In the November 2024 Newsletter
  Innovation Culture and Success / Events

New to receiving this newsletter? You can subscribe or unsubscribe anytime.

How to Succeed in Bringing Innovations to Market

Despite billions of dollars spent annually on bringing technological innovations to market, 35%-96% of them fail. What a waste! Fierce competition, large funding needs, and high risk are readily apparent reasons for failure. Less apparent, and less adequately researched, are the human elements of the process. How do these elements affect the success rate of radical, technological innovation? Answer: A lot!

The Situation

Implementation is key to turning ‘Innovation into Income.’ You can have the best technological innovations in the world, yet unless they are highly used with good user satisfaction, they’re unlikely to deliver full benefits, be successfully implemented, or see wide diffusion in the marketplace. The wider the diffusion producing a solid user base, the bigger the real income. So a key question is: How do we increase user satisfaction?

The Solution

Develop an Innovation Culture. Based on my research study of business to business (B2B) transactions, published in my scholarly book Champions of Technological Change, change agents or champions of change are essential. These players within the vending organization (VO) interact with champions in the buying organization (BO) to ensure high user satisfaction. How? It happens through Exchange between the vendors and buyers.

	PRODUCT EXCHANGE. VO and BO champions make prototypes and pilots available. They ensure proper installation and operation of the technology, and listen to feedback so as to solve any initial challenges.
	INFORMATION EXCHANGE. VO and BO champions provide live and automated demos. They explain the cost / benefits, and align the offering to the corporate mission and goals.
	REWARD EXCHANGE. VO and BO champions offer positive feedback, give recognition, and award those who use the technology.

Example

In Radish 2.0 — the software company I co-founded, built, and sold — we were introduced to a large, multi-national manufacturing company with contact center agents located worldwide. Their problem was that they had no way to assess the quality of service those agents were providing on calls with their customers. Enter Radish Systems and the partner company we teamed with on this project.

Working closely with the manufacturing company, we concluded that if a customer could take a visual survey to rate the agent they’d just talked to, it would be a good solution. However, we realized this approach wouldn’t succeed unless we developed a very user-friendly way to encourage customers to participate, and then allow them to take the survey as quickly and easily as possible.

In the implementation, a pleasant voice sequence was created to empower customers to opt in. Then, for those customers on a mobile device who talked to an agent, a visual survey was delivered at the end of the call to that same device via our patented ChoiceView protocol. A lot of effort went into constructing the survey itself and capturing the agent’s ID anonymously. The survey questions were designed to allow the manufacturing company to pinpoint exactly the right issues. The resulting process was piloted and tested extensively within the company.

In the end, we were very pleased at how many callers opted to take the survey. Equally importantly, the manufacturing company, in examining the survey data, was immediately able to make process improvements, save money, and ensure happier customers. The process wouldn’t have worked without the day-to-day exchanges between the vending (Radish) and buying (manufacturing company) organizations at every step. Along the way, champions exchanged product, information, and rewards. The result: High user and customer satisfaction leading to a successful implementation with wide usage of the innovation.

Summary

The best innovation needs good implementation in order to bring high user satisfaction and usage. Champions within the vending and buying organizations are key. Working together they exchange the right products and information to bring user rewards. I can help you and your company create an Innovation Culture based on this methodology. Try building an Innovation Culture in your organization and you’ll reap the real rewards of your innovations.

Selected Events

November 27 – December 1, 2024. Theresa will be in the Chicago area. Please reach out if you want to meet up.

December 10, 2024. Theresa speaks at the Louisiana IT Symposium in New Orleans on “Becoming a Champion of Change” and “IT as a Pursuit of Passionate Purpose.” Learn more and register.

Did You Know? It’s Not Too Late

Yes, it is the 4th quarter. However, it’s not too late to revisit / establish your personal or corporate strategic plan, explore how to build an innovation culture, or book a kick-off event. The most successful organizations have a plan. Theresa, a business strategist, executive coach, and speaker, can help you. Please contact me for a complimentary exploratory discussion.

Theresa M. Szczurek, Ph.D.
C-Level Executive, Certified Corporate Director, Certified Management Consultant®, Executive Coach, Speaker, and Colorado CIO of the Year

Pass it on. Feel free to share this newsletter, using my name and copyright declaration, with your colleagues.