This Guide provides a wide ranging look at innovation including entrepreneurial marketing, nurturing innovation and implementing organisational change. It starts with entrepreneurship, examining the processes by which ideas can be converted into entrepreneurial opportunities and how traditional and new marketing approaches can be used in different entrepreneurial contexts. The second part of the Guide looks at the factors which support different types of innovation in organisations including the creative climate of the organisation and the role of external networks. It also looks at how to design a marketing function to support innovation and how to create innovative marketing programmes. The final section looks at internal marketing and the implementation of marketing-led organisational change including how to plan, implement and measure a change programme.
The speed of economic and technological changes represents an increasing challenge in today’s global business environment. The capability of businesses to address this dynamic landscape with innovative and effective solutions will determine their success in the market place. Maastricht School of Management is launching a master class series to guide companies and organizations towards business excellence.Learn from senior practitioners from around the globe the latest insights, developments and best practices on four hot topics shaping today’s business landscape!
The master class series takes place from March - June 2014 at the Maastricht University Campus in Brussels, Belgium. See below the list of master classes.
Uniplan Live Trends 2007, German marketing managers on the trends and strategies of personal communication — results of a survey of 422 companies conducted by Uniplan and the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
Live Communication as value added factor in marketingDagobert Hartmann
Uniplan Live Trends 2008, German marketing managers on the trends and strategies of personal communication — results of a survey of 405 companies conducted by Uniplan and the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
The speed of economic and technological changes represents an increasing challenge in today’s global business environment. The capability of businesses to address this dynamic landscape with innovative and effective solutions will determine their success in the market place. Maastricht School of Management is launching a master class series to guide companies and organizations towards business excellence.Learn from senior practitioners from around the globe the latest insights, developments and best practices on four hot topics shaping today’s business landscape!
The master class series takes place from March - June 2014 at the Maastricht University Campus in Brussels, Belgium. See below the list of master classes.
Uniplan Live Trends 2007, German marketing managers on the trends and strategies of personal communication — results of a survey of 422 companies conducted by Uniplan and the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
Live Communication as value added factor in marketingDagobert Hartmann
Uniplan Live Trends 2008, German marketing managers on the trends and strategies of personal communication — results of a survey of 405 companies conducted by Uniplan and the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
Uniplan Live Trends 2006 - German marketing managers on the trends and strategies of personal communication — results of a survey of 398 companies conducted by Uniplan and the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
In today’s competitive world in which men are looking for acquiring a better place for themselves and their properties, indeed it can be said that people who compete on a full scale in marketing and branding by learning knowledge and experience, are more successful. Apart from people, countries, cities, businesses, historical and religious sites, companies, products, services, and even government agencies are endeavoring and competing to possess a better place and more profitability.In the meantime, universities, higher education institutions, and specialized schools such as Business Schools, Language Schools, Art Schools, etc. are not exceptions. Contest in the digital and traditional area, simultaneously, and with a proper strategy and developing systematic advertising campaigns can make a university or higher education institutions a brand. Since the branding process, as its name implies, has a -ing (continuous), the process must be continual and running continuously. One of the most significant tools in higher education institutions branding is CEM (Client Experience Management) which includes SEM (Student Experience Management) and TEM (Teacher Experience Management).Valuing the main audiences, which are students and professors, and creating a distinctive and excellent experience in the educational environment either in a digital or in a traditional area, can lead to receive excellent feedback from these audiences and direct them to the brand layers that are Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, Engagement, Satisfaction, Loyalty and the highest level that is Passion, which the same matter make the sense of constancy and belonging and conversion Trademark (Servicemark) a higher education institution to a Lovemark.
This Guide has been written specifically to assist marketers who are involved in both studying and implementing digital marketing. It includes examples and activities to help reinforce your learning, and recommended reading and website links for additional information. We recommend that you work through the Guide from beginning to end undertaking the exercises and supplementary reading included.
This Guide provides a wide ranging introduction to the world of digital marketing and the digital landscape. It looks at the opportunities and challenges of the disruptive digital environment, online and offline integration and the importance of customer focus. It considers the rise in online consumer power, how to use the internet for revenue generation and the changes in customer behaviour due to the rise of the digital world. It then looks in detail at the wide range of digital communications tools and hardware available and how to develop and co-ordinate an effective digital communications mix. It also looks at digital platforms and channels and the stages of digital adoption. Finally, it focuses on digital campaigns and multi-channel marketing and how to measure and monitor digital effectiveness.
