At the recent FDIN conference Anneke Ammerlaan outlined a new consumer – The Cultural Creative. These consumers believe in a blend of the old and the new – old knowledge combined with the latest science and technology. They value authenticity, much as the TNS “new consumer” does, are personally demanding, value honesty and relationships and are concerned about the ecology of the world. The attitudes of these consumers are playing out in 5 trend areas:

Authenticity

The taste of honest products from honest producers. They emphasise origin and traditional production and see beauty in imperfection. They place more emphasis on the preparation method as a means of creating flavour

Health

Cultural Creatives see healthy food as real food and see the two words “Natural” and “Healthy” as very closely linked.

Care

They believe in the personal touch and a re more inclined to prepare at leaste some of their food from scratch. The belive that if they put love into their food, it will taste better and will be healthier.

Convenience

For Cultural Creatives, convenience is not just about time saving but is about simplicity and ways to deliver care with fresh, natural ingredients.

Sustainability

They look for bands and retailers they can trust and expect them to pay a fair price for a fair product. They are interested in exploring local foods and are keen to support local producers.

A must read book to learn more about Cultural Creatives is In Defence of Food by Michael Pollen.

A lot of what Anneke shared matches my experience of modern food consumers (and not just continental European ones) and gives weight to some key emerging food trends. I’ll try to get some more from Anneke over the next couple of weeks.

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Following my earlier post from Fanborough Airshow. I now have some BBC video of the F22 Raptor in action. Watch out for the tail flaps as the plane executes some very radical moves – it’s a good illustration of what modern fly-by-wire can do.

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Recently I asked a question on Linkedin about open innovation  options for SMEs. In, particular, I focused my question on SMEs who think they have a great technology with broad potential, perhaps in mew market areas, but are struggling to grow their sales. Here’s the question I posed:

If a small company has a great technology but a small market base, what are the best options for that company to connect with bigger markets? I’ve been writing about Open Innovation in my blog http://www.cocatalyst.com/blog and one area of the market which doesn’t seem to be as well served is SMEs seeking market growth. The scenario is something like this: I’ve got a great technology with IP protection but I can’t afford the time or cost of posting this on one of the on-line marketplaces e.g. yet2.com. What options do I have?

Greg Bautz, Owner at Sales Surge LLC, answered:

If Sales is not your core competency, then seriously consider outsourcing so you can focus your time and resources on your core company values and capabilities.
When your company wants better sales results, in the start-up phase, or ready to expand to the next level of corporate growth, you need to focus your resources and attention on your core product or service and not on developing sales processes and hiring a sales team. By outsourcing this business process, your company will move at the speed of light and leverage the core competency of the sales outsourcing to Sales Surge, we already have these systems and processes in place. As an added benefit, your company is getting the benefit of access to senior sales executives, sales consultants and sales trainers that perhaps you could not afford or justify. A real synergy begins to develop as you bring these talents together.

Anil Choudhary, Group Delivery Head, ASEAN & JAPAN at Wipro Technologies said:

 I think allaince and partnership may be best way to get bigger market base. However choosing right partner and alliance is the key and finding that may not be so easy.

One option is to leverage internet but unless you are in right place at right time, these could not give desired result quickly.

You could look at participating in some industrial seminar and conferences which you think may be interested in your product. A demo and talk on the technology and product could create interest in the group and could lead to some initial traction. You could also get your idea and product communicated through ebast to participants and that will help a lot if your demo and talk has made some people interested.

Another way could be to tie-up with some bigger player on profit and cost sharing basis for initial 2-3 years timeframe. This will not help in getting much profit initially but will ensure that effort and cost spent in getting attention and customer can be reduced to a great degree. Through this big player, once you have got to the right customer and your product / technology has become little bit familiar in the market place, you could extend it on your own. In fact chances are that this partner may become your customer or provide bettr deal for continued alliance. You must however ensure that IP remains with you.

