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Business Disrupted by the Pandemic? 4 Things to Do If Your Products or Services Are No Longer Needed

Major world events create disruption, and COVID-19 is no different. Many industries are experiencing disruptions—in the way they do business, in the sustainability of their systems, and in the engagement of their customers.

It is estimated more than 100,000 businesses that were inactive or barely active during the pandemic will close permanently. Even some large iconic brands have announced their intention to close or have filed for bankruptcy protection due to low demand for their offerings. What happens when the demand for your offering is diminished? What should you do? Here are four actions to take. Read more.

 

Let Customers Help You Innovate During COVID

By: Dr. Evans Baiya

In this article, we’ll look at three ways to engage customers and create products they want to buy right now.

If you have an idea for a product or service but are uncertain about launching something new during the pandemic, rest assured that people are still buying. They are looking for solutions to the unique problems they are experiencing today, and if you have the solution they need, they will buy it. The biggest challenge for business owners right now is breaking through the noise.

Now more than ever, customers are being bombarded with countless choices, which means that in order to select your offering, they must have some level of connection with you. The same customers have too many choices and with the higher uncertainty, they are careful on what they buy and who they buy from. Trust and connection is becoming a critical consideration during purchase/investment decisions now than pre-pandemic.

Another challenge is ensuring that your offering actually matters right now, given the new set of circumstances your customers are experiencing. Customers want a clearly stated and provable value proposition before they buy. This is especially true in complex offerings, digital offerings, and high-priced offerings.

Engage Your Customers Early

The first step toward creating solutions that your customers want is to engage those customers in the early stages of product development. There are many benefits to this strategy.

First, you get the client’s attention. This is premium and allows you a deep advantage to learn. Second, you learn from reality. If the customers do not like the solution or do not believe there is enough value for them, you will know. If they do like or, even better, advise you to improve your solution and add more value, you can then amplify what you are doing. Third, engaging customers allows you early market entry and sales. If you are successful, it provides the referrals you need to create traction. Finally, you learn faster. Innovation is time-bound and there is always a race to market. The quickest way to market is to build a customer base during solution development so your early adopters eventually become your brand evangelists.

How To Engage Your Customers

There are three stages during which you can engage your customers: product definition, product development, and product validation. Depending on the customer, nature of relationship, and resource needs, the customer may not be available to work with you in all of the stages. It is important for you and the customer to understand which stage you are in, outline the benefits for the customer and set proper expectations at the onset.

Stage 1. Product Definition: In this stage, you need to understand the customer’s needs and wants so you can properly incorporate these aspects into your product. The customer must trust that you will be confidential and that the data they share and the time they invest is going to be used to create a solution for them. This does not necessarily constitute a commitment for a solution, but it is important for the customer to understand that they are helping seed a potential solution for themselves and others in their industry. Some customers may ask for compensation, exclusivity or some other form of benefit in exchange of the information. In this stage, you must answer these questions:

1. What are the customer’s needs/wants? What is the job-to-be-done?
2. What is the right way to deliver the expectations of the job? (Consider functionality in the right form such as channels, timing, design, etc.)
3. How will we measure the impact of the job done? Or what does success look like?

Stage 2. Product Development: In this stage, you need to develop your product collaboratively with your customer. The key here is working as closely as possible with your customer. Around the world, everyday, there are many products that never get adopted by the customer because companies develop solutions in their own “caves” and introduce them to customers as a surprise. In many cases, the offering fails because it does not meet the need the way customers would like, and customers do not feel valued because they have only been treated as buyer, not a collaborator. Customers want to be part of creating their own solutions.  In this stage, you must answer these questions:

1. Now that we know what the customers want, what is the best approach to develop the new product quickly?
2. How can we develop iteratively and incrementally with customer involvement?
3. How do we develop a profitable product?

Stage 3. Product Validation: In this stage, you need to validate the market viability of your product. The true metric for validation is customer usage and economic exchange for that usage: the customer believes your solution addresses a need they have and is valuable enough for them to pay for it. There are two forms of payments: direct, where the customers pays you directly or though a distribution you have defined, and indirect, where the customer buys through someone else who also serves your customers, such as advertising models in social media platforms. In this stage, you must answer these questions:

1. How are the initial set of customers responding to the benefits from the product?
2. How are we collecting the feedback from customers, both qualitative and quantitative (including how they respond to the product experience)?
3. What is right price for the value we are offering, according to initial customers with the product you take to market?

