Innovation kaleidoscope: The 4 primary colors of innovation

Many people think that innovation is a single thing – and it’s centered on the product or service – but I believe innovation can come in at least four areas and is driven at the organizational level, not just the product or service level.

In the graph, I have outlined four areas of innovation that create and drive Customer value:

1. Technology Innovation

2. Revenue Innovation

3. Channel [or sales] Innovation

4. Delivery Innovation

But before we start talking about innovation, let’s quickly look at Customer Value so let's keep it simple with the following definition...

Innovation driven Customer Value is anything that improves the product or service for the customer while creating an overall lower price.

I can already hear some of you "But what if I make the product better and it's costs more?" -- that may be the case, the innovation may make something "better" and raise the price - but price is relative to the improvement or innovation - and is completely relative to the "perceived" value by the customer [adding anti-lock breaks to a car may increase the price, but it should also increase the perceived value of the vehicle even more].

So, with that in mind, let's look the four areas...

Technology Innovation

Technology Innovation is usually what we think about when the term "Innovation" is used. It is the aforementioned anti-lock brakes [that are now standard and no longer considered innovative]; it Windows 7 or Snow Leopard operating system; it is the reusable space craft [also called the space shuttle]. Technology Innovation is that leap forward, the move from one place to another, that makes our lives more interesting.

Every company and organization can utilize technology to innovate their products and services - even things as boring as water facets can be enhanced with technology - new metals, new filters, new colors, new shapes, etc. So anytime you see either a brand new product or a "new and improved" label - it usually has to do with Technology Innovation.

Revenue Innovation

Most people don't think "how you get paid" is very innovative, but ideas such as Credit, Lay-away, try-before-you-buy, are all innovative ways to get more revenue. How about Google - they have an innovative way to fund their company - it's through advertising - they provide most of their services free and all a user has to do is allow advertising to be "presented" to them while do their own thing. Or how about Open Source software - in many cases, it's free, but the companies such as Red Hat and SugarCRM give away their products but charge for support and training. In the very early days of outsourcing, EDS shifted the revenue away from "time sharing" of a large mainframe to "paying per transaction" complete [sounds a little like cloud computing doesn't it - of course it's not, because cloud is new concept created by Amazon!!].

Channel Innovation

How you sell is always changing - some companies innovate by moving everything to "self service" allowing the customer to support themselves [and many people do a better and quicker job of it] while others may move to a very "high touch" or personal experience. How you sell and how you support your customers becomes an integral part of who you are as an organization - and in many cases becomes synonymous with your "brand". But remember - nothing is written in stone and being innovative with your products and services can breath new life into them.

Delivery Innovation

Within the context of services, how you deliver can determine "who" you deliver to. In fact, companies have sprung up around this area alone - FedEx being the most popular, but there are others. But logistics and delivery is only one aspect of delivery innovation. Think about all the applications on the iPhone that did not exist two years ago. Many banks deliver your account balance and other services to you where ever you are in the world - that's delivery innovation. How about Enterprise Rent-a-Car "They'll pick you up" - that's both a promise and delivery innovation.

So what does all this mean - that Innovation does not have to be wiz-bang stuff. Innovation can be doing some small things differently. Or it can be about who you are in the world. Innovations are happening around us all the time - stop and starting looking for both the small and big things - and you'll notice that many companies are listening to you and making changes for the better.

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What's the most fun you can have with a Jet Pack?

I guess it's flying over the Royal Gorge in Colorado.  And incase you aren't impressed with this feat, here are some stats about the Gorge and the Jet Pack...

• The Royal Gorge (also Grand Canyon of the Arkansas) is a canyon on the Arkansas River near Cañon City, Colorado. With a width of 50 feet at its base and a few hundred feet at its top, and a depth of 1250 feet in places, the 10-mile-long canyon is a narrow, steep gorge through the granite of Fremont Peak. It is one of the deepest canyons in Colorado. [Source:  Wikipedia]
  
• The Jet Pack is powered by powered by hydrogen perioxide.  The frame for the pack is high tech, light weight and made from carbon-fiber technology.  It can only fly for about  30 seconds and can reach speeds of 70+ miles per hour.  And it is strapped to someone's back - no parachute, no wires, no safety harness, no net - it is a real live high-powered engine, inches away from skin and bone -- and the point of the thing is to lift you off the ground and "shoot" you foward.