The customer has always been at the heart of marketing. Knowledge and understanding of customer behaviour and changing needs and wants provides the essential basis of a market orientation. Today marketers not only need to consider how best to meet their customers’ requirements, but understand their expectations and provide consistent customer experience. This Guide looks at different types of customers and organisational contexts; it considers how to identify customer expectations and the importance of customer satisfaction and loyalty; and assesses the importance and role of brands and consumer behaviour theory in relation to expectations. It unpacks the different dimensions of customer experience, looks at customer experience design and frameworks, and activities that enhance the customer experience. Finally, it looks at how to measure and monitor customer experience including relevant measures, metrics and research and how to use that information to improve the experience in the future.
This Guide provides a strategic look at the disruptive digital environment, digital planning, channels and tools. It looks first at a range of tools and frameworks for analysing the micro and macro digital environment and identifying and assessing strategic implications and relevant emerging themes. It also looks at how to assess, monitor and generate insights into key emerging themes. It then moves on to look at strategic objectives and recommendations to acquire, convert and retain customers using a digital approach, and how to develop an agile response to changing customer behaviour. It also focuses on how to optimise key digital channels and content in order to deliver a strategic, digitally enhanced plan and the tactics and resources required. Finally, it looks at the tools available to measure social, sentiment and site behaviour and how to monitor and measure digital channels.
Advertising Course Georges Najm USEK School of BusinessGeorges Najm
Advertising is an “Ideas” industry, which allows marketers and brand custodians to create, position, or reposition their brands. It is a considerable part of most of modern companies, corporations, and brands, being the most visible and immediate point of communication between them and their customers / audiences.
Advertising is also a business, but not any kind of business. It is a business full of excitement, fascination, and fun. Today, it constitutes a respected, strategic, and profitable industry. This course is designed to introduce students to Advertising, while aiming to provide firm grounding on its fundamentals. It will expose the links between media, society, advertising, and business. It thoroughly investigates the foundations of advertising and checks its main processes in action, based on true business / media / communication problematic.
The course also explores the business aspects of advertising through a global industry overview, the business transactions organizations, with illustrations of advertisers and advertising agencies. Finally, the course focuses on market realities in order to allow the students to have a practical link with the business life and to bridge the gap between the theoretical aspect and the professional side of Advertising.
LEARNING OUTCOMES & COURSE OBJECTIVES
This course explains the basic principles, functioning and processes of Advertising. It treats, investigates, and answers the following questions, crucial in the lives of successful businesses and corporations:
• What exactly is Advertising?
• Where is it situated vis-à-vis: the Business, the Marketing Mix, the Communication Mix, the Corporate Communication Wheel
• What is Advertising place and weight in company’s IMC?
• What are the financial considerations if Advertising?
• Why is Advertising so important for successful brands?
• Why and how do companies use Advertising?
• What are the Advertising’s main functioning principles, methods, and practices?
This course also allows the students, as future marketers who will be ultimately called to manage and control
Companies’/brands/clients’ marketing communication budgets, to:
• Define the key terms in the Advertising environment.
• Identify and explore the tools available to lead Advertising campaigns with.
• Explore the basics of Advertising media planning.
• Be able to conduct a proper creative briefing.
• Be able to define and lead an advertising strategy.
• Be able to lead a basic advertising campaign.
Uniplan Live Trends 2006 - German marketing managers on the trends and strategies of personal communication — results of a survey of 398 companies conducted by Uniplan and the HHL-Leipzig Graduate School of Management
In today’s competitive world in which men are looking for acquiring a better place for themselves and their properties, indeed it can be said that people who compete on a full scale in marketing and branding by learning knowledge and experience, are more successful. Apart from people, countries, cities, businesses, historical and religious sites, companies, products, services, and even government agencies are endeavoring and competing to possess a better place and more profitability.In the meantime, universities, higher education institutions, and specialized schools such as Business Schools, Language Schools, Art Schools, etc. are not exceptions. Contest in the digital and traditional area, simultaneously, and with a proper strategy and developing systematic advertising campaigns can make a university or higher education institutions a brand. Since the branding process, as its name implies, has a -ing (continuous), the process must be continual and running continuously. One of the most significant tools in higher education institutions branding is CEM (Client Experience Management) which includes SEM (Student Experience Management) and TEM (Teacher Experience Management).Valuing the main audiences, which are students and professors, and creating a distinctive and excellent experience in the educational environment either in a digital or in a traditional area, can lead to receive excellent feedback from these audiences and direct them to the brand layers that are Awareness, Knowledge, Attitude, Engagement, Satisfaction, Loyalty and the highest level that is Passion, which the same matter make the sense of constancy and belonging and conversion Trademark (Servicemark) a higher education institution to a Lovemark.
