This whitepaper is the foundation for the Joint Innovation Program, the program that I have developed for Orange Business Services. It is aimed at delivering joint innovative projects, mainly in the framework of outsourcing contracts.
A methodological perspective on joint Innovation
[exceprts]
A high-level view
When innovation is discussed, people often say, “it’s all about execution; ideas are easy” or “innovation is about creativity and only creative people can innovate.”
Experience has shown, however, that generating a good idea that can be executed rapidly requires a good process and an organisation’s ability to learn.
This learning process must take place internally, through a culture of knowledge sharing, and externally, from the ecosystem of value-add partners, like Visionary Marketing.
Our joint innovation approach supports customers as they travel through their “innovation journey.” The aim of this paper is to provide methodological approaches to the kinds of issues depicted in our previous white paperThe white paper is one of the pillars of a B2B content marketing strategy. It is proof of your expertise. entitled “The Far Side of Digital Transformation.”
Joint innovation program: what is joint innovation?
To some, innovation means developing new products or services. To others, the focus of innovation is on the generation, prioritisation and development of radically new ideas (as opposed to ongoing product development). Still, others will interpret innovation as the process of successfully implementing new ideas. Whether incremental or disruptive, however, innovation always benefits from experimentation that involves customers and partners. Joint innovation, as it is called, accelerates the innovation process and the time to market.
Leading-edge not bleeding-edge
Whether innovation emerges from pure creativity or from business requirement analysis is a spurious question. Both are required, and only the combination of the two will produce business benefits. It is generally accepted that when a product or service is useful, it should sell in large quantities.
In this context, marketing new products or services is indeed very straightforward, i.e., requirements can be measured, and these measurements can be immediately applied to product or service design. However, in reality, it is very rare that things happen that way since innovation is very much about marketing the unknown (1).
Hence, delivering successful innovations for the enterprise is not so much about eliciting underlying requirements as it is about surprising people with new ideas, new approaches or new ways of marketing existing products or services. It is also about jointly experimenting with new things and learning from experience.
As a result, innovation is always the product of a dual process, mixing technological advances and inventions with market responses and business requirements.
Who needs a joint innovation program?
S&P 500 companies pay back hundreds of billions of dollars to shareholders every year. Even when the economy is faltering, dividend payments stayed strong and that was certainly the case in 2015 which was a record year in that respect. One may postulate that these companies have squeezed out all possible efficiency through cost-cutting measures and now have the cash to spare. They have reached a point where further cost-cutting measures could severely impact their business models.
The acceleration of market deregulation around the world, the long-term reductions in transportation and communication costs and the new opportunities for competitionMarket definition in B2B and B2C - The very notion of "market" is at the heart of any marketing approach. A market can be defined... provided by new technologies and scientific advances have had a significant impact on global business rules. In such a global and competitive world, corporate organisations can no longer wait for changes to happen for fear of losing market shareMarket share can be defined as a percentage accounted for by a given producer or brand in its own market. Market share = Current market of producer or brand / Current market of product all brands and potential for improvement.
As a consequence, the need for innovation is deeply felt, and that is true of smaller sized firms too. In that context, it may be a good idea to resort to third-party support in order to tap into the knowledge and experience of seasoned professionals in the field of innovation and transformation. This can help those clients to significantly increase their chances of success and the pace of delivery of their new products or services.
In this paper, we describe our vision of innovation and how we wanted to deal with this topic in a down-to-earth manner.
An updated version of this joint innovation program white paper is available here
https://visionarymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/innovationwhitepaper11-2.pdf
Read the 2020 version of this joint innovation program whitepaper
https://visionarymarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/Joint-innovation-layout_en.pdf
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Yann Gourvennec a créé visionarymarketing.com en 1996. Il est conférencier et auteur de 6 livres. En 2014, il est passé d'intrapreneur à entrepreneur en créant son agence de marketing numérique.
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