And just to in case you were curious, the technology and company are backed by a sponsor -- yes, it's the pot and the kettle working together -- science and marketing -- to bring us all this fun.

But it worked, no one was hurt and it makes for some incredible video.

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Springwise for Nov 11, 2008 | Ideas worth investigating

This afternoon, I was watching the stock market - wondering would end up or crash - and it ended up!!  Although still down for the week, any good news is welcome right now.  So to celebrate both the weekend and an up day on Wall Street -- here are all the trends fit for investigating.  Enjoy!

 

It's time for your weekly fix of entrepreneurial ideas! Our latest issue is now online. Here's a quick run-down of the promising new businesses Springwise featured this week:

Personalized travel books combine search & curation
Media & publishing / Travel & tourism

Offbeat Guides creates personalized, up-to-date travel guides to more
than 30,000 travel destinations using a combination of search
technology and curation by both amateur and professional experts.

Buy a (real) beer for a Facebook friend
Food & beverage / Retail

It may be better to give than to receive, but for those on the receiving
end, real-world gifts trump virtual ones. No surprise, then, that we're
seeing more ways for online friends to give each other offline presents.

Parisian hotel puts an iMac in every room
Travel & tourism

By replacing the ubiquitous in-room TV with the multimedia Apple
iMac, Mama Shelter mimics the same type of shift going on in many
homes.

Free T-shirts for targetted consumers
Marketing & advertising

Companies tell Gitchers what types of consumers they'd like their
T-shirts to be sent to -- women aged 35 to 50 in Chicago, for example
-- and Gitchers matches them with consumers who want a free T.

Online community promotes indie bookstores
Retail / Marketing & advertising

IndieBound's mission is to help people across the United States
share and find independently owned businesses, starting with
bookstores.

Design your own protein shakes
Food & beverage

Earlier this year, we featured You Bar, which lets customers order
custom-made energy bars. The company recently expanded its
offerings with a new line of design-your-own protein shakes.

High-tech pod offers total immersion
Homes & housing / Lifestyle & leisure

A bespoke, high-tech capsule, the Ovei offers a highly immersive
experience that provides its owner with a strong dose of "me time,"
far removed from the demands of others.

Transparency goes to college
Education / Media & publishing

A few new sites offer a way for students to share an insider's
perspective on campus life, from dorms to campus hotspots to local
culture.

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Springwise for 11.5.2008 | This week's most joyful new business ideas

I can only say -- ain't new ideas great -- and Springwise always delivers. In our world of frenzy [and newly elected Presidents] and financial collapse, it's fun to see how others are handling the world around us. Enjoy!

Baby-food bar serves up tryvertising for tykes
Food & beverage / Marketing & advertising

Fresh and frozen gourmet baby foods are taking off across the world.
A California company is taking the idea one step further with a
tasting bar that lets babies try before their parents buy.

Suspended from a crane, weddings with a view
Lifestyle & leisure

Wedding planners can add a new venue to their lists: a platform
suspended from a crane, seating up to 20 guests. If they're feeling
brave, the bride and groom can even bungee jump after saying "I do".

Single-serve wine touts portability (and eco-cred)
Food & beverage

Volute is pitching its product as the wine that can be drunk anywhere,
like a bottle of beer. Thanks to its aluminium packaging, that includes
no-glass zones like concerts, camping grounds and beaches.

Lush sells discontinued products on demand
Fashion & beauty / Retail

Responding to customer demand, the cosmetics retailer has just
launched Retro Lush: an online and mail order-only service that gives
ardent fans their fix of long lost products.

Frustration-free packaging
Retail / Eco & sustainability

Amazon is working with manufacturers to eliminate the causes of
Wrap Rage while also minimizing the impact of packaging on the
environment. Just in time for the holidays.

No more voting on DIY T-shirt site
Fashion & beauty / Retail

Threadless and many other T-shirt sellers operate as competitions,
relying on the crowds to determine which shirts get produced. New-
comer Yerzies was asked by its early users to adopt a different model.

Where food and tech meet for dinner | Update
Entertainment / Telecom & mobile

We first wrote about interactive restaurant uWink Bistro early last year.
Furthering the spread of its concept, uWink has now begun offering its
technologies to other restaurants.

