Innovation in Practice Blog
Don’t Be Fooled When Assessing Creative Work
How we judge a creative idea is affected by how we perceive its inventor. Without realizing it, we may overvalue or undervalue a new concept and make poor choices in the product development process as a result.
Academic Focus: Universidad Deusto – Master in Business Innovation
The University of Deusto business school is offering a masters degree in business innovation (MBI) that I believe serves as an excellent role model for other schools. It is unique because it focuses on three foundations (from their website):
Marketing Innovation: Avocados and the Unification Tool
The Unification Tool is a tricky but effective advertising tool. Unification recruits an existing resource and forces it to carry the advertising message. That resource can come from within the medium itself or within the environment of the medium. In other words, the tool uses an existing component of the medium or of its environment in a way that demonstrates the problem or the promise to be delivered.
The tool is one of eight patterns embedded in most innovative commercials. Jacob Goldenberg and his colleagues describe these simple, well-defined design structures in their book, “Cracking the Ad Code,” and provide a step-by-step approach to using them. The tools are:
Marketing’s Seat at the Innovation Table
Where does your marketing department fit when it comes to innovation? In an article1 titled, “Improving Marketing’s Contribution to New Product Development,” these author’s offer a dismal view:
“The prevailing view in most companies is that marketing is not a distinct function, and therefore, everyone can do marketing. As a result, the status of the marketing department is in a steep decline, which is especially observable within the NPD process. This development is surprising because it seems that top innovators strongly involve the marketing department in the NPD process. Hence, strengthening the marketing department’s position with respect to NPD should be a priority to improve innovation performance.”
I agree. But I believe the authors fall way short of what is needed to do that.
“The prevailing view in most companies is that marketing is not a distinct function, and therefore, everyone can do marketing. As a result, the status of the marketing department is in a steep decline, which is especially observable within the NPD process. This development is surprising because it seems that top innovators strongly involve the marketing department in the NPD process. Hence, strengthening the marketing department’s position with respect to NPD should be a priority to improve innovation performance.”
I agree. But I believe the authors fall way short of what is needed to do that.
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