World Monitor Mag, Industrial Overview WM_November_2018_WEB_Version | Page 98

additional content
improvement is needed, compared with
29 percent of market readers and 33
percent of tech drivers — while they
put less emphasis on improving product
development.
because the brand is sacred to us. But we also recognize that if we have only the
inspiration and creativity of people within our own organization, we miss a lot of
what’s going on in the marketplace. We articulate this point by saying that we
need to be consumer-obsessed and to create the best product for the consumer. If
that is your endgame, then you have to be able to confront sacred cows, and open
yourself up to ideas that you might not have been open to in the past.” Adidas’s
innovation approach has been key to its return to the ranks of top innovators and
financial performers — and its ranking as one of our high-leverage innovators for
the 2012–17 period.
Focus on project selection. When asked which stage of the innovation process —
ideation, project selection, product development, or commercialization — was most
important, 35 percent of our survey respondents chose project selection, followed by
31 percent for ideation. This “front end” of the innovation process is indeed critical to
success. For one thing, most of the long-term costs of product development — as much
as 70 percent, in our experience — are locked in at the ideation and project selection
phases. And even great operational capabilities and business management cannot
overcome poor decisions about which ideas to move into development and production.
Companies reporting relatively faster growth said they were most competent at the
ideation and project selection stages, but they were more likely than those reporting
slower growth to see even more potential improvement in their project selection
capabilities: 42 percent of the fast-growth companies saw project selection as the
stage with the most opportunity for improvement in their company, compared with
30 percent of same-growth companies and 31 percent of slower-growth companies.
Need seekers are also more eager to improve the project selection phase of the
innovation process — 42 percent said this is the innovation stage where most
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Stanley Black & Decker is among the
group of companies hungry for more.
“I would agree that project selection
is the area where we have the biggest
opportunity for improvement,” says Hatch,
the CTO of Stanley Engineered Fastening.
The core product development teams are
challenged to find the next iteration or
big step from a current product, and then
are measured very tightly on delivering
on the product time line, he says, “100
percent, on time, on cost, on delivery.” The
breakthrough innovation teams, however,
are challenged to go after projects that
might not be a success. “If everything we
do is a success,” Hatch says, “then we’re
not trying hard enough and not going far
enough from the core.”
Amadeus IT has a similar focus.
Innovation leaders track the portfolio
precisely and have explicit criteria for
project selection. “It’s not like we create
something and then commercialize it,”
says Mesnage, head of research. “It’s
all about making sure that we have a
problem–solution fit — that we’ve really
found a problem worth solving, that we
have a solution in mind that can solve it,
and that there is a business appetite, so
that we know there are enough people
willing to pay for the solution we are
proposing.” One recent product innovation
that grew out of the company’s revamped
innovation approach is Amadeus
Video Solutions, an interactive video
player that enables travel providers to
show consumers videos about travel
destinations and pause the video at any
time to see the location on a map; check
and price travel, lodging, and activity
options nearby; and make purchases
without leaving the platform.