Engaging customers in product development can be a complex endeavor, but for those who want to have competitive advantage and long-term relationships with customers, it is a necessity. The next time you are thinking of building a new product or service, reach out to multiple of high-value customers, and ask them for collaboration in one or more of the stages. Inevitably, at least one of them will say yes. Start engaging them early and you will surprised what will happen to your product: it will be better, more valuable, and more profitable. Products are made great by customers loving them because they were part of creating them.

About the Author

Dr. Evans Baiya is an internationally recognized and trusted guide to business leaders and innovators. Using his 6-stage process, he helps the businesses identify, define, develop, verify, commercialize, and scale ideas so the businesses and individuals can learn, grow, and thrive.  He is the co-author of the award-winning book, The Innovator’s Advantage and co-creator of The Innovator’s Advantage Academy, a detailed step-by-step innovation training. Learn more at TheInnovatorsAdvantage.com.

 

This article originally ran in Innovation Management.

Four Ways to Innovate Right Now

By Dr. Evans Baiya

While the pandemic has been difficult for all us economically, as business owners, we never run out of opportunities. No matter the business climate, there is always a chance to do something new and something better—you just have to find it.

This has never proven truer than now, with the way business has been forced to change and adapt due to lockdown. Businesses that are looking for opportunities are finding them, and those that aren’t are facing the consequences.

Right now, driving new ideas and innovation should be happening in your organization on a weekly basis. If you are not in front of what is happening, you will miss an opportunity or be disrupted in an irrecoverable way. Because of what we have collectively been through, I predict that the pace of change will be faster and the economic recession will be shorter than it otherwise might have been during normal times.

Innovation has many definitions, but in its purest form, innovation is creating new value. You must first determine where you can create new value. Then you need to validate what you have created by determining if your customers are willing to pay for it. If you succeed at creating new economic value, you are innovating.

If I was going to give any advice to a leader right now, it would be to look for opportunities along the four types of innovation. If you can manage this, it will change how your business operates and recovers from this period.

Product

Product innovation is introduction of a new or significantly improved product or service. New products or services that meet the needs of customers in a different way fall into this type of innovation.

First, ask yourself what kind of products you should be coming up with to create new value. What does your customer care about right now? You also have to broaden your typical thinking about what a product is because, as we’ve seen, a product can be virtual.

A sit-down Mexican restaurant in Nashville that is well known for amazing street tacos knew they had to change to a take-out menu when the restrictions from COVID-19 hit. They reduced their menu to only four offerings and created a delivery service. Their business is thriving because of this change in products.

Process

Process innovation is implementation of new, significantly different or improved production or delivery mechanisms for the product or service that your organization offers.

When you execute process innovation, your product will often be affected, so you may need to innovate in both areas or vice versa. A lot of simple process improvements can not only save you money but will even make you money.

One of my clients had been experiencing cash flow issues. We identified a process innovation that allowed them to reduce the amount of time it takes to get paid. When we examined the system closely, we discovered that clients were taking 50—60 days to pay invoices. By simply working with their bank, they were able to activate click-pay on their invoices and are now getting paid within 14 days.

Position

Position innovation is implementation of new context in which the product or service is introduced to the market. Innovations of channels, brand, and customer engagement fall under this type of innovation. Position innovation is often underestimated and even forgotten.

When considering position innovation, you must understand how people view your company, both internally and externally, and how they can see the value you bring to them. Think about your employees, your shareholders, and your customers. As you reconfigure your brand and create new messages, you will empower people to talk about your organization and ultimately bring more business to you. Position innovation can also be tied to process and/or product innovation, as you often need a new position to support innovation in either of these areas.

During the business shutdown, Gravity Payments created a software to help restaurants execute their own online ordering so they could keep 100 percent of the sale, instead of sharing a portion the sale with meal delivery services. The business can deliver the food to clients, deepening client relationships while keeping people employed. Gravity is using this opportunity to further position themselves as a champion for small business.

