Cultivating an Innovation Mindset
Recognizing that the path to filling an innovation pipeline can be a challenging one, Wendy shared some useful tips for attendees to assist with their innovations, whether it's evolutionary or revolutionary, or product or service.
Wendy recently spoke with Ipsos Ideas to share some of her advice and insights.
Q. The speed of business is moving faster than ever before, meaning there is less time for trial and error. What is the best way to ensure that innovations are successful?
A. It's the balance of qual and quant that really brings the best ideas to life and ultimately, what gives you an edge in the marketplace. Consumer-led innovation starts with an insight and it's a mix of working through workshops and underpinning all of our learnings with quantitative validation. This accelerated approach consists of five simple steps.
Q. Can you expand on these five steps?
The first step is about identifying future opportunities for growth through insights. We believe that we must be consumer-led in all that we do. Most often we find the best innovations come when we honor ownable insights from the consumer that are unique to your brand. Second, we get to the right insights and ideas early by articulating the insights and testing them quickly. Third, we help get innovations to market faster with qualified ideas that are ready to become concepts. We do this with overnight idea testing, which helps us promptly understand whether the idea is something that is relevant and resonating with your consumer base. The fourth step involves beating out the competition by building ideas via co-creation, and profiling them versus the brand strategy. And lastly, we create incremental growth by measuring, to ensure you have the right ideas in your pipeline.
Q. You said that consumer-led innovations start with an insight. What is a great insight?
A. There are so many definitions. We believe that an insight is a revelation of a significant tension between consumers' aspirations and what they perceive as available, which can be turned into a business building opportunity. At Ipsos, we love to pontificate the white space and truly honor it.
Q. How do you know when you've come upon one?
A. We've actually developed nine golden rules around what a compelling insight looks, smells, sounds, and feels like.
First and foremost, it's revealing. It has to be a vulnerable truth that uncovers a new or hidden consumer aspiration. We all know what it's like to hear something for the first time, and it can be jarring. So the more revealing it is, the better. The insight has to also be unrealized, or in other words, it must reflect a tension from an unfulfilled aspiration. We often hear the phrases `I wish" or "I want" when we talk to consumers, and that's some of the best lead-in language. Thirdly, the insight must be important. The consumer is an emotional being and their cues allow you to understand that it is something they really care about.
Fourthly it's engaging; it's something that the consumer can relate to firsthand. We then have familiar, the insight relates to a situation that occurs in everyday life, potentially causing a compensating behavior. This goes along with frequency, meaning that the insight reflects a situation that occurs often. This is a great cue that you're onto something good.
Great insights are also credible, and something that the consumer believes (consciously or subconsciously) has a possible solution. The insight has the power to change a consumers mind and behavior, it's inspiring. And finally, it's consistent. If it just so happens that the insight sounds like something that would fit within the current brand strategy, you're definitely onto something.
Those are just a few tips and ways to identify the truly compelling insights, and boost your chances of success when it comes to new innovations.
To hear more about how to create successful innovations, click here to listen to the full webinar.
