innovation book

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there is no secret

sauce

there is no secret

sauce

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how are you?

Are you growing this season?

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The economic winter is slowly giving way to more profi table weather. Companies that saw the last decade as perpetual summer faced a freezing death. Those with reasonable fat on them survived the winter to be leaner and meaner.

The companies that had managed to optimize everything (or worse, nothing) before the winter struck, were probably unable to cope with the recession and are now gone.

The adoption curve

INNOVATOR EARLYADOPTER

MAJORPLAYER

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Where is your company? You know where the money is coming from today. But what about the new ideas that will bring you money tomorrow?

Walkman

Post offi ce

Long distance telephone calls

Big powerful American auto makers

AltaVista

The world is full of companies and industries where management knew exactly where the money was coming from. They all failed to innovate and some other technology made their business obsolete or changed the competitive landscape completely.

LAGGARD

Technology

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Technology is about “how” we do things. The garden rake is a vast improvement over gathering leaves with your hands. E-mail is much more effective than using the postal service.

Innovation means improving “how” we do things. From better service – pay upfront, eat with your hands, clean up after yourself, be happy = McDonald’s – to more comfortable living – piped water in-house = plumbing.

Innovation is about technology, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be high-tech. It doesn’t have to be about geeks and computers. It can simply be a better, healthier sandwich from Pret a Manger.

it’s the economy, stupid

Design thinking

discover define

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Design thinking is not about design. It is future scenario creation based on insight and indirect analogues. Business schools have just recently discovered the value of design thinking, but for designers, whose whole curriculum is about problem solving, design thinking is the normal way to look at the world.

develop deliver

Source: Design Council, 2005

Please draw me a business

YX

I’m in a hurry

I’m politeand swift

I’ve got time

I’m polite andknowledgeable

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Design thinking has become a hot topic at the same time that “new business model creation” has become an urgent need. When businesses stayed the same, designers were occupied with styling and product semantics. The central part of design was the visual impact of the business.

Over the past ten years companies have started to recognize the value of design thinking. The way you can purchase a good, the place, the experience itself (did you stand in line bored or interested) can be done differently, if you initially view it as a problem that can be solved, not as a given to be ignored.

> www.zappos.com

The enemy of innovation

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Tradition

Supersititon

Convention

People

Superstition. Think GMO crops.

The fuzzy front end

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Innovation is diffi cult because as people we are uncomfortable working with unknowns. We don’t accept things we haven’t experienced because it is not the way things are. Even the automatic sliding doors in shopping malls weren’t popularly received at fi rst, because they weren’t ‘doors’.

Working with unknowns is called the fuzzy front end. This is where the weird questions are asked and the suprising answers are found.

manage or

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lead

At the top of your game

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For businesses that are successful selling stuff that people want the danger is that the company is optimizing, not innovating.

The fact is, that if your company isn’t innovating, then you are sure to be surpassed by a competitor with a better offer in the future. Or a cheaper one, because what once was a luxury is now a commodity.

Manage-ment

PROFIT

COST

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Established companies have managers whose responsibility can often be summed up by “improve fi nancial performance”. This means effi ciency. Better tools, better logistics, better (and fewer) people. This will lower costs and raise profi ts.

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Fewer, higher educated people doing sophisticated and complicated work. They are rarely motivated by higher corporate profi ts because they already make good money. They want to be good at what they do, manage themselves and have a good reason for doing what they do.

Management is often ill equipped to motivate these people because the “purpose” of the business hasn’t actually been defi ned beyond “making more money”.

Leader-ship

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Providing employees with a clear purpose that is bigger than their work; focusing on effi ciency while at the same time providing new and exciting projects to work on turns management into leaders.

They in turn can motivate this high value staff to (pause here) make more money for the company.

Wouldn’t you rather work for Apple than Nokia?

what are

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the options

Innovation

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If you are in the business of making widgets, then you know that over time you’ve gotten better at making them. The cost of a widget has gone down. At fi rst this meant that you made more money. Then competition piled in with cheaper widgets and you had a choice:

a) make widgets cheaper

b) make widgets better

Plan A

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If you decided to make your widgets cheaper, then to stay in business you had to continually sell more, while selling cheaper, increasing market share and increasing markets. In a price war, only one can win.