This Guide has been written specifically to assist marketers who are involved in both studying and implementing digital marketing. It includes examples and activities to help reinforce your learning, and recommended reading and website links for additional information. We recommend that you work through the Guide from beginning to end undertaking the exercises and supplementary reading included.
This Guide provides a wide ranging introduction to the world of digital marketing and the digital landscape. It looks at the opportunities and challenges of the disruptive digital environment, online and offline integration and the importance of customer focus. It considers the rise in online consumer power, how to use the internet for revenue generation and the changes in customer behaviour due to the rise of the digital world. It then looks in detail at the wide range of digital communications tools and hardware available and how to develop and co-ordinate an effective digital communications mix. It also looks at digital platforms and channels and the stages of digital adoption. Finally, it focuses on digital campaigns and multi-channel marketing and how to measure and monitor digital effectiveness.
The customer has always been at the heart of marketing. Knowledge and understanding of customer behaviour and changing needs and wants provides the essential basis of a market orientation. Today marketers not only need to consider how best to meet their customers’ requirements, but understand their expectations and provide consistent customer experience. This Guide looks at different types of customers and organisational contexts; it considers how to identify customer expectations and the importance of customer satisfaction and loyalty; and assesses the importance and role of brands and consumer behaviour theory in relation to expectations. It unpacks the different dimensions of customer experience, looks at customer experience design and frameworks, and activities that enhance the customer experience. Finally, it looks at how to measure and monitor customer experience including relevant measures, metrics and research and how to use that information to improve the experience in the future.
This Guide provides a strategic look at the disruptive digital environment, digital planning, channels and tools. It looks first at a range of tools and frameworks for analysing the micro and macro digital environment and identifying and assessing strategic implications and relevant emerging themes. It also looks at how to assess, monitor and generate insights into key emerging themes. It then moves on to look at strategic objectives and recommendations to acquire, convert and retain customers using a digital approach, and how to develop an agile response to changing customer behaviour. It also focuses on how to optimise key digital channels and content in order to deliver a strategic, digitally enhanced plan and the tactics and resources required. Finally, it looks at the tools available to measure social, sentiment and site behaviour and how to monitor and measure digital channels.
Advertising Course Georges Najm USEK School of BusinessGeorges Najm
Advertising is an “Ideas” industry, which allows marketers and brand custodians to create, position, or reposition their brands. It is a considerable part of most of modern companies, corporations, and brands, being the most visible and immediate point of communication between them and their customers / audiences.
Advertising is also a business, but not any kind of business. It is a business full of excitement, fascination, and fun. Today, it constitutes a respected, strategic, and profitable industry. This course is designed to introduce students to Advertising, while aiming to provide firm grounding on its fundamentals. It will expose the links between media, society, advertising, and business. It thoroughly investigates the foundations of advertising and checks its main processes in action, based on true business / media / communication problematic.
The course also explores the business aspects of advertising through a global industry overview, the business transactions organizations, with illustrations of advertisers and advertising agencies. Finally, the course focuses on market realities in order to allow the students to have a practical link with the business life and to bridge the gap between the theoretical aspect and the professional side of Advertising.
LEARNING OUTCOMES & COURSE OBJECTIVES
This course explains the basic principles, functioning and processes of Advertising. It treats, investigates, and answers the following questions, crucial in the lives of successful businesses and corporations:
• What exactly is Advertising?
• Where is it situated vis-à-vis: the Business, the Marketing Mix, the Communication Mix, the Corporate Communication Wheel
• What is Advertising place and weight in company’s IMC?
• What are the financial considerations if Advertising?
• Why is Advertising so important for successful brands?
• Why and how do companies use Advertising?
• What are the Advertising’s main functioning principles, methods, and practices?
This course also allows the students, as future marketers who will be ultimately called to manage and control
Companies’/brands/clients’ marketing communication budgets, to:
• Define the key terms in the Advertising environment.
• Identify and explore the tools available to lead Advertising campaigns with.
• Explore the basics of Advertising media planning.
• Be able to conduct a proper creative briefing.
• Be able to define and lead an advertising strategy.
• Be able to lead a basic advertising campaign.
My project of t.y.b.m.s. on magazines (haymarket pvt ltd)Ammar Zakir
It is a project on marketing and distribution of magazines. It is based on a multi-national company named as Haymarket Media Pvt. Ltd.This is the project for Third Year of Bachelor of Management Studies. I hope it will help in reference to the upcoming youth.
