Innovating on the Cheap
Lance Bettencourt
May 25, 2011
In this new Harvard Business Review article, Lance Bettencourt and Scott Bettencourt present how companies are able to innovate and create new products with existing resources. "Most managers think an innovation must be something absolutely, completely new—new to the world, ideally, and new to the company at the very least. Yet the reality is that almost all companies have previous discoveries with overlooked innovation or market potential. Those innovation prospects are the proverbial bird in the hand: The work is done, and the risks are low. All it takes to realize a substantial and swift payback is for the company to recognize what it has."
The authors recommend Managers look for six kinds of "in hand" innovation:
1. Innovations that were previously developed but never launched, owing to circumstances that may have changed.
2. Features of past products that may meet newly critical customer needs.
3. Existing offerings that should be repositioned, because customers like them for unforeseen reasons.
4. Elements of bundled offerings that could stand alone.
5. New combinations of elements, in which the bundled value to customers is greater than the sum of the parts.
6. Overdesigned offerings that could be pared down for less-demanding customer segments.
Innovation is associated in many minds with bold bets on next-generation solutions. But for marketers with little appetite for high risks and distant paybacks, an innovation in the hand is worth two in the lab.
Go to the Harvard Business Review site to download the article.
