4.9 Discussion and Practice

  1. From your own personal experience, identify three or four companies you think of as world-class innovators. Why do you think these companies are great innovators?

    Google “World’s Most Innovative Companies.” How many different rankings do you see? How are the rankings different? Which one do you find to be the most credible? The most insightful?

    Consider Forbes’s “definitive” ranking. Are you surprised by any companies you see on the list? What do the companies on this list have in common? How did they build their innovation capabilities? How do you perceive each? How valuable do you think a recognized innovation capability is?

  2. Use your favorite search engine to investigate Amazon’s approach to innovation. What strategic process leaps has Amazon used to change the competitive rules? In what ways has Amazon used incremental innovation to enhance its competitiveness?

  3. Evaluate the customer insight-gathering techniques in the following table? Specifically ask, “How confident are you in the insight generated by each technique?” Think about why you are or are not confident. What are each techniques pros and cons? Under what circumstances would each technique be appropriate?

    Insight-Gathering Technique How Confident Are You? Why?
    Not             Very
    1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10
    Traditional Technique
    • Customer Surveys
    • Focus Groups
    • Expert Panels
    • In-depth Interviews
    Observational Approaches
    • Shadowing
    • Ethnography
    Sales and Customer Support Feedback
    • Cadence Calls
    Digital Tools
    • Customer Profiling
    • Crowdsourcing
    • Social Network Analysis
    Customer Immersion Labs
    • Simulations

  4. Imagine you’re being interviewed by a new, but very successful start up company to lead its NPD team. The company, One Hit Wonder (OHW), wants to make sure it outlives its name. As part of the interview process, Tim Proveit, OHW’s CEO, has asked you to make a short presentation on how you would set up and structure the NPD process at OHW. Tim’s final words on the phone were, “I’m really curious what you think the bottlenecks are for each step in the process and what you would do to overcome them. We want to grow and new products will lead the way. Getting the NPD process right is the key. We look forward to seeing you the day after tomorrow.” Build a table to help you describe the NPD process. Be sure to have a row for each step and a column for each bottlenecks and your solutions for overcoming them.

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