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The Empty Whitecoat

Exploring co-creation, service-dominant logic, outcome-driven innovation, market learning and capability development. Written by Chris Lawer since 2003, MD Strategyn UK, The OMC Group and Cranfield School of Management

How to Innovate the BananaJanuary 2

Here’s an alternative healthy eating challenge for you for the New Year: How is it possible to innovate the banana, that prime symbol of commoditisation, that staple of every self-respecting fruit-bowl? How can this most unremarkable, taken-for-granted fruit compete against the new exotics filling up the supermarket produce aisles – such as the kiwis, the mangoes, the chikoos*?

Since being introduced to the west in 1633 by the British traveller Thomas Johnson, then popularized at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, banana producers and marketers have exhausted practically every promotional trick in the book to establish the fruit as, ahem, top banana – the biggest selling fruit in the world. Perhaps the best known is the little sticky blue label that was added to all Fyffes bananas in the 1920s. It marked the first attempt to brand fruit and in doing so, transformed an undifferentiated commodity (even then!) into a super brand. (For more on the history of banana marketing, see Stephen Brown, Marketing – the Retro Revolution, 2001).

Whilst there already exist several banana-based product extensions, both food (e.g., banana baby food, banana ice cream [try Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey], banana bread even) and non-food (e.g. The Body Shop’s range of banana-based cosmetics) and undoubtedly there are many oppo

An emerging market for market dataJuly 14 2008

I enjoyed reading this piece in the New York Times about how mobile phone text services (from Reuters) are transforming agricultural markets in india by giving farmers more info on when to sell their goods at the right time in different markets - for higher prices and profits but at same time giving them means to lower consumer prices. At least some of the food crisis problem is due to a lack of transparency in pricing and ineffective / inefficient means to connect buyers and sellers. Simple technology like a pricing text service for farmers to help them find optimum prices can help reduce waste, speed goods to market, and lower costs for consumers. Its not just a questiion of increasing production capacity to meet growing demand.

Whether it is for a Wall Street trader or a farmer in India, the right information at the right time is a necessity for success.

For 157 years, since signing a contract in 1851 to supply stock prices from exchanges in Continental Europe to the London Stock Exchange, Reuters has served up numbers to the finance set. The International Herald Tribune has a partnership with Reuters, under which the two companies jointly publish the Business with Reuters section of the paper.

Now, Reuters, part of Thomson Reuters, is trying to provide analogous services to farmers in the developing world, where price information is stubbornly hard to compare. If successful, the program could become a model for economists an

New Concise Introduction to Strategyn and Outcome-Driven InnovationJune 17 2008

This short introduction to Strategyn and Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is designed for a C-Level audience. It summarises the six critical capabilities companies must develop to become successful innovators, outlines the key tenets of ODI, describes what types of innovation ODI applies to and defines the varieties of organic growth it can drive. Some client testimonials and case-studies are briefly mentioned too...

Download A Short Introduction to Strategyn and Outcome-Driven Innovation (pdf)

Fixing the Innovation ProcessJune 9 2008

A short post from Taverner Research summarises our view on customer needs and reasons for product failure succinctly.

90 percent of all new products fail. You see them all the time: they fill bargain trays in department stores and mark-down aisles in supermarkets.

Why is this? What's wrong with the product development process? Why is failure so much more common than success?

According to Tony Ulwick of Strategyn, it's because people have got the innovation process the wrong way around.

Here's how it usually works. Someone has an idea - a lightbulb - about a fantastic new product. The idea is evaluated and if the right people give the thumbs up, it goes ahead. Maybe the idea comes from a brainstorming session. Either way, it is pretty much guesswork about what the market needs or wants.

Another source of ideas is customer feedback. But when you ask customers what they want, their answers aren't very useful. They either tell you about features your competitors offer, or they suggest things that in the end, they don't want enough to buy.

The solution, according to Ulwick, is to start with a systematic, rigorous look at what your customers are doing, or trying to do, in their lives and work. The goal is to find holes in real-world processes, holes that the customer would like help with. Maybe a workman ne

“Value”, “Value”, “Value”– the Most Vague and Over-Used Word in MarketingJuly 30 2007

Everyday, marketers, product developers, managers, all business-people in fact talk about “value”. In fact, I reckon it is probably the most popular – yet at the same time, most misunderstood - word used in everyday business conversation

(Quick “non-empirical test” using Google: Value – 776 million hits, Customer – 583 million hits, “A Definition of Value” – 606 hits!)

For the past 2-3 years - off and on admittedly, I have been interested in how value is increasingly being co-created by firms and customers. ("Traditionally, learning about customer needs and the process of value-creation occurred within the firm’s boundaries or at best within partnerships amongst firms. The role of the firm was the development and delivery of goods and services, and the role of the customer was the consumption of those goods and services. However, a perspective of the firm as an autonomous value-creator is becoming increasingly redundant … " etc etc)

Over this period, I have become increasingly aware that to understand co-creation and by extension, to understand how firms can become effective co-creators with their customers, it is first essential to have much greater clarity on what we mean by value – particularly what value is being created and when, by whom and for whom. In the book, The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing (eds. Vargo and Lusch), Woodruff and Flint critique our understanding and use of value as being too concept