The Secret to Engaging Modern Consumers: Journey Mapping and Personalization
In today's digital landscape, understanding the customer's journey and delivering personalized experiences are paramount. This masterclass delves into the art of consumer journey mapping, a powerful technique that visualizes the entire customer experience across touchpoints. Attendees will learn how to create detailed journey maps, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for optimization. The presentation also explores personalization strategies that leverage data and technology to tailor content, products, and experiences to individual customers. From real-time personalization to predictive analytics, attendees will gain insights into cutting-edge approaches that drive engagement and loyalty.
Key Takeaways:
Current consumer landscape; Steps to mapping an effective consumer journey; Understanding the value of personalization; Integrating mapping and personalization for success; Brands that are getting It right!; Best Practices; Future Trends
Short video marketing has sweeped the nation and is the fastest way to build an online brand on social media in 2024. In this session you will learn:- What is short video marketing- Which platforms work best for your business- Content strategies that are on brand for your business- How to sell organically without paying for ads.
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
Mastering Multi-Touchpoint Content Strategy: Navigate Fragmented User JourneysSearch Engine Journal
Digital platforms are constantly multiplying, and with that, user engagement is becoming more intricate and fragmented.
So how do you effectively navigate distributing and tailoring your content across these various touchpoints?
Watch this webinar as we dive into the evolving landscape of content strategy tailored for today's fragmented user journeys. Understanding how to deliver your content to your users is more crucial than ever, and we’ll provide actionable tips for navigating these intricate challenges.
You’ll learn:
- How today’s users engage with content across various channels and devices.
- The latest methodologies for identifying and addressing content gaps to keep your content strategy proactive and relevant.
- What digital shelf space is and how your content strategy needs to pivot.
With Wayne Cichanski, we’ll explore innovative strategies to map out and meet the diverse needs of your audience, ensuring every piece of content resonates and connects, regardless of where or how it is consumed.
The session includes a brief history of the evolution of search before diving into the roles technology, content, and links play in developing a powerful SEO strategy in a world of Generative AI and social search. Discover how to optimize for TikTok searches, Google's Gemini, and Search Generative Experience while developing a powerful arsenal of tools and templates to help maximize the effectiveness of your SEO initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
Understand how search engines work
Be able to find out where your users search
Know what is required for each discipline of SEO
Feel confident creating an SEO Plan
Confidently measure SEO performance
Most small businesses struggle to see marketing results. In this session, we will eliminate any confusion about what to do next, solving your marketing problems so your business can thrive. You’ll learn how to create a foundational marketing OS (operating system) based on neuroscience and backed by real-world results. You’ll be taught how to develop deep customer connections, and how to have your CRM dynamically segment and sell at any stage in the customer’s journey. By the end of the session, you’ll remove confusion and chaos and replace it with clarity and confidence for long-term marketing success.
Key Takeaways:
• Uncover the power of a foundational marketing system that dynamically communicates with prospects and customers on autopilot.
• Harness neuroscience and Tribal Alignment to transform your communication strategies, turning potential clients into fans and those fans into loyal customers.
• Discover the art of automated segmentation, pinpointing your most lucrative customers and identifying the optimal moments for successful conversions.
• Streamline your business with a content production plan that eliminates guesswork, wasted time, and money.
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.\
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
10 Video Ideas Any Business Can Make RIGHT NOW!
You'll never draw a blank again on what kind of video to make for your business. Go beyond the basic categories and truly reimagine a brand new advanced way to brainstorm video content creation. During this masterclass you'll be challenged to think creatively and outside of the box and view your videos through lenses you may have never thought of previously. It's guaranteed that you'll leave with more than 10 video ideas, but I like to under-promise and over-deliver. Don't miss this session.
Key Takeaways:
How to use the Video Matrix
How to use additional "Lenses"
Where to source original video ideas
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
In this presentation, Danny Leibrandt explains the impact of AI on SEO and what Google has been doing about it. Learn how to take your SEO game to the next level and win over Google with his new strategy anyone can use. Get actionable steps to rank your name, your business, and your clients on Google - the right way.
Key Takeaways:
1. Real content is king
2. Find ways to show EEAT
3. Repurpose across all platforms
Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?Cut-the-SaaS
Discover the transformative power of AI in content creation with our presentation, "Is AI-Generated Content the Future of Content Creation?" by Puran Parsani, CEO & Editor of Cut-The-SaaS. Learn how AI-generated content is revolutionizing marketing, publishing, education, healthcare, and finance by offering unprecedented efficiency, creativity, and scalability.
Understanding
AI-Generated Content:
AI-generated content includes text, images, videos, and audio produced by AI without direct human involvement. This technology leverages large datasets to create contextually relevant and coherent material, streamlining content production.
