The word “Innovation” can conjure up thoughts of mystery and mystique to many people. After all, the very definition of innovation means doing something new and different, coming up with ideas and products that have never been done before. Hence, many people think that innovation is something magical, something beyond what “normal” people or companies are capable of doing. However, I’m here to tell you that innovation is something that EVERY company can drive and achieve, and it’s just the resulting business success that’s magical!

Let me start with a real-world example that I had the privilege of experiencing first hand:

• We were in the production scanner business, with #1 market share in the very high end of the market. However, growth in the high-end market was slowing down, and a new mid volume segment was starting to take off.
• We wanted to participate in the mid volume segment, but it was dominated by two large/strong competitors, each w/ about 50% market share.

So exactly how does an organization suddenly get the inspiration and insight to beat incumbent competitors at their own game?  The execution details may vary, depending on the industry, technology, or product line, but the following approach enabled us to achieve incredible success, going from 0 to 50% market share in just 18 months in the market! Your mileage may vary, but the following basics were key:

1. Immerse yourself in the customer’s day to day life

   

   • There’s no script – just observe and discuss how they go about doing their business. What issues do they keep hitting? What frustrates them? What limits their productivity?
   • Send in the engineers and technologists! Don’t just rely on marketing and sales folks to interact w/ customers. Take advantage of the technical people in your organization – their technical background and innate “scientific thinking” gives them a unique perspective, enabling them to see through typical impediments and problems and imagine alternate options or approaches.
   • Get a reasonable number of data points. Depending on the product line, size of company, or industry, that can be 10’s of customer visits and dialogs or thousands. But it’s not just one, and it’s certainly not just one person’s.
   • In our case, we did about 15 customer visits (technically, they were our competitors’ customers, not our customers … yet)

2. Aggregate and analyze the results

   

   • After all of the teams come back from their customer visits, aggregate the results and do a pareto analysisof the issues/opportunities that were found.
   • For our specific situation, we found 2 issues that were major dissatisfiers for these customers: (1) poor paper handling robustness – too many jams/stoppages when scanning real-world documents that had folds, crimples, tape, etc. and (2) poor image quality when dealing w/ real-world content on these documents, such as different color inks, pencil, highlighter, and stamps/marks.

3. Brainstorm solutions

   

   • Engage all of the functional teams involved in the product – scientists, engineers, marketing, service, manufacturing, QA, etc. All of these folks have their own unique perspectives and insights, but they all have 2 things in common: (1) some level of expertise on the specific product being delivered and (2) some level of ownership for wanting it to be successful.
   • For the mid-volume scanner example: (1) paper handling robustness was solved by leveraging the technologies and techniques we had implemented in our more expensive high-end scanners, but with significant reductions in the manufacturing and service costs. (2) For the image quality issues, we accelerated a new Adaptive Thresholding technology we had been working on as a research initiative, but with greater resolve and with real-world examples/data to help refine it.

4. Verify the solutions with customers

   

   • Once you have come up with some good solutions to resolve the issues or address the opportunities identified, it’s important to prototype the solutions and put them in front of customers for verification. Nothing like real-world customers to let you know if you hit the mark – or better yet, if you created a wow factor!
   • Prototyping can take various shapes and forms, depending on the type of product or what you have available to you. The intent is to do it as quickly and as cheaply as possible, while still making it “real” for the customer (you don’t have to start with “imagine if you will …”, you just ask them to try something and give you feedback).
   • For the mid-volume scanner example we used 2 different approaches: (1) for the image quality issues, we took some samples of the customers’ documents, processed them off-line using our prototype algorithms (slow processing via software, but equivalent results to what the future hardware implementation would deliver in real time), and then gave them back normal binary files for their review and assessment. (2) For the paper handling, we used prototype manufacturing techniques to build a mechanical paper transport breadboard (same size and configuration as the intended final product), which we took over to the customer sites for them to try it out. We got disbelief on the image quality (customers had a hard time believing that what we showed them could be produced in real time vs. “back-end processing” that was time consuming and couldn’t be sustained), but they loved the results … and we were confident that we could deliver the real-time version in hardware, so we had confirmation. For the paper handling, we hit a real wow factor! Customers couldn’t believe what they were seeing – it got to the point where they stopped feeding their typical problem documents (they all fed just fine), and instead they started purposely mangling documents to see if they could get a jam!

5. Deliver the Solution

   

   • This step is much easier said than done!
   • Obviously, the solution you deliver should include the innovative features discussed above. However, you need to make sure that the WHOLE product offering is top notch and will delight the customer.
   • For example, the scanner we delivered represents a very complex product, including many subsystems/features, such as illumination, optics, sensors, imaging electronics, motors and controls, paper path mechanics, user interface, industrial design and ergonomics, software drivers, etc.
   • If any one of those subsystems or features is poorly implemented it will over-shadow the innovations you baked in. For example, who cares about a scanner that handles all sorts of damaged documents if it always overheats and shuts itself off? You just traded one customer problem/inconvenience for another.
   • You need to pay attention to everything you’re delivering, not just the exciting new innovations.
   • Our mid-volume scanner was a huge success – the innovative features gave it sizzle and buzz in the industry, but it also delivered reliability and robustness, earning the reputation as a real workhorse production scanner. As I mentioned in the beginning, we achieved 50% market share in just 18 months, and we broke even on the entire $20M initial investment in just 12 months!

Obviously, the key to success is in the detailed execution of the above process, but the bottom line is that innovation isn’t some illusive magic that’s just reserved for a few lucky people. It happens because you continuously immerse yourself in your customer’s day to day life, identify the key issues/problems they encounter,  continuously engage your entire organization in solving those problems, verify the solutions with customers, and then deliver those solutions with reliable and robust products and services. It’s a lot of hard work and attention to detail, but only the results are magical!

Here’s to your success!

• Pete