Paradigm

Paradigm innovation is implementation of new mental models that frame what the organization does. Innovation of the profit model, network, and organizational structure fall under this type of innovation.

Paradigm innovation can be a difficult to conceptualize, as it required deep and long-term thinking. But now is an ideal time to reinvent who you are as a company, which can work in favor of your growth. A paradigm innovation takes bold decision making.

The lockdown has given companies to opportunity to evaluate their purpose and mission. A sales training company in Chicago that has been profitable running in-person corporate training. They have been to change the company for growth, but they have not spent time or resources thinking deeply. COVID lockdown afforded the company the opportunity. It changed the purpose from being “sales trainers” to “sales content creators.” Its brand is changing from delivering corporate training services to thought-leadership. This has long-term consequences to the company and its brand. It will need to develop new products, update external and internal processes, come up with different positioning, hire new talent, invest in a new infrastructure, and develop a new revenue model.

If you feel stuck when it comes to innovation, remember that there is great opportunity in solving problems of the people that you serve. Our clients find their best ideas when they are thinking about their customers—even better when they are thinking together with their customers. COVID-19 has changed every business in one way or another, which means that leaders need to be talking to customers to help identify their next opportunity. Do you know what new product, process, position, and/or paradigm your customers need now? There is opportunity to create and deliver new value.

About the Author

Dr. Evans Baiya is an internationally recognized and trusted guide to business leaders and innovators. Using his 6-stage process, he helps the businesses identify, define, develop, verify, commercialize, and scale ideas so the businesses and individuals can learn, grow, and thrive.  He is the co-author of the award-winning book, The Innovator’s Advantage and co-creator of The Innovator’s Advantage Academy, a detailed step-by-step innovation training. Learn more at TheInnovatorsAdvantage.com.

 

This article originally ran in Innovation Management

Validate Your Pivot with Innovation

By Dr. Evans Baiya

When planning or navigating a pivot, how do you know if you are pivoting in the right direction? Answer simple questions to validate your pivot and execute on four actions to help create speed-to-market.

We are hearing the word “pivot” a lot these days. The idea is that business conditions have changed dramatically and, therefore, we need to change course. Companies are finding that they must shift business and adjust the game plan in order to survive or thrive. What we often fail to do is ask ourselves what we are changing the plan to. What, how, who and where are vital questions that need to be answered for a successful pivot. Simply assuming you will find your answers along the way creates complexity and can lead an organization to adopt what is easy, not what is strategic and value-creating.

Not all pivots are the same or will have the same impact. There are a few ways to pivot: market, product, and organization. Market pivot is when your organization changes its customer base or the way it delivers value to its customer. Product pivot is when your organization changes the product or services it delivers to its customers. Finally, organizational pivot is when your organization changes its paradigm or purpose to something different. Each pivot requires different strategies, resources, and timelines.

One example of successful pivoting is Slack. It started as a video game company, but after finding little success in that vertical, company owners realized they would need to pivot. They had a good product, so they decided to use the same product as a chat application for co-workers. This is an example of a market pivot.

A botched pivot can be catastrophic to a brand, and in many cases, result in unrepairable damage or the death of a brand. The reverse is true: a successful pivot can give a whole new life to an organization, leading to growth and success. Sometimes a company may have to go through multiple pivots, but each pivot should lead the company into a better place, incrementally.

To avoid failing in your pivot effort, you need to answer these simple questions:

• Why are we changing?
• Changing from what to what?
• What are we going to gain (or avoid losing)?
• How are we going to pay for the pivot?
• Who is going to win in the process?
• Who are we going to disappoint in the process?
• What resources are required?
• How long will it take to execute the pivot?

The sooner you answer these questions, the stronger and clearer the decision and pathway toward pivoting success becomes. It is important to emphasize pivoting is a journey from a less favorable condition towards a future/context that is more conducive for your business.

After you decide on your pivot, the next step is to innovate. Innovation is taking problems or opportunities and turning them into value that your customers will appreciate and pay for. It is the innovation that will validate if the pivot was successful.