Peter Adams, Head of Group Business Systems at High Tech Electronics Global Manufacturer advised:

Firstly, seeking parternships or entrance vehicles with companies that either have your customer OR are offering something aligned to your product. an entrance vehicle would be steve jobs saying how wonderfull your ‘do hicky’ is or Oprah or some other high profile candidate

secondly, joint venture arrangements to piggy back on another product for a split to gain market access

thirdly, a test/free version to give away to capture a backend profit ( assuming you have a backend to the entry product – and you should ! )

fourth, eMarketing to create the broader demand. ie. (directly ) Articles, whitepapers,blogs, books, audio and video, social marketing etc to drive traffic to your direct presence on the net. (indirectly ) locating all the eMarketing activity related to your prodcut and adding value that links back to you – no pitching BUT value for the consumer of that feed – those who like will come looking (existing )

fithly ) targetting specific consumers – identify your core love to have as customers Prospects and then target your marketing to win them ( see David Ogilvy or Chet Holmes for the dream 100 approach )

6th ) PR. use media placement strategies to raise the profile.

ps. if you cant find time to sell it – why on earth did you make it ?

And, finally Tim Northcutt, Director, Sales – Americas at Dow Reichhold Specialty Latex LLC said:

One of the best ways we have found to get integrated quickly into a new market is to find the primary industry conference for the market, assuming one exists and connect there. Either attend the annual meeting to identify key industry players for partnership, or use the event organization to conduct an eblast introduction of your technology. The choice depends on your strategic intentions whether to choose a small development partnership versus a broad market approach. The small partnership approach requires diligence on IP ownership. Experience has suggested that development partners tend to over estimate their contributions if not clearly defined as the process unfolds. Both methods have generated positive results. If a large enough audience can be gathered, we have had success with introductory webinar events coordinated through an industry organization. Alternatively we have had success in hiring a credible, usually retired, industry executive who can immediately provide us with access to the highest levels of targeted customers. This contract employee gives us immediate credibility and access to key decision makers. Compensation is done on an hourly basis for consulting fees.
Either way, the key is quick and credible access to the right people at the right potential partner at reasonable cost. Best of luck!

So to summarise this advice, key strategies to get your technology more widely known are:

• Clarify the market area you wish to target
• Identify and attend primary industry conferences for your target market. Alternatively, link up with the organisers and get them help you promote your technology
• Partner with key players in that market, i.e. who either already deal with your target customer or offer something parallel/complementary. If these are development partners, be careful to protect your IP
• Target your prime customers and aim your promotional material at them, consider running introductory webinars or hire a credible, usually retired, indutry executive to help
• Get some sales help from people who already have the skills 

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In an interesting example of targeting new product innovation at non-consumption as outlined in the Innovator’s solution by Clayton Christensen, I learnt from Putting People First that Philps have launched a low cost a series of new portable, compact patient monitors that provides a reliable, yet affordable means to observe and care for patients. Now available to healthcare providers in India, the new Philips SureSigns VM3 is the first Philips patient monitor designed for emerging markets.

The Philips SureSigns VM3 offers ECG, respiration and pulse oximetry in one user friendly, compact monitor that helps provide quality care in almost any clinical setting. It offers vital signs measurement and monitoring in an easy-to-use system that can be used in various departments throughout the hospital, nursing homes, private practices and rural clinics, as well as ambulances and mobile facilities.

This product is a great example of taking a system which has been far too expensive for an emerging (non-consuming) market and using technology in a creative, and dare I say, targeted, way to provide real mutual benefit. I like it.

At the FDIN conference on Breakthrough Innovation yesterday, I learnt about a more precise and reliable way to identify and engage with influential lead users to generate Breakthrough Innovations that really deliver brand growth. The presentation from TNS, highlighted an approach which can help you to screen for and work with people who are both “connectors” and “new consumers” in your target category (e.g. mobile phones, coffee, soft drinks etc.). A lot of the thinking here comes from books such as The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (incidentally a pretty good read) but also from consideration of the “adoption chasm” wherby many products used by early adopters never make it to the mass market. So, what should you look for to identify “connectors” and “new consumers”?

Connectors

• Have a big social network and act as hubs within it
• Tend to have more friends
• Talk about new things they’ve found
• Are curious

New Consumers (for a specific category)

• value authenticity and originality
• are well informed and care about the category
• are individualistic (they want things done “my way”)
• are time poor
• are socially responsible

By using a screening questionnaire against these traits it is possible to identify “future shapers” for your category. Typically “future shapers” are much more likely to identify ideas for future brand growth than “early adopters” who are often quite fad driven and can drop new ideas very quickly. Some stats were presented showing that there is a good correlation between high “future shaper” rating for a product idea and actual brand growth, whereas, there is a poor correlation between “early adopter” rating and brand growth. If it is true, they are really onto something, given how unpredictable Breakthrough Innovation often is!

