The Innovation Advantage™
Amazon has it.
Nike sustains it.
Upworthy socializes it.
Umpqua redefined an industry with it.
Blackberry thought they had it.
Yahoo is still looking for it.
And Apple had it, lost it, found it and may well be losing it all over again.
Any thoughts on what ‘it’ could be?
Vision?
Passion?
Market dominance?
It could well be any of those things. However in this case, it is what we refer to as
The Innovation Advantage™
The most compelling competitive advantage a business can have in today’s highly competitive and increasingly commoditized global marketplace.
If you are discouraged by declining market share…
Struggling with stagnant growth…
Or simply frustrated because revenues aren’t rising as quickly as you would like,
It’s time to gain and sustain your Innovation Advantage.
The Innovation Advantage is the cumulative competitive advantage that a company derives from its ability to continuously create, demonstrate and deliver more strategically innovative value to more customers more often than its competition.
To gain and sustain an Innovation Advantage, an organization must continuously out-innovate their competition in three Innovation Advantage Imperatives.
- How they Create Value (think products, services and even business models);
- How they Demonstrate Value (think sales and marketing in the broadest sense);
- How they Deliver Value (think operational excellence via all delivery methods).
Taken individually, each of these imperatives holds a multitude of opportunities for your organization to prove its innovation prowess and to differentiate your offerings from those of your toughest competition.
Taken together, they create the framework for a customer centric innovation strategy that is fanatically focused on value, daring your business 2b different in ways that will help you influence the mindsets and behaviors of your customers so that you can drive more revenue and more growth in your business.
- Create Value
- Demonstrate Value
- Deliver Value
- The Three Imperatives
This is where businesses put innovation to work by continuously creating and designing new and innovative products, services, processes and experiences that add strategic value to their customers.
Case in point, UK based company ARM creates the code that powers over 90% of smart phones worldwide. Considered by both Forbes and Fast Company to be one of the most innovative companies in Europe, ARM continuously creates strategically innovative value for its customers not only by designing new code that companies such as Apple and Samsung can then license for their own use, but by adapting and repurposing applications of that code for everything from digital networks to refrigerators.
What unique code do you create for your customers? Are you continuously re-inventing and repurposing that code in ways that reset customer mindsets, redefine value and strategically differentiate you from your competitors in the marketplace?
More Customers, More Revenue and More Growth
Find out how we can help your organization gain and sustain your Innovation Advantage today.
Regardless of how innovative your code may be, if no one understands and appreciates the difference between the value of your code and that of your competitors, your innovations are destined to remain perilously invisible to the very customers that you created them for.
The Ikea outlet that transforms their main staircase into a chest of drawers to demonstrate an entire wardrobe impeccably organized inside; the distribution center that demonstrates gratitude by including a personalized note of thanks and a discount coupon in the boxes of inventory that they send to their most loyal clients; the pharmaceutical rep that always limits her meetings with physicians to less than 15 minutes so as to demonstrate the importance that she places on the doctor’s time…
Do you consistently out-innovate your competition when it comes to demonstrating the value of your unique code to your customers?
More Customers, More Revenue and More Growth
Find out how we can help your organization gain and sustain your Innovation Advantage today.
Although many businesses focus on creating and demonstrating strategically innovative customer value, for some reason they completely overlook the multitude of opportunities that exist in the deliver phase. Opportunities to create strategically innovative customer experiences that, when added to the Innovation Advantage mix, would significantly differentiate them from their competition by delivering more value for more customers more often when they least expect it.
Umpqua delivers banking services in stores (not branches) that have water bowls for pets, freshly baked cookies on Fridays and a comfortable café environment where customers can have a coffee, read the newspaper and surf the internet. At Pike’s Place Fish Market in Seattle shouting fishmongers deliver their fare by throwing it across the room to each other. And in the not too distant future, companies like Amazon may well use drones to deliver your purchases to your front door.
When it comes to delivering value, how innovative is your organization? Simply put, does your delivery experience really deliver?
More Customers, More Revenue and More Growth
Find out how we can help your organization gain and sustain your Innovation Advantage today.
To earn your place at the intersection of the three concentric value circles where the most compelling Innovation Advantage resides, your company must continuously innovate in all three of the create, demonstrate and deliver imperatives.
The word ‘continuously’ reminds us that it’s not enough to innovate from time to time. Not enough to innovate when it suits us or when a sudden crisis motivates us to go in search of new ideas. The innovation commitment required to gain and sustain a true Innovation Advantage spans the entire spectrum of customer value. A continuous commitment that gives your brand the type of compelling competitive advantage that not only differentiates you from your competition but that also redefines customer expectations so that you can drive more customers, more revenue and more growth for your business.
More Customers, More Revenue and More Growth
Find out how we can help your organization gain and sustain your Innovation Advantage today.
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