Assuming you are committed to innovation, you must focus on speed-to-market. To help you achieve speed and make your pivot successful, do the following things:

Focus on creating customer value. This is the north star. What does the customer (current or potential) need and how quickly can you get it to them (not in perfect form, but in a way that solves a problem they have)? Since the focus is the customer engagement and validation, you must eliminate “nice-to haves” and organizational bureaucracies and make the process of delivering the minimum viable product as quick as possible. In a pivot situation, validation trumps perfection. Once you have validation by the customer, then you can come back and create scalable processes and further efficiencies.

Create ideal teams to execute innovation. Form small, organized teams that work closely together to get results faster. Learn and fail fast. Wherever possible, ask a member of your customer base to be part of the team so you can get feedback quickly. (Yes this works, just ask!) Avoid forming large teams and creating decision-making committees based on positions and hierarchy. Instead, create competence-based teams with specific skills that are suited for the task at hand. These teams may disband after the work is done. It is not time for power struggles; it’s time to win together quickly.

You can use assessments to help select and create committed teams quickly. One such assessment is Innovation FitnessTM, which uses science to reveal where people best fit in the stages of innovation, and where they will be able to use their natural talents and skills to help drive results and efficiency.

Use the 6-step innovation framework to innovate quickly and systematically. Every successful innovation goes through six stages: identify, define, verify, develop, deploy, and scale. By using this proven framework, you will avoid skipping necessary steps and causing your innovation—and your pivot—to move in cycles, wasting precious time and resources to market, eventually disappointing customers.

Deliver value incrementally. Iterative mindset is required in the innovation process. Learn fast using experiments and deliver something of value to your customers quickly and incrementally. During pivot you want to receive continuous validation, and the only way you get validation is through customer acceptance. Get your value-producing innovation in front of people as quickly as possible and then keep delivering more as you learn, as resources allow, and as customers demand more. It doesn’t have to be perfect. If you wait for perfection, you will have lost an opportunity to deliver and engage your customers. Best is often the enemy of good when trying to take advantage of a new opportunity in business, especially during times of crisis. Your focus should be to first deliver something valuable—in some cases I actually recommend delivering the minimum viable product—and then ask your customers to commit to you as you improve it for the better. Just be good enough for your customers to want more!

About the Author

Dr. Evans Baiya is an internationally recognized and trusted guide to business leaders and innovators. Using his 6-stage process, he helps the businesses identify, define, develop, verify, commercialize, and scale ideas so the businesses and individuals can learn, grow, and thrive. He is the co-author of the award-winning book, The Innovator’s Advantage and co-creator of The Innovator’s Advantage Academy, a detailed step-by-step innovation training. Learn more at TheInnovatorsAdvantage.com.

 

This article originally ran in Innovation Management

Why Agility is Key to Companies Surviving the Pandemic

From An Inventor to Becoming a Master Innovator

Evans Baiya, PhD & Ron Price

Being an inventor is a great achievement. After all, you are the one who comes up with the ideas, or a new discovery. From incandescent light bulbs to the internet of things (IoT), inventors have made untold numbers of improvements to our lives.

We have been privileged to work with many people who are truly world-class inventors; scientists, engineers, and other forms of disrupters or technical experts. Confidentiality agreements prohibit us from sharing details, but we have been awestruck by some of the advances we have watched emerge into the marketplace by people we were privileged to coach.

One thing has become very clear to us in our experience — there is a significant difference between being an inventor and being an innovator. Fundamentally, invention is birthing of the value creation concept while innovation is the development from the concept all the way to value delivery. Inventors are idea or discovery driven, innovators are value driven. Actually, there are many differences between inventors and innovators. Five of the most important differences we have noticed are:

1.    Quantity of ideas.  Where the inventor quickly focuses on a specific idea envisioned, innovators focus on a broader scope with an appreciation for idea quantity over idea quality. Global research shows that it takes over 3000 ideas for one to become commercially successful. The inventor has laser focus; the innovator starts with a large funnel that needs to be filled with thousands and thousands of problem-opportunities.

2.    Questions to be answered. Inventors draw their inspiration from within; the questions they want answered are mainly around the idea itself, not necessarily it’s application or eventual value creation. Innovators draw their inspiration from the world around them. Innovators fill their idea funnel by studying, asking, and learning about other people’s problems – a series of strategic questions. As they consider these problems, they answer questions about impact significance, development obstacles, delivery systems, and channels of connecting with others. They begin answering all of these questions before they start the “inventing” process.

