Innovation - a RESET perspective

Innovation is the outcome whenever a change, an improvement or a novelty applied to a product, service or a process is adopted by users and translated into value. Innovation can be qualified as "incremental", "disruptive" or "substitutive".

Personally, I tend to consider value replacing innovations - "Substitutive" - as the most important in sustainable businesses. "Substitutive" innovation arises, mostly, from optimization, context or regulatory factors and play their role in the mid-long terms.

I see very few (if any!) recognition about the relevance of this 3rd branch of innovation types. As if innovative products, services, processes or measures could only be accountable as innovations when adding to the existing (or disrupting them!).

RESET context might demand an increasingly relevant share of "Substitutive" innovations, when compared with "Disruptive" and "Incremental" sides.

Why do I say so?

If "Discontinuity" ends up being confirmed in the following Quarters of post-pandemic World, the best Corporations will have to accelerate into a "F.A.S.T." mindset. Concomitantly, their Risk Assessment will "recommend" Strategies which leverage on existing brands and portfolios! Those brands and those portfolios whose past-built "Trust" among consumer minds (or customers, or clients) have an increased probability of cashing-in in the short-term! Furthermore, those brands and/or portfolios will have to address the "(re)coloring World" context carefully, avoiding to harm that "Trust"!

We can conclude from the above, that such a Business's workflow works much better if the innovation process addresses tactic replacements of the offer, avoiding complex or radical launches to be managed in the short-term.

We are not in a context of changing technologies or expanding and globalizing collaborative ecosystems throughout markets and companies. On the contrary!!!

I envisage it's time for companies to stretch the S-Curves of their existing products, services and technologies a little longer. Accordingly, the easy way will be a "Substitutive", Non-"Radical" and (still!) Non-"Incremental" approach to Innovation.

How will innovation processes of organizations around the World adapt to this paradigm? Well, this is something every single incumbent and challenger Company must trial & error (and launch first!), before revealing the secrets of "Substitutive" projects... and measure its outcomes!

Enjoy your summer! Rest and recovery are non-substitutable...

Keep safe!