Types and strategy of innovation
What innovation is about (product, process, organisation, marketing), its intensity, its origin, its diffusion (Rogers' adopter categories, the S-curve) and the pioneer and follower strategies.
- 27 cards
- 7 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
- Sort and link
- On the timeline
- The curves
- Scenarios
- Understand
A few cards from the deck
Innovation: what is it?
Show the answer
The putting into use of a new or significantly improved product, process, organisation or marketing method, which finds takers.
An invention stays in a lab; it only becomes an innovation when it is adopted. The four possible objects are the product, the process, the organisation and the marketing.
Every year, a manufacturer releases a smartphone with a better camera and a longer-lasting battery. What intensity of innovation is this?
- Incremental
- Radical, because the camera changes
- Disruptive, because the model replaces the previous one
- Open, because suppliers make the components
Show the answer
Incremental
The principle of the offer is unchanged: an existing product is improved for the same customers. Radical needs a new technology or use, and openness is not an intensity but an origin.
A … innovation changes what is sold; a … innovation changes how it is made or delivered.
Show the answer
A product innovation changes what is sold; a process innovation changes how it is made or delivered.
The other two objects: the organisation (how people work together) and the marketing (how the offer is sold). The assembly line is a process; the monthly subscription is marketing.
Incremental innovation: what is it?
Show the answer
An improvement to an existing product or process, in small steps, without changing the principle of the offer or the market.
It carries little risk and serves current customers: a better camera on a phone, a longer-lasting battery. Its effects add up, but it does not redefine the market.