3.    Target Outcomes.  Inventors almost always focus on new products. Innovators look much broader because their focus is solving problems that may not be solved by new products. They look for value creation that may include new services, new processes, new ways of engaging the marketplace, and whole new paradigms or mindsets that change the way we live. Innovators focus on value that may require new inventions, but many times, it takes existing ideas and creates something new that delivers the desired value.

4.    Execution Process: Innovators follow a rigorous system of six stages of value creation. Inventors follow two or, at most, three of these stages. They have an idea, then they begin experimenting, and finally, they introduce their new product to the world. One scientist told us, “We get an idea and we create a product!” Because innovators are first focused on value creation that solves the problems of others, they carefully move from identifying problems, to defining them, then developing multiple solutions as experiments, then verifying them with a group of “problem owners”, and finally deploying and scaling those innovations that will yield the greatest impact. This continuum of innovation brings a much deeper understanding of the “guts” of innovation that provides opportunities for everyone to become a highly valued innovator. With this comprehensive approach, there are often opportunities for inventions throughout the continuum.

5.    Involvement of other people. Inventors do most of their work alone. Even when part of a “team”, we have observed that the real work of inventing is normally a solitary job. The inventor is expected to deliver the product he/she discovered. Seldom do inventors deliver successful products without taking a lot of time and resources. While invention has been treated as an individual sport for many generations, on the other hand innovation is a team sport. Innovators work in teams with shared interests and values, but often very diverse talents and skills. In our work, we have discovered 61 different metrics of natural talent and learned skills that predict a person’s potential as an innovator. One innovator may excel as an idea generator while another will excel as the idea analyzer. Still another innovator will be the tireless experimenter, or the person who devotes her time to understanding how to best introduce the new innovation to the world. In the greatest innovation “labs”, there are multiple teams of innovators that focus on the stage in the innovation continuum where they bring the greatest talents and skills. In our work, we refer to this as each individual having their own “innovation fitness” to be deployed collaboratively for the benefit of the whole team. Anyone can excel in more than one stage, but no one excels in all stages, which means, as long as you know everyone’s innovation fitness and how it applies to your work, even in a small team, you may have enough talent to do great innovation.

We need inventors, and with each new generation, we will have them. The passion for learning, experimenting, and creating new products will always be present. However, today we need many more innovators than currently exist. This is because innovators are not born; they are made through carefully learning the tools and processes of value creation around purpose, pathway, and organization of people. When organizations realize the differences between inventors and innovators, value creation will grow exponentially, providing significant new levels of success for both individuals and the organizations where they work. Innovation will no longer be mistakenly seen as exclusively the work of inventors.

Dr. Evans Baiya is an internationally recognized and trusted guide to business leaders and innovators. Using his 6-stage process, he helps the businesses identify, define, develop, verify, commercialize, and scale ideas so the businesses and individuals can learn, grow, and thrive.

Ron Price is an internationally recognized business advisor, executive coach, speaker, and author.  Using his breadth of global experience, Ron helps leaders, teams, and individual innovators develop a sense of ownership as he guides them through the 6-stage innovation process leading to greater accountability and improvements of bottom-line results.

Baiya and Price are the co-authors of the award-winning book, The Innovator’s Advantage and co-creators of the “The Innovator’s Advantage Academy (IA2)”, a detailed step-by-step innovation training for innovators and business leaders. To connect with them, visit www.theinnovatorsadvantage.com, or email info@theinnovatorsadvantage.com.

Innovation And the Future of Performance Reviews

By Dr. Evans Baiya, HR.com, July 2019

In today’s fast-paced world, innovation must be the future of any company looking to compete and win market share. You simply cannot grow and thrive by doing what you’ve always done. Therefore, it is a natural conclusion that innovation will be a key component to the future of performance management.

Over the past several years, my co-author Ron Price and I have seen an increasing number of companies embrace innovation as part of their strategic plan, even going so far as to create new company roles such as chief innovation officer, innovation analyst, innovation engineer, and more. In fact, a 2018 CB Insights State of Innovation study reported that 85% of executives see innovation as an important initiative..

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