Driving Organic Growth and Innovation

Underpinning of Driving Organic Growth Blog

by Robert Cooper

After much investigation I found four critical components of a successful corporate innovation effort and have tagged the posts in this blog appropriately.

The Critical Role of Leadership
Leadership must frame the overall innovation effort; make the critical resource decisions in a transparent fashion; clear any obstacles that would impede momentum; legitimize the initiatives within the corporation; and, play a major role in setting the climate for innovation.

The Importance of an enabling Corporate Climate
Corporate Climate deals with the: cultural barriers to growth through innovation; the skills required; the incentive systems to create the right behavior; the managing systems and attitude. We have found that managing business risk is an absolutely critical component to a successful, sustainable innovation effort.

Sources of Ideas
Ideas are of course the basis for innovation. Where they come from is changing dramatically. We will discuss this thoroughly going forward. However, you will fall way short if all you do is generate ideas.

The Importance of Process
Process is the final component to a successful innovation effort and we will share what different companies have tried. Within this group there are sub-groups of Managing Uncertainty, Being Ambidextrous and Creating Competitive Separation.

Monday, January 18, 2016

Market Segmentation

http://www.tutor2u.net/business/reference/market-segmentation

A very simple summary

Market segmentation offers the following potential benefits to a business:

Better matching of customer needs: Customer needs differ. Creating separate products for each segment makes senseEnhanced profits for business: Customers have different disposable incomes and vary in how sensitive they are to price. By segmenting markets, businesses can raise average prices and subsequently enhance profitsBetter opportunities for growth: Market segmentation can build sales. For example, customers can be encouraged to "trade-up" after being sold an introductory, lower-priced productRetain more customers: By marketing products that appeal to customers at different stages of their life ("life-cycle"), a business can retain customers who might otherwise switch to competing products and brandsTarget marketing communications: Businesses need to deliver their marketing message to a relevant customer audience. By segmenting markets, the target customer can be reached more often and at lower costGain share of the market segment: Through careful segmentation and targeting, businesses can often achieve competitive production and marketing costs and become the preferred choice of customers and distributors