Game changing innovation: Making theory a reality through practice

By Yoav Nir

This book is the disquisition of what I know and truly believe makes products a success and how you can replicate it within your company.

What is this book about? Why should I read this book? Why did you write this book? These were the three questions I received from a good friend.
So what is this book about my good friend asks?
This book is like a cookbook with recipes for lean innovation, a collection of concrete techniques and strategies that are invaluable and lead to the same end: game-changing innovation. The book is a compilation of what I consider the fundamental models for lean innovation and some of my own complementary models for successful innovation1. A supplement to the existing international reference works on innovation (Alexander Osterwalder, Eric Ries, Ash Maurya, Clayton Christensen…) I will complement and adapt the existing tools and methods. Enhance their flavor “monter la sauce” as they say in France. The book is mainly a “how to” book and a “lessons learned” book, substantiated by good analysis and reflection. Like a chess book to improve your play this book will improve your innovation. The book provides an analysis of proven tactics and strategies on how to win the lean innovation game as well as a post mortem on why it is so often lost.
Should you read this book?
Here is some bad news, if you were hoping to improve on your innovation by spending more on R&D, it won’t work. The consulting giant PWC confirmed in its Global Innovation 1000 research that just increasing R&D resources will not solve the innovation problem !

The presented methodology can be quickly employed and implemented by the reader with the book as an instruction manual !

• Language: English
• Publisher: Die Keure Publishing
• Release date: Jan 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9782874034930

Book preview

1983-2001

Too often large companies and startups make the wrong products right

Yoav Nir

What is this book about? Why should I read this book? Why did you write this book? These were the three questions I received from a good friend.

So what is this book about my good friend asks?

This book is like a cookbook with recipes for lean innovation, a collection of concrete techniques and strategies that are invaluable and lead to the same end: game-changing innovation. The book is a compilation of what I consider the fundamental models for lean innovation and some of my own complementary models for successful innovation¹. A supplement to the existing international reference works on innovation (Alexander Osterwalder, Eric Ries, Ash Maurya, Clayton Christensen…) I will complement and adapt the existing tools and methods. Enhance their flavor monter la sauce as they say in France. The book is mainly a how to book and a lessons learned book, substantiated by good analysis and reflection. Like a chess book to improve your play this book will improve your innovation. The book provides an analysis of proven tactics and strategies on how to win the lean innovation game as well as a post mortem on why it is so often lost.

Should you read this book?

Here is some bad news, if you were hoping to improve on your innovation by spending more on R&D, it won’t work. The consulting giant PWC confirmed in its Global Innovation 1000 research that just increasing R&D resources will not solve the innovation problem²!

Some companies are lucky enough to have a CEO with visions being the closest thing to holy prophecy with a hint of messianic dimension. Yet, most of us are not that lucky.

If you do not know what the term lean innovation stands for and you are even only remotely involved in innovation then this book is a lifesaver for you. You will not only learn what lean innovation is about but you will get a look into the soul of lean innovation. You will get a smell and taste of lean innovation and an appetite to start implementing it in your organization today.

The fundamental innovation tools and concepts are presented in Chapter 2 and are illustrated with practical examples and tips.

If your company is already using innovation tools the book will help to improve the way the tools are used and how to choose the right people profiles to use the tools. This book will help you with the difficult and sometimes mystifying process of coming up with successful new products. If you do it extremely well and luck is on your side the new product could even be a game changer.

The book presents the challenging subject of product innovation in a fun way and makes it accessible to the laymen. The many real-life use cases make the book easy to read. More than seventy different products and companies are referred to in the use cases. Some of the use cases are known, some of them will be new to the reader. All use cases are pleasant and are within the context of the chapter. Every chapter is supplemented with quotes at the beginning of and throughout the chapter. Most of the quotes are from smart and famous people, except for a few quotes by yours truly. The use cases and quotes are like the oil in an engine, they keep the book fluent and easy to read. And then there are the tips to help you in game-changing innovation. Not just ten tips as is typically the case (Just google ten tips and see how many results you get) but more than seventy tips!

The presented methodology can be quickly employed and implemented by the reader with the book as an instruction manual; the many tips as encouragement and the quotes as inspiration.

All the quotes and tips are referenced at the back of the book. We also included an index that will direct the reader to all the key terms and concepts within the book. The index will facilitate the reader to use the book as a reference book.

This book is the disquisition of what I know and truly believe makes products a success and how you can replicate it within your company.

The book is relevant for hardware products, software products and services. Most books on (lean) innovation focus on software. The methodologies presented in the book take up the specifics of hardware development that are different or non-existent with software development. Chapter 8 is dedicated to the specifics of lean hardware development.

The entire spectrum of companies from startup to the multinational corporations will relate to the concepts and methodologies in the book. Most books on (lean) innovation focus on startups. This book will delve into the dynamics of lean innovation in corporations and explore the best practice to become an innovation powerhouse. Chapter 4 will analyze why it is so challenging for corporations to innovate and Chapter 5 will provide practical solutions on how corporations can become lean game-changing innovators.

Being conscious of the typical corporate pitfalls will help to avoid them.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play

Immanuel Kant

And to the final question, why did I write this book?

I am frustrated by the problem that despite the combination of good tools, good people, motivation and hard work; companies fail to truly innovate their business models, to truly innovate their value propositions, to make game-changing products. It is my hope that this book will be a contribution in resolving that problem. I have always had a drive to learn, understand and share. Learn from the wisdom of others and from my own success and failures. Understand the (sometimes peculiar) behavior and thinking of myself and others. Share my insights with others who are also eager to learn and understand.