Once the widget is something everyone has but no one thinks about then there will be widget makers around the world making the same stuff. It’ll be a commodity and if you go out of business no one will notice.

> Record companies. Airlines.

Plan B

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If you decided to make your widgets better, then that means innovating. A better brand, better marketing, a better quality widget. Widget 2.0. It’s a unique widget bought for quality, not price.

Over time it may become something else entirely. Nokia didn’t invest into making better rubber boots. They started making mobile phones instead.

There is no secret sauce

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Design thinking and innovation can be learnt. It is a process, not a good guess.

Brand Manual can help you develop your internal innovation procedures or be a partner to build new business, service or product concepts.

But don't wait too long. The slide down the adoption curve can be surprisingly swift.

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Charles H. Duell, Commissioner,

U.S. patent offi ce1899

manual

Brand Manual is a branding & service design consultancy

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We work with companies to create new brands and design the products, services, spaces and interfaces that make the experience real for customers.

We help companies build an innovation culture and the supporting internal processes that are necessary to launch new ventures and businesses. Using design thinking as a strategic management tool, we build lasting brands centered around well designed products and services. For companies looking to grow through export, we offer our skill in making solutions internationally competitive, not just locally relevant.

The following pages introduce a few of our cases from 2010.

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CONTEXT FILTER

GENIUS LOCI: SCOPE AND MOTIVATORS

HOUSE

STREET

BOROUGH

CITY

COUNTY

DAYWEEK

MONTH

YEAR

CHILDREN

PETS

SPORTPHILATELI

RESTAURANTS

TAXES

MUSIC

T

25

03

10

TIME

PLACE

THEME

LOCATION BASEDTOURIST

INFORMATION

LOCATION BASEDTOURIST

10

PL

AN

I

DEA PR

OB

LE

M

RE

SO

UR

CE

S

FEEDBACK

SOLU

TIO

NS

ACTIV

ITIE

S /

EV

EN

TS

ISSUES / DISCUSSIONS

VIS

IBL

E A

CT

IVIT

IES

OPP

OR

UN

ITIE

S T

O S

UP

PO

RT

CIV

IC

INPUT FOR LEGISLATION

OU

TP

UT

/ INF

OR

MA

TIO

N

L OC A

L A

U T H O R I T Y

CO

NT E N

T CR E A T I O N

I NP

UT

PERSONALLYRELEVANT

INFORMATION

NEWSFEED

MYLOCATION

MYINTERESTS

MY TIME-FRAME

NEWSnewspapers, news portals etc.

culture.net

(subscription fee)

SERVICES

EVENTS

“There should be moreflowers in the city”

Agree / disagree“I like that idea”

“I want to clean up the local park”

“I want toget something fixed”

“There is a pot hole in street”

Resource“I can come to helpnear Park street”

Service“I can offer constructionmachinery”

Event“Park street cleaningand street party”

Repair“Street repairs onOak street”

AS A RESULT OF DISCUSSION A NEW INITIATIVE HAS BEEN STARTED

PEOPLE OFFER THEIR SUPPORT

CREATE NEW EVENT / ACTIVITY

I WILL FIND OUT HOW MY PROBLEM CAN BE SOLVED

I WILL SEND A REPORT WITH THE NECCESSARY DETAIL

GOV’T COMMENT/ WORK SCHEDULE

I WILL EXPLAIN

HOW THE PROBLEM

CAN BE SOLVED

STAR

T A

DISC

USSI

ON

DISCUSSION / OPINIONS

SUPPORT THE INITIATIV

E

GOV’T OFFICIAL C

ONFIRMS IN

FO

OFFER

YOUR HELP / S

ERVICE

LOCAL GOV’T SUPPORT

BBBBBOR

COU

DETAILED

SCHEDULE

OF

REPAIRS

LEGISLATIO

N

BUDGETS

CALENDAR

PLANS

19/05/2010

OPPORTUNITY TO FOLLOWTHE DISCUSSION

OPPORTUNITY TO FIND HELPOR SERVICE PROVIDERS

GET/RECEIVEADVICE ON COMMONISSUES

CHANCE TO SEE EVERYTHING AROUND YOU IN THE NEAR FUTURE

Issue “Is the postman allowed to bite an attacking dog?”

