Innovation and strategic thinking marwan

PREPARED :DR. MARWAN SAKRAN

Innovation and strategic thinking

Basis for the comments2

Case studies of service and experience firmsExperiments in service and experience firms

(project ”When the customer encounters the employee”)

General reflections and case-examples

Why strategic innovation3

Innovation is a risky businessThe idea phase not the most difficult – that is the

commercialisation phase Firms want to introduce innovations that the

market wantsService firms have very little R&D and need to be

pull-orientedThey have the advantage of meeting the

customers Their innovation process becomes customer

oriented

What is strategic innovation ?4

Innovation is about what people may want in the future

That is difficult to predict Firms can not rely on actual user-demands on the market – they can not find lead users

Firms are forced to choose a strategy: Defensive: Try to guess what future users will want Offensive: Try to determine what the future users

will want (influencing life style)

How is strategic innovation practiced?5

It is difficult to practice directly user-based innovation:Customers often have no ideas, particularly not for radical innovations

Strategic innovation is the indirect way to find what users may want in the future

Several methods

User analyses6

Market analysesExamples: Surveys (how do people use web sites)

Trend spotters (new food habits)Focus groups (social home service)

Anthropological approachExamples: Living in youth groups (music, clothes, everything) – acting as a tourist

Critical incidencesExample: Interviews with victims of fire

User involvement7

User communitiesExamples: Web-blogs (software firms, library) Help desk and complaints (travel agency)

User involvement in the innovation processExamples: Co-creation (NewInsight) –The idea and test phases (New services for mobile phones)

Value chain innovation (company-users as experts)Examples: Diary – wholesale – cafe Hotel - attraction – tour operator – press

Employee-based user-knowledge8

Idea boxesExamples: Library, IBM

Empathic innovationExamples: Insurance agents

Employees as innovatorsExample: TrygVesta (insurance company)

VolunteersExample: UNDP

Offensive strategy9

Creating behavioral trajectoryExample: Discount airlines discount airport terminals

Experience added (influencing life style)Examples: Cars – web pages – Levis jeans

Entrepreneurship – create the movement oneselfExamples: Body Shop – Windmill industry

Reflexive strategy10

The strategy must be regularly assessed (the innovations may be wrong - the world is changing)

Employees are involved (encounter ther customers)

New push-based innovations may come up (technology, R&D, intrapreneurship)

Sum up11

Market or user based strategic innovation is about incremental innovation

Strategic innovation is constant hard workIt is about business development and solving

problems/creating a better life – call it innovation or not

The methods must be developed and people trained in using them.Management must be committed and focused on innovation – and educated