Speed to market (STM) – The most critical success factor of innovation

Innovation and Ideation are often used interchangeably across the world by organizations. What could easily be classified as an incremental change in the way one does business or market a product is also often glorified

as innovation. All successful organizations have invested in Innovation. Knowingly or unknowingly when you invest in this critical enabler the results accelerate pace of growth. If all organizations do invest in this enabler and every one universally acknowledge this as a critical must have for sustainability why are we still finding some laggards in market place ? Why do we have some of the market leading players are not up to speed with commonly accessible innovative selling, delivering and servicing techniques?

One word answer to above questions is the speed at which innovations are taken to market. I am sure that no one will disagree with me that the excitement value is reduced /lost the moment an experience has become repetitive. It is only the first time or few times an innovation is regarded as novel. The pace at which its uniqueness gets diminished is unimaginable in today’s world. It is very hard for organizations to preserve innovative differentiating aspects of their product /service for long time. I would define any period more than 3 months as long in this context.

Why is “speed to market” (STM) the most determining factor in innovation success?

1. Your competitors are investing equally or more in innovation and chances are that, the delay in monetizing your idea would put them ahead of you in race track
2. Most of your innovations are technology enabled or dependent. Changes in technology is laser fast and before you would realize it could render your innovation redundant
3. Lifecycle for premium pricing of your innovation is shrinking day by day. Once it has become a common market place technique it would not yield any incremental returns.

How can you accelerate STM for Innovation

- Integrate business with innovation – More often than not, innovation hubs are isolated and operated in silo. Core business functions seldom participate in innovation process and the burden to prove investment in innovation is mostly confined to a smaller group. This reduces an organization’s overall risk appetite and slow down STM. Participation and representation from different teams of organization will help faster STM

- Have revenue targets – Having revenue targets for innovation team is not regarded as a very innovative practice. Particularly this being opposed by innovation champions in the name of creativity having no boundaries and a constraint less environment. Trust me; if you don’t have a target in money terms, nothing works in business. All innovations will be inherently linked to one’s business model. It becomes imperative that business is able to measure success of innovation investments in terms of returns it provides. This will certainly inspire faster pace of STM

- Leverage outsourcing – Except of core IP areas all aspects around STM are possible to be outsourced. Identifying the target customer segment to launch, price points, commitments and promotion channels etc can be sourced from outside business. Developing a supporting partner eco system to help launching innovations would speed up STM.

- Create pilots ready markets/customers - Been in business for long, one must have created a segment of customers or markets where the innovations can be piloted with an acceptable level of risk. These customer groups could also evolve as co innovators for you over a period of time, thus sharing risk and rewards involved in this investment.

In summary, an organization’s ability to accelerate its speed to market for innovations would be a key differential in market place now. It will also determine how effectively the investments in innovations are managed.