the price of the medicine to the level of the cost to produce the medicine would make no signifiant difference in number of patients that would be able to pay for it (80% would still not be able to afford it). Lowering the price even further was not sustainable.
- When discussing this challenge with patients, it became clear that the issue was not cash, but cash flow: many patients could not pay for the treatment within the 6-month treatment period, but they would be able to pay if the payment was spread over a longer time period. This was a specific target.
- Innovative ideas emerged, leading to an experiment in which the company partnered with a bank. This bank provided the patient with a loan, to be paid back over a 3 year period.
As Innovation Leader, how to catalyze specific target management? A few suggestions:
- Narrow down the problem. Ask the brand team(s) to share their problem statements: as specific as possible and in a terminology that can be understood by all employees.
- Communicate the problem. Make sure everyone in the company knows and understands the specific problem. Engage the brand team and/or customers, e.g. by featuring them in a short video.
- Facilitate proposals. Make sure the innovators connect their innovative idea well with the problem, e.g. by building a One-pager .
- Connect innovators. Ask the innovators to discuss promising ideas with the brand team to ensure alignment with the problem statement and to secure sponsorship.
- Recognition. Ensure that evaluation criteria, like for Innovation Awards, are very tightly related to the specific problem.
As Esther Dyson, EDVenture said:
I don’t try to encourage creativity for creativity sake, instead, I try to encourage creative solutions to real problems.
So, as Innovation Leader, I made sure to focus innovation on specific, brand related business/customer challenges and consistently supported innovators to address those.
Additional views on this topic: Don’t Look for a Great Idea. Look for a Good Problem , by Greg Satell
What do you think? Please share!
More of my blogs on innovation: Wim Vandenhouweele