Everyone will agree: innovation is a key element of economic and social development. That's it, it's set. It makes it possible to create new products, services or processes that meet the needs consumers or businesses.
Wait a minute... Did you say “need”? “However, don't we say that to be innovative, you should not wait for the expression of a need, but create the need? ” These are remarks that I often hear when I give an innovation conference or even sometimes during a creativity conference.
In fact, there is a very widespread confusion in the field of innovation, a confusion due to the fact that there are two very different approaches to the issue: meeting an existing need or creating that need.
Breakthrough innovation is Russian roulette
The big bets that have led to breakthrough innovations often do not meet any demand. Take the example of mobile telephony, the Internet, social networks. When they were launched, there was no specific demand for these products. If you ask consumers in advance, the reactions are not enthusiastic. However, these innovations were able to create their associated need and therefore the demand that goes with it. Consumers didn't know they needed these products until they discovered them. Moreover, it was not a latent need, it was just that once the discovery was in front of us, there was immediately “progress”
visible, sensitive, which encouraged use (let's not fall into the definition of “progress”
here).
As business strategy professor Philippe Silberzahn explains, Nespresso, which has shaken up the coffee market, has never responded to a prior request. Market research even indicated that there was no demand for the product. However, the brand knew how to create its need and the product became a global success. Breakthrough innovation is that: creating need by working on mental models.
” Inventing soap is not enough. You still have to convince people to wash their hands! ” said the economist Joseph Schumpeter. Creating demand is an integral part of the work of disruptive innovation.
OK But this breakthrough innovation obviously involves risks. No bread, no gain. It is difficult to predict how the market will react to an innovation that creates the need rather than responding to an existing expression. Start-up costs can be high, investors may be reticent, and consumers may be skeptical.
The solution to protect yourself from risk? Meet an existing need. This is what we recommend to all start-ups: do not strive to educate the market or worse, to be ahead of the market, something reserved for mastodons who have the necessary resources. But rather start by responding to a clearly identified, segmented, precise and documented need. In short, don't reinvent the wheel and make something new out of the old.
Incremental innovation: is it just a small win?
By doing so, you can truly conduct market research, study competitors, study competitors, be inspired by them, etc. This is impossible in the case of disruptive innovation, since as the name suggests, you are out of step: no competitor, no history, no apparent market to evaluate. Just a blank slate, with the excitement — and risks — that comes with it.
The dilemma between meeting a need to start a successful business and disruptive innovation, which involves creating the need, is real. We are tempted to break up, it's chic, but the caution of a market reality brings us back to the basics: meeting an existing need. Complex duality, when we talk about innovation and when we need to implement clear strategies.
Duality that can be found even at dinners: one exposing his idea of a breakup, the other responding sadly “it will never work...”. Or someone talking about a problem that was given to him, and the other saying, “Oh! That's a business”!
But in reality, they are two very different things, wrongly grouped under the term “innovation.” There is incremental innovation, which improves an existing product or service, often by putting a good digital layer on top of it, thus meeting an existing need. And there is breakthrough innovation, which creates the need by offering something new, different, revolutionary.
The two have nothing to do with each other.
They're not even sisters. It's like when we talk about books: we put everything on the same page even under the same name. Classic literature, station novel and personal development: the object is indeed a book — the container — but the content is very different. It's the same with disruptive innovation vs incremental innovation. No connection. But endless debates since we never talk about the same thing...
Disruptive innovation is not the only path to follow to succeed in an innovation strategy. Incremental innovation makes it possible to improve an existing product or service to meet the needs of consumers more effectively. It can also reduce production costs and improve profitability.
It is more likely to succeed, and in the end - in the end - failing to make history (breakthrough innovation, hubris?) it really does serve a purpose.
Above all, it will have the virtue of triggering a dynamic of audacity and agility, an essential prerequisite for then considering “rupture”.
And in fact, maybe in the end it's just a matter of style!
Alexis Botaya, creativity and innovation speaker
- My creativity podcast upon Majelan
- My Challenge Create to Innovate on WelcomeOriginals
