Of Innovation : Monitoring company's survival
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By:
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dhanyse
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Mood:
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happy
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Date:
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07/30/2007
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Music:
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None
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Almost every month we
can see a new product is launched to the market. Customers have more
choices through many kind of products flow to the market. Each company
launch their new product where it is a result of innovation of each
company. Innovation perhaps the main factors to make existence of the
companies, keep their loyal customers or expand their potential buyers. Good companies should care of
innovations and usually have R&D division where innovation will
come from. Innovation itself is not an easy effort and sometime it took
a time or even wasting time process. Many people believe that
innovations will costly, spend a lot of money. But the real question is
that wheter should it cost million dollars? Should it costly?. Not really! Sometimes it does need a big budget but sometimes it doesn’t have to. It’s only matter of different point of views. Technologically innovation based, perhaps cost a lot of budget. Some technology leaders,usually big companies like IBM, Samsung, Sony, Nokia, Novartis
spends million dollars in order to have stayed at the cutting edge of
dynamics industries. They boost R&D labs with full facilities at
the best universities in the
world. Those big companies headquarters is countries with myriad
institutions that support innovations, liquid financial markets,
venture capitalist to fund big bets on technology, research
universities with many PhD, and clear legal frameworks that protects
intellectual property. In developing countries, usually lack of this advantages. But, does it mean that there will be no innovation in such developing countries? Surely not.
Innovation in developing countries face serious challenge including
political stability,volatile exchange rates, underdevelop physical
infrastructure. Some condition in developing countries in fact have
characteristics of : - lack of solid technology and world class research universities - customers with low disposable incomes, low GDP - low budget for innovation Then how to innovate in such conditions like that? Innovate from other of their business structure would be the answer. It means that they can innovate from other perspective such as from manufacturing, logistics, marketing, and customer services. A distinct approach of innovation where we can strategically exploit and deep knowledge of customers mindset, innovate “around” technology (rather than through technology) Some companies from developing countries have proved that they can do it. Innovation comes from two varieties that are technology push and customers pull. Technology push means that innovation by giving new products based on cutting edge research while customer pull based means that we have to finds ways to solve customers needed without relying on novel science. China’s company named Haier discovered
new innovation by visiting their rural customers where they have to
used washing machines not only to wash clothes but also for cleaning
vegetables. With some modification of their washing machines, Haier can
produce washing machine which can be used both for clothes and
vegetables. As a result, Haier become the market leader in China rural
areas. CEMEX (
Cementos Mexicanos), the mexican cement giant company solve the
challenge of delivering ready-mix concrete where contractors in Mexico
usually change their orders at the last minutes. CEMEX look deeper
towards this problems and found that it took 3 hours between the time
when a change order was received and when the order could be delivered.
Decreasing turnaround time will be the solutions for the problem.
Therefore, CEMEX equipped most of it’s concrete mixing trucks with GPS
locator, making easier arrangement to deliver customers orders within
only 20 minutes. Natura,
a leading Brazillian cosmetics company focused on serving distinctive
needs of multi ethnics brazillian populations. Realizing that Natura
will not be able to compete directly with Multinational companies for
technology-based innovation, they search for something else by knowing
whats the customers mindsets. While big companies like Lancome launch
3 differents product for wrinkles solutions for women over thirty,
Natura simplified it by produces Chronos, single products for the same
purpose. Natura itself has 200.000 direct sales consultants where they
can easily get customers feedback so that company can gain insight of
their customers. Another
Natura’s daring ideas was it’s mother-baby products line which launched
in 1993. research showed that Johnson&Johnson has 90% share of this
martkets and had an unassainable lock in this market. Natura decide to
enter this market by linking their mother-baby products with popular
technique of Brazillian for strenghtening bonds between mother and
their infants which called Santala.
Brazillian can forge stronger relationship with their mother and their
infants by gently massaging them during bathing while applying Natura’s
creams and lotion. Natura’s mother-baby product line provides
instructions a Santala massage and outlines it’s benefits. Based
on example above, it is obviously clear that companies anywhere in the
world can do the same to win competition through innovation and
creativities. Knowing the customers mindset is the key for innovations. http://entrepreneurialship.blogspot.com/
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