DervalResearch

Generating Groundbreaking Insights in 4 Steps

by Prof. Diana Derval (info@derval-research.com), September 19, 2008 

Open and Cross-Industry Innovation - with the strong statement that all the smart people are not necessarily working within the company (Chesbrough 2003) – provides companies with a sudden research freedom that triggers many questions: In which direction to research? Which industry to observe? For which Return on Innovation?

Firms can generate groundbreaking insights with the Innovation Path 4i (Ardet and Derval, 2008):

1. Identity. Understanding Personas and their User Experience Chain. Answering the following questions is key to finding the right innovation path: Who are my target customers? What do I know about their profile, daily life, and expectations? How can I improve their User Experience Chain?

Fig. 1 - Example of Persona: Gary , e-Business Consultant

Gary is 32-years old and e-business consultant in a big consultancy firm.

He loves technology, challenging video games, high-end cars, good food and wines, and networking. He goes to work in his BMW with all the options. Between visits to clients, he likes relaxing at café terraces and hunting for the latest innovations at the MediaMarkt.

2. Industry. Observing successful industries along the User Experience Chain. BMW surprised the market when they introduced the iDrive on-board system in 2002. One single button commanding 700 functions is too complicated to use. Is this true for everybody? Probably not for Persona Gary , who masters the most sophisticated XBox joysticks. By observing Persona Gary ’s hobbies and User Experience Chain, BMW had the idea to collaborate with the gaming industry in order to make an intuitive and appealing ‘Gary-interface’.

3. Insight. Firms can evaluate the possible innovation paths in terms of business risk and R&D integration effort with the help of the Open Innovation Path Matrix (Ardet and Derval 2008).

Figure 2 - Open Innovation Paths Matrix (Ardet and Derval 2008)

§ Best Practice or Imitating Innovation. Firms imitating companies from the same industry are not innovating but gathering best practice. The TomTom lane guidance feature, for instance, introduced for the Go x30 series in March 2008, had already been available since 2007 on competitor Navigon’s devices. This approach should be conducted in the background in complement to a horizontal or vertical innovation path.

§ Horizontal Innovation. Firms look at how companies from other industries serve their current Personas. This cross-industry approach is less risky – refer to the BMW iDrive example above - and can lead to radical or business model innovation.