Key Benefits:
Content Creation: Rapidly generate high-quality content for blogs, articles, and social media.
Brainstorming: AI simulates conversations to inspire creative ideas.
Research Assistance: Efficiently summarize and research information.
Market Insights:
The content marketing industry is projected to grow to $17.6 billion by 2032, with AI-generated content expected to dominate over 55% of the market.
Case Study: CNET’s AI Content Controversy:
CNET’s use of AI for news articles led to public scrutiny due to factual inaccuracies, highlighting the need for transparency and human oversight.
Benefits Across Industries:
Marketing: Personalize content at scale and optimize engagement with predictive analytics.
Publishing: Automate content creation for faster publication cycles.
Education: Efficiently generate educational materials.
Healthcare: Create accurate content for patients and professionals.
Finance: Produce timely financial content for decision-making.
Challenges and Ethical Considerations:
Transparency: Disclose AI use to maintain trust.
Bias: Address potential AI biases with diverse datasets.
SEO: Ensure AI content meets SEO standards.
Quality: Maintain high standards to prevent misinformation.
Conclusion:
AI-generated content offers significant benefits in efficiency, personalization, and scalability. However, ethical considerations and quality assurance are crucial for responsible use. Explore the future of content creation with us and see how AI is transforming various industries.
Connect with Us:
Follow Cut-The-SaaS on LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and Medium. Visit cut-the-saas.com for more insights and resources.
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
The digital marketing industry is changing faster than ever and those who don’t adapt with the times are losing market share. Where should marketers be focusing their efforts? What strategies are the experts seeing get the best results? Get up-to-speed with the latest industry insights, trends and predictions for the future in this panel discussion with some leading digital marketing experts.
5. Introduction
Innovation for Marketers i
Page
Introduction
About the Authors (iii)
How to Use this Guide (v)
Additional Study Resources (vi)
Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
1.1 Integrating Marketing and Entrepreneurship 3
1.2 Converting Ideas into Opportunities 19
1.3 New and Traditional Marketing Approaches 22
Chapter 2: An Entrepreneurial Response to Change
2.1 Competitive Marketing Solutions with Limited Resources 33
2.2 Entrepreneurial Approaches to New Product
and Service Development 41
2.3 A Compelling Proposition 50
2.4 Effective Leadership of Entrepreneurial Teams 62
Section 2: Innovation
Chapter 3: The Innovative Organisation
3.1 What Kinds of Innovation Can Exist? 73
3.2 What Does An Innovative Organisation Look Like? 98
3.3 Assessing Levels of Innovation and Creativity 109
3.4 Using External Influences to Drive Innovation 115
Chapter 4: Innovation In Marketing
4.1 Creating Innovative Marketing Teams 123
4.2 Innovation across the Marketing Value Chain 140
4.3 Implementing Marketing Innovation 149
6. Introduction
ii Innovation for Marketers
Section 3: The Marketing Champion
Chapter 5: The Role of Internal Marketing
5.1 The Role of Internal Marketing in Supporting Innovation 161
5.2 Internal Marketing, Leadership and Other Business Functions 181
5.3 The Internal Marketing Plan 187
5.4 New Ideas and Digital Media 191
Chapter 6: Marketing-led Organisational Change
6.1 Analysing the Context of Change in an Organisation 201
6.2 Planning and Executing a Change Programme 222
6.3 Engaging Stakeholders in Organisational Change 233
6.4 Measuring Success 237
Index 245
7. Introduction
Innovation for Marketers iii
About the Authors
Andrew Hatcher BSc MBA FCMC Chartered Marketer
Andrew initially studied as a Mechanical Engineer before joining Reuters, the information
company as a journalist. He then spent 15 years with the company around the world in a
variety of technology, sales and marketing roles ultimately working with the Greenhouse,
Reuters’ corporate venture capital arm, based in New York. He subsequently established an
internal incubator for Reuters in three centres around the world before setting up a new
electronic trading venture in Singapore.
After Reuters, Andrew moved to Cambridge in the UK and has been involved in setting up a
number of companies including Investing for Good which offers philanthropists a structured
way to invest in charities, The Working Knowledge Group which delivers enterprise activities
to students in Higher and Further education and, most recently, the Applied Knowledge
Network which develops training courses and software applications focused on strategic
planning.
Andrew has been involved in marketing training since 2003 and has since delivered
programmes for a wide variety of clients including Statoil the Norwegian State oil company,
British Telecom, Yell, Smith & Williamson, NTT DoCoMo and Eversheds among many others.
