When does an idea become an innovation?

When it’s implemented. That’s the easy answer. And the hardest part. Ideas are the offspring and the wellspring of creativity.

According to Wikipedia: “Creativity is a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a literary work, or a painting).”

Something new, and something valuable. When creativity moves a business forward both are critical. New because it defines and gives differentiated meaning to your brand, your product or service. And valuable, for obvious reasons – to increase sales volume, to sell new things, to sell into different markets and to new customers, or to surprise the heck out of your current customers by understanding an unmet and unstated need, and to sell them (those who already know and love you) something new.

You know that person, that leader, that colleague, or consultant who always has the craziest ideas? That’s the creative mind. But that doesn't mean they can innovate. 

They are the ones who have the ideas. Getting the ideas out from their big brains, breathing life into them, understanding all the inherent and hidden and never-before-explored challenges in making them real is another set of skills completely. That takes putting them (the ideas) to work. And the greatest, coolest, most breakthrough ideas only become innovations when they are put into practice. Having been the one with ideas in too many situations to count, that’s the hardest part.

It takes committing to design thinking, moving fast, and getting messy.

• Create. Build. Prototype.
• Learn. Iterate. Repeat.

Fast, faster, fastest. Your creative idea is great, no, it’s amazing. Hold on to it and at the same time look deeply at all the non-creative things necessary to get over the hurdles to implementation.

Logistics. Legalities. Partnerships. Timing. Internal politics. Competitive forces. These are not the sexy stuff that ideas are made of.  And they are very real on the road to implementation. Without them, it’s just another cool idea.

So dig in and do the hard parts, after you get over the glow of having the idea. Don't let your creativity die on the boards. As Oliver Blume, CEO of Porsche recently wrote, "NO matter how great an idea is, it's not an innovation unless it advances a company." 

Your brand story. And why should it matter to me?

“We’re the lowest priced single-family detached, non-motor court product.”

“No two homes are the same – they are all different. Some have bedrooms with bay windows, because of these bump-outs. Others don’t. Nothing is cookie cutter.”

“Two of our plans have full-sized driveways, so you don’t even have to deal with the motor-court at all.”

Compelling, motivating reasons to buy a home in a new community? Or details I maybe didn’t know or need to care about, until that seed of doubt was planted.  True story, experienced when shopping for homes in a new planned community.

Stories that tell me nothing about the community itself, and give me reasons not to buy each specific home. Unintentional for sure, but a missed opportunity to connect with me. To understand me. What my situation is. What my needs are. Armed with that knowledge, the salesperson would have been able to understand exactly how their homes (not “product”) could make my life amazing. And why this community offered the lifestyle I crave.

Without that, the experience is like a doctor prescribing a medication, before they complete the diagnosis. Maybe I don’t need that anti-depressant. Maybe it’s the anti-inflammatory that will fix my strained Achilles tendon?

And it all comes down to the story being told. Even industry giants like IBM are on board with the power of story in business. Mary Winans, CMO of IBM explained in a recent AdAge article why they are hiring Hollywood screenwriters on staff, in-house. To tell their story, in ways that will connect with all their various customers. And to pay attention to the narrative arc – what comes first, how does interest build, then how does it end, leaving you wanting the sequel?

IBMs’ Winans said it best, “We’re getting better at not forcing a discussion about product too early in the process. Before we introduce a solution, we want to make sure we really understand a particular prospect’s challenge.” (Find the full interview here: http://bit.ly/2bKjqoD).

The best stories connect on a personal level. It’s what makes storytelling a very powerful tool in business, turning what you sell from a commodity, into an experience people want.  Next time you have the opportunity to talk with one of your customers, try switching from the old model: “We sell __________. They are made of the finest ________, with the finest ________. Want to buy one?”

Instead, try asking a few questions, and then listen to your customers before you hit the play button and launch the script about what you are or are not. Start with the why you do what you do. Then tell them how you do it. And only then, tell them the what you do.

Tell your story. And make it a good one. You know it will be shared!

Slower Growth Demands Creating New Demand

Just read an article by one of my favorite futurists and big thinkers - J Walker Smith, of The Futures Company and it made me think and embrace the role marketing has in driving business growth. It's less about projecting and pro-formaing annual increases in appreciation for products sold by the business. It's less about financial modeling and those equations. That is the traditional strategy for success in a high growth economy - when there is an expanding pool of more people able to pay a higher price for your products sold. Modeling and projecting volume and velocity of increases. That worked in a high growth economy.

The article makes a powerful case that the slower growth we are seeing is not a down cycle soon to rebound, or a "slower than expected recovery". J Walker Smith and team lay out how and why the economy has been shifted to a lower set point that will persist, and any cycles will go up and down around this set point. Enter marketing, and the huge job of creating new demand. Slower growth is a consumer disruption of demand. Growth won't come from more people willing to pay more for what we sell. It will come from expanding our product and business offerings within this bounded, constrained market a.k.a. from creating new demand, not following previously predictable economic trends and projecting aggressive growth rates. 

Our job is to rethink and reshape markets constrained by the cycle of slower economic growth reduces consumer spending - weaker consumer spending reduces economic growth. 

How? 

• Look at the demographic shifts in who has money today, shifts in social values and impacts of technology - it's at the intersection of these and other factors where new pools of potential can be created
• Look at the cultural edges - it's here where leading edge consumers live and are doing their part shifting cultural and social values - and in so doing changing what customers judge as a value proposition. That shift can create seismic new product opportunities. 
• Look at the disruptors - outside your industry - for the risk-takers disrupting other industries, and not just for entertainment, but as inspiration to change your business model. And then change it! 

The full article is here, http://thefuturescompany.com/defying-gravity-sources-of-growth-in-a-slower-growth-global-economy/ and worth the read. It's one of the best my marketing mind has read in some time about what we all seem to be referring to with phrases like, "The economic recovery has been slower than we projected", or "we projected higher increases in the recovery than we are seeing", or "we're still not back to the normal markets before the crash", or "the new normal". 

It's a siren call to marketing types in all industries to use your powers of observation, your ability to connect disparate pieces of information and find the "so what factor". Find a way to ask "how might we" when you see a glimmer of new potential demand. And, take the hill. The future of business depends on it. We can count and model money all day long. It's going to get more difficult to make it. 

Your Market(ing) Has a Blind Spot

It's embarrassing to admit it has been almost two years since my last post. I'm now inspired, and I can't promise what will or won't come of it. The world of marketing continues to evolve at vapor speed. Two years ago Instagram was just catching on. The notion of native content was foreign to most of us. And we still talked about the "awareness-interest-evaluation-trial-adoption" funnel. This model was old then, and today it's prehistoric. Recent history (and in the discipline of marketing that means about a year) dictates we should be more concerned about the multimodal, multi-path, customer journey and not just getting our awareness (or number of FB likes) up.

There's no correlation between awareness and market share. It's just the first stage in the "customer choice chain". And they will make many of them all along their path to purchase. Few companies (mine included) have conducted rigorous analysis of customer choices across segments and markets, and what we can do to earn that choice. Part of the sweet spot in all of this is finding the "values fit" between your brand and your customers' needs. Doing that well can turn that choice into conviction and that's what moves the needle.

So, on this first post in two years (the first of many more to come) I challenge you:
- How do you pay attention to what your customers are telling you about their values?
- How do you capture that intel to earn your customers' choice?

Check out this great example from #converse that shows how they did it.
Brand connections are found in all the right, and sometimes very strange places.
http://onforb.es/27FakjE