What’s a successful innovation? (1/5)

Defining a successful innovation is a tough. Most attempts at defining what a successful innovation is emanate from innovation experts whether they are:

• innovation consultants for innovation decision-makers working in large companies
• financial analysts
• consumer groups that review and rate innovation product

My attempt at defining a successful innovation is different.

I/ A novel approach to defining what a successful innovation is

I’ll take a consumer point of view on defining what successful innovation is. And yet at the same time, it will be different from consumer reviews of innovation products, because:

• they tend to focus too much on product features
• they don’t address the broader issue of what a successful innovation might be

In other words, I’ll take on a consumer perspective in order to identify principles of successful innovations. And that’s how my approach is different from other approaches to defining a successful innovation.

The fact is that we’ve all heard of unsuccessful innovations and were all able to name several; at the same time, we’re also able to name successful innovations. But, there’s a real difference between giving examples and providing an insightful definition of what a successful innovation might be.

So, what I will do in order to tackle the question, is :

• I’ll make a list of all the new products I have purchased in the last several years
• Based on the list, I’ll try to see which innovation products I purchased are successful innovations
• From this comparison will arise, by induction, a trend or at least similarities between successful innovations
• These trends will serve as the grounding principles to define what successful innovations are

II/ A list of innovation products

So, here’s a list of the new products I purchase in the last 3 to 4 years. These products include:

• Kindle Paper White, an e-reader
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking, voice-to-text software
• The iPad 2, a tablet
• The iPhone 5
• New sunglasses, made of titanium
• Social Dynamite, a service to boost Social Media Optimization
• Dropbox, a cloud-based hard drive, providing effective data-backup
• A new computer, which works on Windows 7, not Windows 8
• The neti pot for my nose
• LinkedIn premium’s account
• A system to follow my heart rate while I’m running, biking or doing other sports
• A subscription to Paris’ public biking system
• A wireless printer, offering scanning capability
• TurboScan, a scanning app available on the App Store
• A large computer screen
• The Bose a sound system for my iPad
• Sleep cycle, an application on the iPhone
• A Global Positioning System (GPS)

So these are pretty much all the things I’ve purchased in the last few years. In the following posts, I’ll analyze some these innovations products according to how they have changed my life. The products I’ll analyze include:

• Kindle Paper White, an e-reader
• Social Dynamite, a service to boost Social Media Optimization
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking, voice-to-text software
• The iPad 2, a tablet
• A new computer, which works on Windows 7, not Windows 8
• A subscription to Paris’ public biking system
• TurboScan, a scanning app available on the App Store
• Dropbox, a cloud-based hard drive, providing data-backup
• The Bose a sound system for my iPad
• Sleep cycle, an application on the iPhone
• A Global Positioning System (GPS)

III/ What’s a successful innovation?

Criteria to assess successful innovation products

I’ll analyze the above-mentioned products according to the following criteria:

• Do I still use the innovation product?
• What do I use the innovation product for? What tasks am I trying to get done when I use the innovation product? When do I “hire” the innovation product, under what circumstances?
• What did I do to complete the same task before having purchased that product?
• Do I still revert back to other product offerings to complete the same task?
• Does this innovation product optimize the stuff I have to get done? In other words, does the innovation product help me to accomplish the same tasks in a better way?
• If the product does optimize the stuff I have to get done (the jobs I have to get done), how do I assess the improvement? How do I measure the benefit? What criteria do I use to assess the benefit?
• Considering the benefit that the innovation product has provided me with, is the innovation product worth its price? Would I recommend a friend of mine to buy it, as well?

Further readings

• For a presentation of the jobs-to-get done approach, please refer to this post on the The Innovation and Strategy Blog; alternatively, please refer to Anthony Ulwick’s post, here
• For an assessment of the iPhone 5 based on the jobs-to-get done theory, please refer to Strategyn’s post here