He is the co-author of Inventuring – Why big companies must think small, which is a
handbook for corporate venture capitalists; of The Cambridge Marketing College
Handbook: Services Marketing published by Cambridge Marketing Press; and of the Metrics
for Marketers Guide.
Andrew is a fellow of Cambridge Marketing College and has many years’ experience
teaching at both the CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing and Postgraduate Diploma
levels.
Kiran Kapur BA MPhil (Oxon) FCMC Chartered Marketer
Kiran has worked predominantly in Financial Services and has expertise in customer
relationship marketing and customer communications. As a consultant, she has worked as
project manager for companies including Liverpool Victoria, Barclays, London Life and
Cazenove.
She has taught a wide variety of courses at Cambridge Marketing College since 1999. She is
the Distance Learning & Overseas Course Director, with responsibility for the College’s
overseas expansion and a Fellow of the College. She has been a CIM examiner since 2004.
Her publications include the Assessing the Marketing Environment Study Guide published by
Pearson Education in 2009, and The Cambridge Marketing Handbook: Law for Marketers
published by Cambridge Marketing Press in 2015. She is also the author of the Guide: The
Customer.
She is a trustee of Jimmy’s Cambridge, a charity for homeless people.
8. Introduction
iv Innovation for Marketers
Charles W Nixon MBA FCIM FCAM FRSA Chartered Marketer
Charles began his career after studying History and Economics at Manchester University, a
degree that he says gives him a long term approach to strategy. He was first employed as
Government Relations Officer for Courtaulds (then the largest textile company in the UK)
where he liaised with civil servants and politicians on government policy. Whilst at Courtaulds
he was asked to explore the possibilities of the use of new mini computers in the field of
market research and intelligence. This led to his founding Courtaulds’ Office of Market
Intelligence for its Consumer Products Group and establishing one of the first computerised
marketing information systems in the UK.
After a short spell at the International Wool Secretariat as Senior Economic Analyst, Charles
went to Warwick Business School (WBS) to take one of its first MBAs. Whilst there he helped
write the Business Plan for the Warwick Science Park and so confirmed his interest in High
Technology. Following WBS he joined Arthur Andersen Management Consultants (now
Accenture) and spent time in Chicago and Geneva, before joining Mercury
Communications the then embryonic rival to BT. At Mercury, Charles was Head of Market
Research and Market Planning helping the new company segment its market, plan for
distribution, and research customer needs in order to introduce new products. In 1987 he
moved to the City of London and joined Extel Financial in time for the Big Bang and the city
revolution. These latter two posts gave Charles an insight in to the different ways UK
companies approach the market and marketing.
Following several years with Extel he was head hunted by Société Général to rebrand its
recently acquired UK Unit Trust Asset Management arm – Touché Remnant. However the lure
of WBS proved too strong and in 1992 he left the City to start Doctoral Research on the
Marketing of English Universities.
During this time Charles founded Cambridge Marketing College with Ian Brownlee in May of
1991. The College quickly established itself for its fresh and enthusiastic approach. Over the
next five years it steadily grew as a part time activity and in 1997 expanded with a second
college in Guildford and then a third in Manchester. In 1999, Charles became Chief
Executive of the College. Since then, the College has gone from strength to strength to
become the leading Professional Marketing College in Europe with 1,400 delegates at its
study centres around the UK and from over 100 countries worldwide.
9. Introduction
Innovation for Marketers v
How to Use this Guide
This Guide has been written specifically to assist marketers who are involved in both studying
the nature of and implementing innovation. It includes examples and activities to help
reinforce your learning, and recommended reading and website links for additional
information. We recommend that you work through the Guide from beginning to end
undertaking the exercises and supplementary reading included.
The Guide is part of a set, all written by professional marketers and tutors, designed to
provide clear and easy to read introductions to key marketing topics. The other Guides in this
set are: Strategy for Marketers, Digital Strategy and Metrics for Marketers.
Within the Guide you will find the following icons used:
This icon defines a key learning concept.
This icon identifies additional reading resources that can be used to gather extra
information or to reinforce learning about a particular concept.
This icon identifies tasks that are useful in widening your knowledge and applying
the concepts to your own organisation.
This icon identifies real-life examples that illustrate the key issues discussed.
This icon identifies websites with further information on the key issues discussed.
This icon identifies videos available online to reinforce your learning.
10. Introduction
vi Innovation for Marketers
Additional Study Resources
This Guide has been designed to provide you with all the core knowledge and skills you need
to understand the key concepts that support innovation in marketing environments.
