A friend shared with me a wonderful resource on business innovation over on the Visual Capitalist website. I’ve share links to the original source at the bottom of this post, and a number of other valuable resources that can help with business innovation.
I remember a lesson from my MBA. “…to remain profitable in the long term, your products must remain different over the long term.”
Warren Buffett and “Big Moats”
Warren Buffett talks about businesses with “big moats”. A big moat for a medieval castle kept the attackers from reaching the castle walls. A big moat for a business means that competition finds it difficult to offer a similar value proposition at a similar price point. If your product or service is not different from the competition, you have no moat.
In today’s open society, outside of state regulated monopolies, the only long term source of differentiation is innovation. Where does innovation come from? How can a company think about the different directions to innovate their product offering?
The 10 types of business product innovation:
| # | Innovation Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Profit Model | How you make money |
| 2. | Network | Connections with others to create value |
| 3. | Structure | Alignment of your talent and assets |
| 4. | Process | Signature of superior methods for doing your work |
| 5. | Product Performance | Distinguishing features and functionality |
| 6. | Product System | Complementary products and services |
| 7. | Service | Support and enhancements that surround your offerings |
| 8. | Channel | How your offerings are delivered to customers and users |
| 9. | Brand | Representation of your offerings and business |
| 10. | Customer Engagement | Distinctive interactions you foster |
Innovation Tactics: 100 approaches to Identify Innovation
One useful resource is Doblin’s (part of Deloitte) list of over 100 tactics (pdf) that correspond with 10 Innovation Types framework.
Further Reading on Business Innovation
The original Visual Capitalist post is very much worth a read… and provides much more depth on each of the 10 types of business innovation:
