Now here's an interesting idea....
We typically think of "innovation" in product development as a "first world" tool or strategy used by big companies...which may in time trickle down to smaller populations or countries.
This article published recently in Business Week online (March 11, 2009) highlights a different phenomena - companies pioneering innovative efforts in smaller markets or emerging nations, and then moving those innovations to the larger, richer nations.
There is a great advantage to such a process - consumers and companies in the "first world" are hungry for bargains as the recession grinds on. Instead of starting development in an advanced nation and passing along "yesterday's models" to second and third world nations...this model turns that process on it's head.
Companies are turning product development upside down, and customers across the developmental spectrum benefit greatly by such an approach. Newer, lower cost products (and services, for that matter) with just the essential features - not all the bells and whistles.
How can you apply such an approach to your company? What are the essentials your customers need, and how you can you provide it without the bells and whistles? What if you spin off the bells and whistles into individual products or services? If you as the question "what's the ONE thing my customer needs today?"...what is the answer?
I think one of the great things about the technology we have now a days is that we have the flexibility to really test things before implementation, which makes innovation easier to a certain degree. Because we are moving into a more services-based business model, the Web 2.0 world fosters that greatly!
Robert Stanke
http://robertstanke
Check out my new audio podcast: http://robertstanke.com/podcast
Posted by: Robert Stanke | May 04, 2009 at 12:20 PM