Online speed dates as real reality television
Entertainment / Media & publishing

WooMe offers instant speed dates conducted via webcam. Recently,
the San Francisco-based company upped its game by inviting the
world to watch.

More mixed-to-order muesli
Food & beverage

German venture MyMuesli, which sells mixed-to-order muesli online,
has been joined by [Me] & Goji in the US. Have-it-your-way is here to
stay! ;-)

A sustainable model for fair-trade goods
Retail / Non-profit & social cause

Fair-trade exporter CraftNetwork is focusing on long-term
sustainability with an approach that aims to make fair-trade goods
more competitive with other alternatives.

Miniature tennis for pint-sized players
Lifestyle & leisure

Since tennis courts can be large and intimidating from a kid's
perspective, Drop Shots provides a miniaturized indoor tennis facility
with smaller courts on a carpeted surface.

At Inamo, fine dining with a touch of tech
Food & beverage

The impatient and hungry tech-heads of London have been given a
new treat with the launch of Inamo, a pan-Asian restaurant that
canned the traditional printed menu in favour of interactive ordering.

Greener driving with Fiat & Microsoft
Automotive / Eco & sustainability

Like Nike's partnership with Apple, Fiat and Microsoft's ecoDrive lets
users collect performance data while they're out, and analyse it when
they're back behind their computers.

One-stop-shop for used children's goods
Retail / Life hacks

While thrift stores tend to be hit-or-miss and online offerings are often
buried within the likes of Craigslist, a new classifieds site for moms
aggregates listings of children's items from across the web.

Meeting space doubles as product testing ground
Marketing & advertising

Office furniture manufacturer Steelcase is gearing up to launch a new
meeting space in Chicago that will not only host meetings but also
serve as a testing ground for future products

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Inspiring Ideas from TED

I was surfing through the TED site and thought to myself how wonderful it is that we live a time where anyone with access to the internet and little time can hear [and see] inspiring people. We can learn from the greatest minds - it's just a click away. Think about that for just a second -- a little as 30 years ago, you would have to be at Harvard or Yale or Stanford to listen to some of these people - see their presentations, to experience their passion. Now, it's right there, just a click away - so why not inspire yourself today and learn something new. Enjoy.

This week on TED.com, John Hodgman goes in search of lost time, while Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi helps us find our flow. Kristen Ashburn shares powerful, humbling images of AIDS in Zimbabwe, while Paul MacCready offers a soaring talk on his work to save the planet. And this week we celebrate the 2009 TED Prize winners: oceanographer Sylvia Earle, SETI's Jill Tarter and maestro Jose Antonio Abreu. Read more about all 3 winners on TED.com, and catch up with winners from 2005-2008 on TEDPrize.org. John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time Humorist John Hodgman rambles through a new story about aliens, physics, time, space and the way all of these somehow contribute to a sweet, perfect memory of falling in love. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, "What makes a life worth living?" Money cannot make us happy, he says -- instead, he looks to people who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of "flow." Kristen Ashburn: Heartrending pictures of AIDS In this moving talk, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa. Paul MacCready: Nature vs. humans, and what we can do about it In 1998, aircraft designer Paul MacCready looks at a planet on which humans have utterly dominated nature, and talks about what we all can do to preserve nature's balance. His contribution: solar planes, superefficient gliders and the electric car. Listen for MacCready's rule to live by: "I spend about 15 percent of my time trying to save the world." JOIN THE CONVERSATION Become a free member of TED.com to join the discussion on our hundreds of Talks and Themes. We're discussing Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow: Anthony Samules writes: As a working musician I completely concur with this presentation -- the easy, bread-and-butter gigs that employ fewer skills to face fewer challenges become a source of boredom and apathy. But if you stick with it, you start to figure out how to get more of the gigs which do employ your skills, and in which you embrace the challenges with more of your awareness. And at those times you do enter the state of flow, and I experience this exactly as described. Evan Bonifacio writes: So very true. I am an animator, and have had jobs at TV cartoon companies where the general consensus about our work is, "it's good enough for TV." And we all collect our paycheck at the end of the week. In my spare time I do more quality work, spending hours and hours in that state of "flow." Perfecting the animation right down to the subtle eye movements of a character. I don't receive a paycheck for this, but it leaves me with more satisfaction than any amount of money could ever provide. Steve Gottschalk writes: The quote from the composer about the feeling he experiences while composing music sounds very much like Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke. It's as though the composer is experiencing that right-brained connection to the universe that Dr. Taylor described in her TEDTalk and is channeling it. That raises interesting questions about the nature and value of music. And a great comment on Aubrey de Grey's talk "Why we age, and how we can avoid it": Alex Lamb writes: Youth is fetishised. Let's celebrate aging. Some beautiful words from Naomi Wolf: "She reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes after decades of laughter, closing together like fans as she smiles ... The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left her its complexity and its richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier." Join these conversations and more than 300 others by joining TED.com -- it's free! INTERESTED IN ATTENDING TED? Places are still available for TED@PalmSprings, the simulcast event for TED2009, held in gorgeous Palm Springs, California. Watch every minute of TED in a comfortable, loungey environment hosted live by Kelly and Rives -- and enjoy amazing conversations, great parties, exhibits and Palm Springs-only fun. Learn more and register here >> TEDTalks are brought to you with the support of: and