However, marketing is a constantly changing discipline and in order to be a first class
marketer you must keep up-to-date with what is going on around you. Consequently we
strongly recommend that you read widely around the subject for this (and every) topic.
CMC Tutor Blog, Scoop.it! and YouTube Channel
Tutor Blog: www.marketingcollege.com/blog
Scoop.it!: http://www.scoop.it/u/charles-nixon
YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/channel/UC0_uEMPBTxuUr8hH1Ikl70w
Magazines and Journals
We strongly recommend that you read around the subject from the daily and weekly press
and marketing journals and widen your studies by looking at key trade magazines that serve
the industry. These include:
Ad Age www.adage.com
Cambridge Marketing Review www.marketingcollege.com/blog/cambridge-
marketing-review/
Campaign www.campaignlive.co.uk
Marketing www.marketingmagazine.co.uk
Marketing Week www.marketingweek.co.uk
Media Week www.mediaweek.co.uk
Cambridge Marketing Handbooks
The Cambridge Marketing Handbooks: Digital Marketing, Distribution for Marketers, Law for
Marketers, Marketing Communications, Marketing Philosophy, Marketing Planning, Pricing for
Marketers, Product Marketing, Research for Marketers, Services Marketing, and Stakeholder
Marketing, 2015, Cambridge Marketing Press
11. Introduction
Innovation for Marketers vii
Recommended Books
Nijssen E J, (2014), Entrepreneurial Marketing: An Effectual Approach, Abingdon, Routledge
Tidd J and Bessant J, (2013), Managing Innovation, 5th edition, Chichester, John Wiley
Ahmed P and Shepherd C, (2010), Innovation Management: Context, Strategies, Systems
and Processes, Harlow, FT Prentice Hall
Bjerke B, (2007), Understanding Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing
Blundel R, and Lockett N, (2011), Exploring Entrepreneurship: Practices and Perspectives,
Oxford, OUP
Hayes J, (2014), The Theory and Practice of Change Management, 4th edition, Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan
Hogg C, (2014), The Handbook of Entrepreneurial Marketing: How to Align Marketing and
Promotion to New Products and Services, London, Kogan Page
Moore G, (2014), Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to
Mainstream Customers, 3rd edition, New York, HarperBusiness
Ries E, (2011), The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful
Businesses, London, Portfolio Penguin
Sethna Z, Jones R and Harrigan P, (2013), Entrepreneurial Marketing: Global Perspectives,
Bradford, Emerald
12. Introduction
viii Innovation for Marketers
Useful Websites
The Chartered Institute of Marketing
www.cim.co.uk CIM website with information and access to learning
support.
www.cim.co.uk/insight/tools-
and-templates/study-resources/
Direct access to information and support materials for all
levels of CIM qualification (available to CIM Members).
www.cim.co.uk/cuttingedge Weekly roundup of marketing news (available to CIM
members), awards and forthcoming marketing events.
www.cim.co.uk/insight/marketin
g-library-resources/
EBSCO, Emerald, iLibrary and more.
Publications on line
www.ft.com Extensive research resources across all industry sectors,
with links to more specialist reports. (Charges may apply).
www.economist.com Useful links, and easily-searched archives of articles from
back issues of the magazine.
www.mad.co.uk Marketing Week magazine online.
www.brandrepublic.com Marketing magazine online.
Sources of useful information
www.esomar.org/ European Market Research Association.
www.asa.org.uk/asa/ Advertising Standards Association – useful for the Codes
of Practice.
www.marketresearch.org.uk The Market Research Society. Contains useful material on
the nature of research, choosing an agency, ethical
standards and codes of conduct for research practice.
www.statistics.gov.uk Detailed information on a variety of consumer
demographics from the Government Statistics Office.
www.data.gov.uk/publisher/ce
ntral-office-of-information
Government News.
www.quickmba.com/ Quick reference website for business models.
Wikipedia – A Note on its Use
Wikipedia is a good place to start any research on a new subject. Whilst content now goes
through some review to remove obvious errors of fact, the encyclopaedia is not definitive
and can be incorrect. Always check any information with a second source. Wikipedia is a
good source for other sources.
15. Introduction
Innovation for Marketers 1
Introduction
A word of caution. The world is moving at a fast pace and marketers need to think quickly.
This Guide has been written for those with a quick mind and a willingness to read widely. All
the concepts and references included are not spelled out, but are easy to find through
Google. So please read your Guide and then research the topics you do not at first
understand or about which you want to know more. Doing this is one of the first steps in
being effective at driving innovation!
