How Can Personalization Improve Your Business Impact?

If there’s one mistake that marketers keep repeating, it is treating their customer base as a demographic instead of as a group of individuals. With this in mind, it comes as no surprise that personalizing your message increases your engagement rate while personalizing your brand as a whole tends to give your customer loyalty a boost.

Lessons from Apple on Why Aesthetic Innovation is Important

It’s pretty much impossible to argue with Apple’s success. It’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, and has maintained dominance for its reputation as an innovative company that produces top-of-the-line hardware. Because of its products and brand reputation, Apple has gained a cult following that will buy nearly every new product that emerges, year after year. So why, even with the high price tag, are so many consumers willing to shell out for every new gadget that comes along?

What Do Innovators Look Like?

Crowdsourced innovation is a tactic used more and more often by government organizations as well as enterprise corporations. This means that innovation teams need to add a new skill set to their resumé: communications.

The Dynamic Duo of Innovation: Ethnography and Big Data

The combination of Big Data and ethnographics can be a potent toolset for uncovering innovation opportunities, as a growing number researchers are discovering.

Rising to the Challenge of Peak Population

In 2011, world population passed the 7 billion mark. While growth will continue, total fertility rates are falling fast and will result in slower population growth and possibly, according to some, declining total population. Lower fertility rates may bring a demographic dividend, significant opportunities but also challenges. Or, we may be doomed, as others would suggest.

2021-12-02T18:02:51-08:00January 11th, 2012|Categories: Trend Alert|Tags: , , , , |

Why do Most Products Fail? 3 Techniques to Leverage Hidden Needs

Many managers want their organizations to develop breakthrough products and ask their R&D departments to come up with the equivalent of the iPod or iPhone. Unfortunately, the reality is that product failure is more common than success. So what are the reasons for product failure and what steps can companies take to avoid it?

How to Leverage Results from your Research and find Buried Treasures

Every year hundreds of millions of pounds are spent on consumer and market research. All those involved in NPD will know how a myriad of research projects is deemed fundamental. Yet, managers across the globe may be wasting a good portion of their research budget. Learn more on how to leverage research results and create new opportunities in this article by Bryan Urbick, Chairman of Consumer Knowledge Centre.

Customized Careers – a lattice replacing the traditional ladder

We think of careers like ladders, don’t we? And when careers do not go straight up the ladder, we do not see them as (good) careers. But if you are in the business of providing talent this is a tradition that may need to be replaced by innovation. Replacing the traditional ladder with a lattice has led to significant improvements according to Cathy Benko, chief talent officer for Deloitte.

3 Ways to Tap into the Voice of the Culture

For decades we’ve been taught the surest way to developing successful new products is to listen to the voice of the customer. And we’ve all experienced focus groups and surveys. Consumers tell you they want one thing and then turn around and do another. So which is the right voice to listen to? Harvey Briggs provides some guidelines.

The Challenge of Relative Values

Two new research studies examine on the one hand personal values among young adults on the other the realities of corporate values and culture. Both have some harsh truths to tell. The two forms of ‘relative values’ these studies discuss, have implications for strategic flexibility and devolved decision making for market success. Coupled with greater transparency they may also mean that companies need to take a long hard look at their corporate cultures.

Learning from Asian Innovation

Asian companies are different from Western companies in their approach to innovation. A recent study has identified four generic elements of the Asian approach that might help any Western company think differently and to be more effective in their business creation. In this article Peter Hesseldahl gives a brief overview of the conclusions.

Boosting Innovation by Integrating a Gender Perspective

Why does gender diversity matter when it comes to product and service innovation? What has research shown? And what does hard-won experience tell us? This article shows how businesses gain a competitive edge by integrating a gender perspective into their innovation work – a much needed boost as global competition becomes increasingly tough.