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New News Letter | TED Talks

Enjoy this new email newsletter I'm getting - TED.com is one of those amazing sites that takes the idea of the internet to a whole new level. I'm basically posting the newsletter as I received it -- but take the time to go there and sign up for yourself -- and enjoy a whole world of ideas, inspiration and excitement....Arnie. This week on TED.com, Garrett Lisi talks us through his grand new theory of how the universe works -- in a beautiful, symmetrical way. Paola Antonelli continues the brain-stretching exercises with a walk-through of her show "Design and the Elastic Mind." Cultural critic Virginia Postrel cautions us about the seductive power of glamour, while Dr. Dean Ornish celebrates the power of the body to heal and be well (and shares some simple steps we can take to help our bodies do their best). Garrett Lisi: A beautiful new theory of everything Physicist and surfer Garrett Lisi presents a controversial new model of the universe that -- just maybe -- answers all the big questions. If nothing else, it's the most beautiful 8-dimensional model of elementary particles and forces you've ever seen. Watch this talk >> Paola Antonelli: Design and the elastic mind MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli walks through the groundbreaking show "Design and the Elastic Mind" -- full of ideas, products and designs that reflect the multi-tasking, quickly shifting way we think now. (You can see the exhibit online.) Watch this talk >> Virginia Postrel: The power of glamour In a timely talk, cultural critic Virginia Postrel muses on the true meaning, and the powerful uses, of glamour -- which she defines as any calculated, carefully polished image designed to impress and persuade. Watch this talk >> Dean Ornish: Healing and other natural wonders Dean Ornish talks about simple, low-tech and low-cost ways to take advantage of the body's natural desire to heal itself. Watch for his jaw-dropping stats on the obesity epidemic -- and a few very compelling reasons not to go on the Atkins Diet. Watch this talk >> JOIN THE CONVERSATION Become a free member of TED.com to join the discussion on our hundreds of Talks and Themes. We're discussing Doris Kearns Goodwin's TEDTalk, "Learning from past presidents in moments of crisis": Sharon Beck writes: This was one of my favorite talks so far. I guess it's because I have always admired Abraham Lincoln more than any other President, and she told the story so beautifully. As I read the comments, I was shocked to see any negatives at all. It just goes to show that there's something for everyone at TED. Candy Leung writes: The difference between Lincoln and LBJ seems to be whom they chose to surround them at times of difficulties. At least the former had friends who saw his moments of vulnerability early enough, whereas LBJ only realised he needed that rather too late. Ultimately, love is the bedrock of life, and the source of energy and motivation for ambition and play. Andre Natta writes: Perhaps the lesson learned from Ms. Goodwin's words is to remember that we can find the purpose to press on, regardless of what obstacles are in our way. I'll thank Ms. Goodwin for that any day of the week. And we are grappling to understand the E8 model in Garrett Lisi's's talk "Beautiful new theory of everything": Grant Brayshaw writes: E8 looks like the universe's genome. Beautiful work. Dan Gross says: As Lisi speaks of nature's "perfect balance" across multiple dimensions, I can only think of a giant game of Sudoku on a nanoparticle level. Simply amazing Timothy Wood writes: Wow. I am very impressed. I feel very stupid, but very impressed. In the social sciences there is this dirty little word called "physics envy" ... If anyone's ever wondered what it is that makes people envious, well, there you go. Join these conversations and more than 300 others by joining TED.com -- it's free!

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