Innovation news
Two pieces of news:
1) Some companies are trying an approach to launching products that involves less up-front market research and more experimentation in the marketplace.
2) Innovation is on the agenda of the U.S.’s new CTO.
Topics
Two pieces of innovation-related news:
1) There’s an interesting new article at the strategy+business website about “in-market innovation.” What’s that? The article’s authors (Alexander Kandybin, Surbhee Grover and Nami Soejima, all of Booz & Company) define “in-market innovation” as the practice of doing “mini-launches” of a number of products, with more limited prior market research — and seeing which succeed. Companies that they cite as trying some aspect of this strategy include Procter & Gamble, Target and Tiffany & Co.
The article brings to mind other thinking about the benefits of experimentation, such as Michael Schrage’s (of the MIT Center for Digital Business) advocacy of inexpensive digital business experiments, and John Mullins’ (of London Business School), observation that start-up companies need to be willing to experiment until they develop the right strategy.
2) In other innovation news, the Bits blog at NYTimes.com reports that in a recent interview, Aneesh Chopra, the new chief technology officer of the United States, identified four main goals for his new job. Interestingly, all four involved innovation.