Making Innovation Work

Managing innovation through Diagnostics

Its a given, that innovation is what every management seeks from its team. When a company is straight jacketed in a particular industry it becomes even more difficult to innovate, as you only have a few categories to choose from. Consider a food product, if we add to that the complexity of consumer behaviour, alternative products, flavours and tastes: very few innovations actually see success with customers. Innovations are not easy however it is imperative that they succeed as it takes a mindset, a culture, some money, time and lots of motivation.

One of the world leaders in snack food had created an innovative snack food product and launched it in India. The innovation was launched as an extension under the brand umbrella of a successful snack food brand.  While the original brand had products which were traditional Indian flavours this innovation was a western flavour in an Indian snack food. The innovation had a flavour and smell different from the parent brands core offering, the packaging was designed differently from the core too and so was pricing which was a 60% premium to the core brand. This trial pack constituted 60% of the categories volume. The communication was also changed and a new celebrity was used for this variant. To top it all the innovative product’s supplies were constrained during the launch months. With so many changes it was difficult to set the success parameters.

In the launch phase itself the brand was not doing well and we were called in to diagnose what could be the reasons. As all the elements of the marketing mix were altered for the innovation while it was still a part of the extension which added to the complexity. It was necessary to quickly find out what was contributing to the lower acceptance and correct it.

We ran our diagnostic tool CapturePlus on the goto market and sales team followed by the distributors. Our cloud based proprietary techniques on CapturePlus speeds up data collection and analytics. This diagnostic when run on any business quickly throws back results and on doing a quick analytics over few days we could zero in on 3 issues. First the pack when opened had a smell issue reducing repeat purchase. Second, the higher price which was not a sweet price point created angst for the retailer due to increased demand for loose change. Although the pack carried a higher volume at a higher price, the same was not communicated to the consumer on pack and finally the disruption in supplies lead to a further fall in acceptance.

What diagnostics did was quickly zeroed in to the core issue affecting sales, identified what could be the increase in sale if corrected and recommended the future course of action. This innovation was successful but the goto market plans needed some change.

What’s important in implementation of any innovation is to understand what is contributing to the success or acceptability and fine tune that in real time. To do this you need tools which can quickly zero in to the problem and accurately identify the success criterion. Diagnostics done during the launch phase of new products can greatly increase the probability of success.

Innovation is necessary for future success but what defines success is execution.

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