What’s a successful innovation? Is Social Dynamite a successful innovation? (3/5)

A successful innovation improves things I have to get done in my daily life. In order to assess whether an innovation might be successful, the key is understanding how and if the innovation really changes our experience of doing something that we already do in our daily lives. Last week, I applied these criteria to Social Dynamite, a new blog content promotion service. I’ve been using it for several months now. Today, I continue and conclude the analysis. Is Social Dynamite a successful innovation?

VI/ A/ Functional benefits

First of all, Social Dynamite helps me to promote my content faster. In other words, time is one way to measure functional benefits. Before using Social Dynamite, I would manually promote content on my blog: I would post on LinkedIn Groups, Twitter and Facebook. This was very time consuming. Now, all I have to do is launch a promotion scenario on Social Dynamite and I’m all set. What used to take one hour, now only takes 5 minutes.

Functional benefit number 1: Social Dynamite helps me to :”minimize the number of minutes it takes to promote my blog’s content”, where:

• “Minimize” indicates the direction of improvement
• “The number of minutes” indicates the unit of measure
• “to promote my blog’s content” indicates the desired outcome

Second of all, Social Dynamite helps me to promote my content by reaching out to a larger network. In other words, the size of the network is another way to measure functional benefits. Before using Social Dynamite, the only network I would use was my own. But now, I can tap into multiple networks, the networks of my fellow allies.

Functional benefit number 2: Social Dynamite helps me to: “maximize the number of people who hear about my new blog post”, where:

• “Maximize” indicates the direction of improvement
• “The number of people” indicates the unit of measure
• “To promote my blog’s content” indicates the desired outcome

Social Dynamite helps me to increase my audience. In other words, the number of visits on my blog is another way to measure the functional benefit. My audience has increased by 50% since I’ve been using Social Dynamite

Functional benefit number 3: Social Dynamite helps me to: “maximize the number of visits on my blog”, where:

• “Maximize” indicates the direction of improvement
• “The number of visits” indicates the unit of measure
• “visits on my blog” indicates the desired outcome

VI/ B/ Emotional benefits

• I’m always very happy when I get the confirmation that members of my blogger’s alliance have retweeted a post of mine
• I’m happy to have retweeted their content too. It provides me with a sense of belonging.

VI/ C/ Social benefits

• Frequent retweets by other bloggers serves as social proof and serves to validate the content I post on my blog.
• Recently, I was talking to a CEO and he informed me that he viewed me as a Key Opinion Leader, largely because my content is retweeted by other bloggers and because I was interviewed on BFM, a French Business Radio.

VII/ 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?

Yes, I certainly would !

VIII/ What does this example mean about successful innovation? In other words, how does this example help us to define what a successful innovation is? What is it about Social Dynamite that makes it a successful innovation?

I guess several things to a come to mind:

• First of all, I keep using Social Dynamite. This means that it’s an innovation that helps to get things done better and faster. In this sense, Social Dynamite is an innovation, not a gadget
• Second of all, I can measure the benefits I enjoy from using Social Dynamite, in terms of increased audience (functional benefit), emotional benefits (feeling of belonging) and social benefits (social proof)

IX/ What’s a successful innovation?

In a nutshell, Social Dynamite is a life simplifier. That makes it a successful innovation.

Further Readings:

• For another take on how to create successful innovations, please refer to Sage blog, here. Please note that this post shows that listening to consumers is not enough; the key is helping them get their tasks done faster
• For a description of how to make radical innovation happen, please refer to this blog, here