Brands and innovation
Because brands play a critical role in creating customer value, they are often deeply involved in a company’s innovation process. (Ideally, they lead it.) But what is “innovation?” How does one separate feature creep and superficial enhancements from the real deal? At some point you have to define innovation so you can focus your efforts.
I define innovation as follows:
“Innovation is what you do for the customer, not what you do to your product.”
From a brand perspective, you’re looking for innovations that can advance the customer. New product “features” that replicate the old product mindset often miss the mark.
The brand team should be plugged in to the vast array of innovation that takes place across a company: process innovation, channel innovation, service innovation, etc. Every so often you can do an innovation roll-up that takes the best of these and translates them into added customer value. That’s the context where companies (and brands) can make a difference.