My drive for learning and understanding was either to apply what I have learned to practice and become better at what I do or to gain insight into matters of personal interest. For over twenty years I built up quite some tacit knowledge from my own practice, believe me I carry the scars to prove it, as well as from observing the successes and failures of others. The easy part was learning about abstract innovation concepts like, for example, the KANO model that I will explain early on in the book. The difficult part for me was understanding the dynamics of our decision making, the forces driving our behavior, both as individuals and as a team. I expanded my search beyond the engineer’s comfort zone of logic and hard tangible facts into the scary, fluffy, quicksand territory of cognitive psychology. Sometimes decisions related to customer value are made based on a wrong intuition/gut feeling and the decision is more likely to be taken by the political savvy and not the customer savvy. A little bit like a ship’s captain deciding on the wind direction based on the draft he feels on the ship’s bridge. This is why I dedicated Chapter 7 to our intuition and the important role of intuition in our decision making.

I was often challenged on my listen to the customer conviction by the famous quote of Mr. Henry Ford: If I had asked the customers what they needed, they would have said faster horses. I will set the record straight, hopefully for once and for all in Chapter 3.

This book is an efficient means to share my tacit knowledge with anyone who is interested in learning about the successful implementation of game-changing innovation. From a business school student to the CEO of a corporation, from a novice of the subject to a subject matter expert, from a high-tech company to a publishing house; all can enjoy the book and quickly put it into practice.

I truly believe there is much that we can do from an organizational, cultural and methodological point of view to increase the likelihood of successful product innovations!

This book is based on over more than 20 years of hands on innovation & best practice. It is personal and by no means academic.

I hope you read through the book as if it was a box of chocolates. That each page will be enjoyable. That each time you turn the page, you look forward to what’s coming next. That a sweet aftertaste remains once you have finished reading.

An inspiring quote to keep the book light is: It is not the answer that enlightens but the question by Eugène Ionesco.

Following this advice throughout the book I will share business questions that intrigued me over the years. Luckily there is never one single answer to a question and I would like to challenge the reader to search for their own answers.

TIP

If within 20 minutes into the book you feel bored or annoyed, I suggest you just stop reading it. It won’t get any better. Just give the book to someone you don’t like as a present. Comfort yourself with the thought that, for sure, other people make much worse investments than the one you made buying the book.

I want to thank the following people for their help and contribution with making this book.

The team at die Keure: Liesbeth, Maaike, Nele, Isabelle and Jonathan.

A special thank you to Milena Genova for her help and advice throughout the book. A warm hearted thank you for the comments and advice on the book to Hugo Vandamme, Romeo Baertsoen, Omar Mohout, Tine Demoor, Chris Van de Voorde, Andrew Wainhouse Davis, Linda Jacobson, Carine Lucas, Erwin Knuyt and last but not least Noam and Sara Nir.

Finally, as you will see I will sometimes make reference to Wikipedia. I will donate some of the earnings from this book to Wikipedia.

Enjoy.

Some inspiring examples

Throughout the book we will illustrate the different tactics and strategies with successful or failed product innovations. In total we highlight 42 products from 40 different brands. To warm up we will look at some well-known examples of different, game-changing designs of products and services.

Most of the Apple products in the new millennium were game changing. The iPod was a new digital music player making use of MPEG format. Nothing disruptive technology wise. There were many other mpeg music players from companies like Sony and Phillips. Downloading music was also not new. There were other sites where one could download music files. Apple did it differently and much better. They made their music player much easier to use, gave it a cool design, and made it much more convenient (and legal) to download the music onto the iPod. The iPhone is another great example. Nokia made years before the iPhone, the Nokia phone and organizer in one, with a keyboard and everything. Blackberry was the industry standard for the mobile businessman who stayed connected. The iPhone just offered a totally different way and in many respects a much better way of combining a phone with an organizer. And, it was much better suited to surfing the web due to the larger screen. These benefits were so strong that customers accepted the much shorter battery life and hence higher frequency of recharge. This created the phenomenon of the so called wall huggers. The power of the product was so great that it forced its way into the corporate world. For the first time IT managers had to surrender to their user community and allow people to exchange their Blackberries for iPhones, or, later on android phones.

To use a different industry as an example, Ryanair believed there was a way to make air travel cheaper and better. Ryanair found a much cheaper way to transport people by air. The smaller regional airports they used were already there for grabs. Boeing could have made the same type of practical, basic planes as anyone else.

Spotify found a much better way to allow people to enjoy music. Apple made a big step forward making it much simpler for users to buy music and allowing people to buy it by the song. Yet, there was still a much better way to do it. Instead of a CAPEX model of buying one song or album at a time, go for an OPEX model and just get continuous access to all songs. If you do not find it on Spotify, chances are small you can buy it somewhere else in a digital format, online.

P&G spent years coming up with a potato chip (kind-of a potato chip; it is only 42 % potato) to address the consumer complaints about the industry standard of broken, greasy and stale chips, as well as air in the bags. Research started in 1956. In order to address the problems of the regular potato chip, a new chip had to be invented. The first Pringles were sold in 1967.

James Dyson was tired with his vacuum cleaner losing suction power as the bag got full. He wanted to have a vacuum cleaner that keeps its suction power over time. In order to achieve that he had to come up with a different design. A design without a bag was the means to make a vacuum cleaner that did not lose suction power. A vacuum cleaner without a bag was the means to do it, not the goal by itself. This is fundamental!

All of these examples found different and game-changing ways of making a product, service or business model.

Apple was a significant better experience and actually more expensive.

Spotify is certainly a better experience than single songs or album purchases.

Ryanair made the significant difference as the cheaper operator and in some aspects they even provide a better service. For example, they were paving the way for the convenience of online bookings and they are leading on the time departure and arrival track.

Another interesting common element is that they were all newcomers to the industry.

Apple was a new entrant in the mobile phone business and redefined the smart phone.