i3 - January/February 2016 - 103

Business

BY SCOTT STEINBERG

FO RWA R D ST R AT EG I E S
INNOVATION DOES NOT
HAVE TO BE DIFFICULT

trategic innovation is of pressing interest among today's most
volatile business fields. Learning
to evolve and adapt, often at a
breakneck pace, is key to finding success
for both scrappy young startups and multinational organizations alike. Thankfully,
the process of reinventing your enterprise
is often far simpler than you may suspect.
Certainly, the concept of innovation can
refer to game-changing, breakthrough
discoveries and technologies. But innovation is often much easier in practical, realworld scenarios. By definition, it's simply
the introduction of something new.
But innovation can also refer to successful evolutionary growth activities as
well, such as promising new concepts, new
marketing strategies, or new ways to reposition your business to be more relevant to
customers.
It takes a willingness to make some
seemingly simple, but hugely powerful
shifts in strategy and thinking. As the
following examples illustrate, successfully
innovating may be easier than you think.
Cases in point:

John Lund/Getty Images

MasterCard is one of the world's largest financial services organizations.
To drive innovation, it created a series
of worldwide "hackathons" (quick-hit
brainstorming and product prototyping
sessions) where everyday employees are
invited to come up with new product/
service concepts. One invention-Qkr, a
smartphone payment app you can use to
order food and beer from your seat at a
football game or preorder school lunches
for your child without ever setting foot
in a cafeteria-was created in 48 hours.
Another, a commercial laundry where you
can pay for washers and driers to clean
your clothes right from your mobile device
with no cash needed, took just 4.5 days to
build after workers locked themselves in
a room with partners from manufacturer
Maytag and set out to solve the puzzle.
C TA . t e c h / i 3

Newell Rubbermaid, one of the
world's largest manufacturers of consumer goods, needed to find a way to
differentiate its Contigo brand in the competitive and crowded market for portable
containers and cups. Instead of spending a
fortune on TV advertising or flooding the
market with a range of chic new models, it
took a more objective approach to industrial
design. Visiting subways and other hightraffic commuter travel sites, the company
studied working professionals' habits, and
noticed business travelers were often wiping
portable coffee mugs' mouth caps on their
sleeves, napkins or scarves. So it introduced a new line of travel mugs (e.g. the
Metra) equipped with auto-seal technology
designed to prevent spills and special covers designed to keep dirt out-and quickly
found a welcome home with working
professionals.

When McDonald's Canada
wanted to connect with customers
and get more feedback on its business efforts, it didn't launch a pricey series
of nationwide focus group programs. It
created a YouTube channel where anyone
could ask anything about the restaurant
and get a video response. More than
two million interactions later, the chain
discovered that viewers weren't just tuning
in en masse-they were sticking around,
and watching every clip an average of four
minutes, about 10 times longer than the
average online viewer.

To teach kids creativity in a
challenging educational market
where budgets are being shrunk,

the Children's Innovation Project gave
teachers high-tech design kits filled with
wires, circuits, and electronic accessories
(similar to the science or engineering sets
many adults received growing up), and
asked tots to experiment and create new
things or solve problems using the gizmos.
Even the youngest children quickly proved
their ability to perform complex tasks like
drawing schematics, creating switches
and building flashing lights-and demonstrated greater patience, creativity and
more rapid learning abilities as a result of
participating in the program.

And when leading medical
device manufacturer Medtronic
wanted to grow its already successful business in the European market? It
didn't create more cutting-edge hardware
or devices-it instead changed its business model, expanding its ventures to
include putting self-owned and operated
laboratories inside hospitals. In addition to
generating more money for Medtronic, and
providing these hospitals with considerable
cost savings? The trust these efforts helped
Medtronic garner from its partners allowed
the company to expand its business even
further, introducing more lucrative services
from performance benchmarking to supply
chain management.
As these examples illustrate, innovation is
seldom a process of delivering game-changing new inventions or massive technological
breakthroughs. More often, it's a process
of making clever and simple incremental
tweaks to business operations or strategy.
Start by thinking small. You may be surprised at how many promising avenues for
growth or advancement present themselves
when you get in the habit of changing your
viewpoint.
Scott Steinberg is the author of Make
Change Work for You: 10 Ways to FutureProof Yourself, Fearlessly Innovate, and
Succeed Despite Uncertainty. AKeynote
Speaker.com.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016

103

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