Value-Driven Innovation - Gary Lundquist
Paths to Performance Excellence
The driving question of innovation-based businesses worldwide is this: How will we turn ideas into profits in highly competitive environments, year after year after year.
Creativity starts the process; ideation develops possibilities. Invention proves concepts; productization or “business-ization” enables practical use. Commercialization impacts markets and delivers ROI. Costs grow dramatically with each step.
Uncertainty kills momentum. Occasional success is not enough. Investment must focus efforts on best opportunities and rewards. Our potential depends on what we know. On our paradigms. Our systems of beliefs about innovation.
Seven core principles in context of two axioms can guide businesses from global corporations to single projects. Adapt these if you must, yet don’t lose the focus they offer.
Axiom
No one ever buys a product.
They always buy
what they think the product will do for them.1
No one ever buys a compass. They buy a sense of direction. Not drill bits, but round holes. Not loudspeakers, but sound. Not mousetraps but fewer mice. You know this is true, yet in the rush to market you might forget.
Customers don’t buy products; they buy the value of products – the sum of benefits that products deliver. The same is true everywhere in business and in life. Not venture investment, but returns on investment. Not project funding, but new possibilities. Not license fees for technologies, but competitive advantage. Not salaries for tasks done, but for progress made.
Exchanges in business are always about perceived value. Each side decides what value is sufficient to drive the relationship – what benefits will drive purchase; what returns will drive investment, and so on.
Innovation depends on this context of value exchanges over and over on its journey from raw idea to market maturity. Impact depends on the multi-faceted value offered in exchange for “payment.” Consistent delivery of value, as perceived by stakeholders, creates durable relationships and the trust necessary to sustain those essential relationships.
Axiom
We have no inherent value
as suppliers of products and services.
We are all strategies.
Loyalty is tenuous. From customer perspectives, we are sources of valuable products, not the value itself (no matter what “product” we deliver). Though they may not think in this language, customers and investors see us as strategies – ways to get desired results. If they can find a distinctly better way (strategy), they’ll convert to that alternative.
We risk everything when we see ourselves as central or core to our business relationships. A more useful perspective sees ourselves as faithful resources driven to deliver high value by meeting customer and stakeholder needs over time. Resulting loyalty delivers precious returns far in excess of mere sales.
Performance Excellence
Market impact requires nothing less than consistent increase in the win-win value of relationships with customers and other stakeholders. Seven principles guide leadership and management at every level of business.
· Value: Relationships first
· Focus: Integrated vision
· Strategy: Goals-driven operations
· Need Satisfaction: Value-driven products
· Perception Management: Brand-driven communications
· Strengths: Powerful people, processes, and systems
· Change: Ongoing business evolution
For the rest of this excellent article and more on the Seven, Principles of Value, Focus, Strategy, Need Satisfaction, Perception Management, Leveraged Strengths, and Change, click on the link below
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