iDKNOWN USER

UNKNOWN USER

UNKNOWN USER

UNKNOWN USER

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Can a government be different?Our web tool for EMSL, the Estonian non-profi t organizations association envisions a forum of individuals and government offi cials taking part in public discourse. Receiving information according to their stated location, interest and time frame while at the same time feeding relevant infor-mation into the system that is then received by others according to their similarly defi ned preferences.

The result is reduced FAQ for offi cials as answers to individual queries become searchable while citizens gain the ability to infl uence decision making by raising a collective voice. Government 2.0.

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How can utilities add value to their service? Moreover, can they help to reduce peak traffi c and cost? Synerall is a utility company energy management service. The program allows users to plan their energy use for the lowest cost periods, monitor their use and understand anomalies. One of our innovations includes how consumers can pay directly for electricity on rental space, without requiring new contracts with the energy company. An especially attractive option for rental space operators.

Synerall is developed with the liberalisation of the European energy market in mind.

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If taxis didn’t have a taxi sign, would you know which one’s a taxi?Innove promotes initiatives of lifelong learning, primarily targeting young people ages 7–26. The actual service is provided through local government programs coordinated and supported by Innove, but so far not subordinated to one single brand and structure.

We helped unify the various organi-sa tions willingly under a single brand and identity for career counseling. It will roll out over the next couple of years and provide both youth as well as employers with a clear and understandable partner in planning for the future.

Branding ABCBranding is not about the logo. During the past year and a half we’ve had the privelege to deliver our Branding ABC course to numerous companies and institutions, including the government sector, throughout Estonia.

The summary of Branding ABC is that the whole company, not only marketing,

Business ideaUSP

LEGAL PROTECTION .BRAND PLATFORM

BRAND ARCHITECTURE

VISUAL COMMUNICATION

MARKETINGPR

PRODUCT DESIGNPACKAGE DESIGN

QUALITY MANAGEMENTPATENTS

RETAIL CONCEPTEXPERIENCE

PARTNERSSUB-CONTRACTORS

LOGISTICS

PERSONNELCULTURE

COMPETENCEATTITUDE

brand

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must be involved in building the brand. The brand, moreover, is not defi ned as image, but rather as what the company is and does that should appeal to its customers. There is little value in stressing service and special offers in communication, if the fl oor staff doesn’t know where the product is kept or why it is out of stock.

The conclusion of Branding ABC is that brands today are increasingly dependent on delivering a service, rather than just a product. As such, designing the whole value chain of the service, keeping in mind both employee motivation and customer disintrest, must become the focus of management over the next decade. Things, after all, are basically the same. How you get them, and how much you pay, however, differs wildly.

Innovation ABCWhat is the next thing? How can we come up with a product or service that can earn us more money? What is innovation? What is technology? How can our company become a hotbed of ideas, with enthusiastic employees, earning profi t along the way?

The problem with innovation, is that everyone talks about it. Innovate or die. But how?

We analysed what it is that we have been doing as company, and as indi vid uals in our previous fi elds.

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Developing new ideas has always been the common denominator. However, not only that, but we’ve solved problems: design problems, marketing problems, distribution prob lems, execution problems. Using design thinking as methodology, we have been able to clear the fog and defi ne a course of action that brings results.

Innovation ABC is a training course that introduces management and senior employees to the processes and mechanics of design thinking, the necessity of innovation in relation to business success, the fundamentals of motivating highly skilled individuals (it’s not only about money) and how to build a company culture where new, useful ideas don’t happen by accident.

For more comprehensive case studies please go to:

is a member of the International Service Design Network and Design Excellence Estonia

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www.thebrandmanual.com

Innovation is about improving or changing how we do things.

This book is about innovation and what happens, when companies don't innovate.

Our previous book, which talks about branding, is available online at www.issuu.com/thebrandmanual

innovation book

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