Main RMI Number
408-554-4960
SCU - St. Joseph's Hall
Room # 108
|
|
Retail Management Institute Newsletter -Winter '04
RCME Presents "Driving Growth Through Innovation"
By Debra Black
Robert Tucker, author of
Driving Growth
Through Innovation.
|
|
The lights went out on Robert B. Tucker, but there was more than enough energy in the room to power his presentation on June 12.
“Isn’t this a great metaphor?” said the president of Innovation Resource. “I’m energized; I’m away from the notes. Someone once told me, ‘It’s not a matter of if your PowerPoint is not going to be available to you, it’s a matter of when.”
Tucker, the author of Driving Growth Through Innovation, enthusiastically showed members of the Retail Consortium for Management Education (RCME) how “Innovation Vanguard companies” fundamentally reinvented their innovation processes to succeed in today’s quickly changing markets.
“I want you to be dissatisfied with the level of growth your company is achieving,” he said. “As a leader, you are either inventing the future, or you are managing the past.”
Tucker outlined six key strategies to systematize your approach to innovation.
Open to Opportunity
Where are the ideas going to come from that are going to fuel your company’s growth? Entire companies have been created as a result of happy accidents. Most of the top inventions of the previous century have major elements of serendipity, said Tucker, and involved the right person, right place, right time and most importantly, the right attitude. A lab scientist working to develop an ulcer drug inadvertently licked his fingers. He wasn’t trying to come up with a substitute for sugar, but the result was NutraSweet, now a $5 billion a year product. Doctors at Pfizer were developing a drug for people with heart conditions, and a happy accident resulted in Viagra. FedEx started out as a company that refurbished the upholstery in executive jets, but grew as customers needed to charter jets to ship their airfreight.
“Not all innovations are equal,” said Tucker. He introduced a nine-box grid that defined three types of innovation opportunities—product, process, and strategy. Each type of innovation opportunity extends from incremental to substantial to breakthrough status.
Most organizations are comfortable staying in the area of incremental innovation. “A lot of companies just want to play it safe,” he says. “WalMart’s logistics system was a process breakthrough bar none in retailing,” but strategy innovation is the hot area of innovation today, and Tucker pointed to Old Navy and Dell as examples.
Assault Your Assumptions
Thinking “there’s got to be a better way” is an innovative moment, says Tucker. “What you are doing in that moment is assaulting your assumptions—the basis of all progress. There is somebody assaulting assumptions in your sector of retail today. Is it going to be you, or is it going to be them?”
RCME participants considered breakthrough ideas and analyzed common benefits. They found that successful products such as Gatorade, Post-its, Chrysler’s minivan, and Gillette’s Sensor razor attempt to make life easier and more convenient, and often go against conventional wisdom. They provide a superior solution to the customer’s problems, a unique value proposition.
Mine the Future
Pay attention to the regulatory, lifestyle, social, and economic changes going on in your market environment. Take them apart and analyze them for opportunities.
“Mine the future. We can’t just passively have a relationship with trends. Get in the swimming pool with trends, and mix it up and be creative,” said Tucker. Then he whispered, “Exploit change.”
Shell Chemical has a six-member Game Changer Unit that solicits ideas from employees around the world. “We want your ideas,” they say. “If you stumble upon a happy accident, here’s our e-mail address.”
The future of retailing and of “anybody who sells anything” is in discovering unarticulated needs, said Tucker. Whirlpool watched people do laundry and asked questions and came up with a great new product called Neptune.
Fortify Your Idea Factory
Encourage your employees as well as your customers to be innovative. Create a systematic program for innovation that gives people credit and incentives for coming forth with ideas.
Tucker encouraged RCME members to uncover barriers to innovation in their organizations, and to consciously identify their own personal process for managing ideas. For example, what’s your most creative time of the day?
In conversations with innovative people, Tucker found each had a process they were enthusiastic about describing. One senior executive of a $200 million company said, “I owe my success and the growth of this company to taking one 24-hour down day a month.” Bill Gates takes two weeks every year to read, and think.
“If you want to reinvent your innovation process, be serious about it. Think about some of these new methods that are coming up. They invigorate your team, your organization, and your senior management.”
Cultivate the Culture
Many retail organizations are still visionary driven, said Tucker. However, many of the founders with the original vision are now retiring. “So it’s left to the next generation of management, and that’s why we need a process.”
Cultivating the culture - an organization’s values, beliefs, and behaviors—is necessary to move an idea along.
“You’re a very special person in your organization. Your company would not have asked you to come to this seminar if they didn’t consider you to be something of a scout— someone who just might bring back a happy accident,” said Tucker. Mavericks should be supported.
Build the Buy-In
Think about the visionary who started your organization. That person had to become a great salesperson to carry forth their vision. It’s not enough to have a great idea, said Tucker. You’ve got to be willing to bring people along.
He offered tips for selling new ideas, including making everyone an idea evangelist and keeping the focus on what’s in it for the customer. “You’ve got to build converts one at a time,” he said.
|
|
RMI Newsletter