You can use “future Shapers” in two ways, as participants (as opposed to traditional market research respondents) in idea generation and development/screening or you can engage them fully in your innovation task. TNS have found it best in engaging “future shapers” to give them thinking time (1 week) to bat around and develop ideas with their friends and they have found it useful to incentivise the idea generation with prizes.

Someone asked an interesting question about how you could reach and engage these “future shapers” if you were in an SME and TNS suggested that these people would be the people who are most likely to be passionately engaged with your product or service category. It was suggested that if you filter the responses and comments on your website with this in mind, you could identify and engage this sort of customer.

I liked the sharper focus this approach gives in terms of clearly targeting the most useful lead user profile. I’ll be getting some more informaton from TNS over the next few weeks and will post and update when I do.

 

I saw an interesting post in the Putting People First blog on user-led innovation. NESTA, the UK’s Science and Innovation body, has published a paper The New Inventors on how users are transforming products and services. According to NESTA:

User-led innovation – where users play an active part in the development of new or improved products and services – is exploding: proliferating digital technologies mean that we’re all potential innovators now. New firms based on user-led innovation are being sold for hundreds of millions of dollars only a few years after being founded.

Policymakers have remained somewhat sceptical about the importance of user-led innovation. But if the UK is to harness this new wave of invention and creativity, it needs to develop world-leading policy in support of user-led innovation. This means being more aware of the impact of new legislation on user-led innovation, and establishing a forum to ensure that policymakers hear directly from these new inventors.

Sounds like the UK Government is waking up to the n=1, r=g model that C K Prahalad outlined in his book The New Age of Innovation and I discussed in a recent post.

Incidentally, I was very impressed by the content and scope of the Putting People First blog. More on this in future posts. It’s going on the Blogroll.

Just got back from an excellent seminar, run by the Food and Drink Innovation Network (FDIN). Lots of interesting stuff to share in future blogs on ways to improve your targeting of Lead Users and ways to engage them more fully in your innovation process, Open Innovation, Consumer Trends and Emerging Packaging formats. Incidentally, the FDIN is a great source of information about developments in the food industry and I make sure I get regular updates.�

Some time ago I did some work to identify common traits that successful innovative companies demonstrate. I identified 5 specific areas where these companies differentiated themselves from less innovative organisations.  I found it useful to use these traits to benchmark organisations wishing to boost their innovation agenda to help identify key gaps. I thought you might like to have a look..

Here is a download presentation of these 5 traits: key-traits-of-leading-innovation-companies

I found this amazing video on the Boston Dynamics website yesterday of a quadruped robot, BigDog which can get over serious obstacles, climb 35 degree slopes, carry 400lbs and even gallop and jump. It is pretty cool even if it is powered by a (rather noisy) gasoline engine driving hydraulics. There are clearly some very sophisticated control algorithms in it’s on-board computer – some of the shots of it trying to stay upright on ice are amazing! I then had a look through the rest of the stuff on the site, how about a tree and wall climber, a sneaky all-terrain ground crawler and a small brother to BigDog imaginatively called LittleDog. I reckon this one seems a bit more house trained and might even make a good pet. Anyway, here’s a shot of BigDog full loaded.

Following on from my post on the latest from Tesla, I’ve just come across details of a new electric supercar, due to be launched at the British International Motor Show. The Electric Lightning GT uses a bank of 30 rechargeable batteries based on a new “Nanosafe” technology providing power to four, wheel mounted, electric motors, generating a claimed 700bhp and propelling the car from 0 to 60 mph in 4.0 seconds. The car is equipped with full traction control and regenerative braking on all four wheels and lightweight carbon fibre/Kevlar composite structure. Of course, a silent electric supercar somehow seems wrong, at least to petrolheads, so this car comes equipped with a engine-sound generator that emulates an engine’s roar. It’s expected to cost £150,000, is exempt from UK car tax and the London congestion charge. This is what it looks like..

Well it certainly looks shiny and the technology seems pretty clever, but something doesn’t quite add up. I remember reading that the main reason people buy the Prius is because it says something about them and the way they’re safeguarding the world, so what does an electric supercar which looks like and sounds like the ultimate eco hate-object, complete with an engine-noise generator, say about it’s owner? Is it possible to have your cake and eat it too?

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