In the 20th Century there was the Marketing Department. However as the discipline of
Marketing has become more widely accepted and understood, the standard techniques
have passed into mainstream Business Development activities. In the 21st Century the most
relevant department is better described as Marketing and Innovation. Because of the
external-facing function of the discipline, it is to marketers that the task of identifying new
opportunities and devising plans to exploit them, falls. And, as basic marketing practices
become more widely used by non-marketers, it falls to professional marketers to innovate in
order to stand out from the crowd.
This Guide was written following 15 years of delivering our MHT (Marketing for High
Technology) Programme for companies in and around the hugely successful Cambridge
technology cluster in the UK. Based on that experience and on the wider world of marketing,
the Guide looks at a wide spectrum of change: from disruptive innovations to creative new
ideas, from implementing major change programmes to managing evolutionary, small-scale
improvements. It looks at Innovation in terms of marketing practice and business
development; the marketing of innovative products and their organisations and marketing-
led internal change management.
Graffiti on the A14 highway leaving Cambridge (Photo: CWN, 2014)
17. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 3
Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
The expected learning outcomes for this chapter are that you will understand the
relationship between marketing and entrepreneurship including being able to:
Describe how the entrepreneurial process sits alongside core disciplines in marketing
Describe the different ways in which business ideas can be translated into
entrepreneurial opportunities
Assess the usefulness of both existing and new marketing approaches in a range of
entrepreneurial contexts
1.1 Integrating Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Many of us work for organisations that are well established, some for many decades or
centuries. As a result these companies have lost much of the original energy of their
founders. Instead they perpetuate the business through what is left behind of that original
entrepreneurial spirit.
For many established companies, it is the reinvigorating of the entrepreneurial zeal that is the
hardest task, as it is safer and (for staff) often easier to continue to gently evolve and please
the current customer than it is to find new ones with new offerings. (Throughout the Guide
‘offerings’ refers to consumer, B2B or not-for-profit products and services)
For others of us, we are privileged to be involved with the founding of a new business or
enterprise and we get to experience the joys and pains of corporate birth. In both situations
we are looking to gain and maintain a market lead or competitive advantage and as such
the customer is always at the heart of the successful enterprise.
There are times, however, when innovation is driven by necessity in order for organisations to
survive. In these periods (termed Creative Destruction by Schumpeter in 1942), marketing
plays a key role: not just understanding the traditional customer, but rather as the observer
and interpreter of macro trends; the identifier of opportunities and educator of consumers
and creator of markets (Schumpeter, 1942).
Creative Destruction
Creative destruction describes the continuous product and process innovation cycle
whereby outdated models and items are replaced by new ones. The process of creative
destruction is estimated to be the driving force behind productivity growth. Artificial
limitations to creative destruction can create significant negative short- and long-term
macroeconomic consequences
18. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
4 Innovation for Marketers
1.1.1 Creating Competitive Advantage
Organisations of all types in many contexts are faced with the challenge of gaining and
maintaining competitive advantage over their competitors. Developing that specific edge
can be critical in some cases, where it ensures survival, whereas for the majority it will provide
a way to stay ahead of the competition. In the last 10-15 years the focus on innovation as a
core competence has increased largely as the result of increased competition from
emerging economies, the ever faster cycle of new technologies, the rapid fall in the cost of
information and the increasing sophistication of the buyer.
Most analysts concur that any advantage from cutting costs and outsourcing have probably
already been exhausted and consequently in order to compete there are few options left
except to innovate a path to advantage. This has resulted in innovation moving from being
an interesting but expensive sideline to being adopted as a core competence and as a
result becoming sustainable.
A critical ingredient for creating and maintaining that advantage can often be the
presence, acceptance and effective implementation of innovative products, processes and
ideas. Being innovative in this environment means seeing things from new angles, having
broad perspectives, taking risks and being flexible. Developing the appropriate climate for
innovation in the workplace often involves not just changing the furniture but is more about
enabling employees to become idea observers, interpreters, identifiers, educators and
creators.
1.1.2 The role of marketing in driving innovation
Let’s look at each of these roles in turn:
1. Observer
2. Interpreter
3. Identifier
4. Educator
5. Creator
The role of marketing in driving innovation:
Observer
Interpreter
Identifier
Educator
Creator
19. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 5
1. Observer
Joseph Schumpeter and Nicolai Kondratieff both hypothesised the existence of Long
Business Waves (Schumpeter, op.cit.), (Kondratieff, 1979). These waves, which Schumpeter
christened Creative Destruction, occur roughly every 50 years and dramatically change the
dominant technology – wiping out an existing competitive advantage; generating new
opportunities. Schumpeter and Kondratieff demonstrated how this had occurred when
steam power was applied to factories in the early 19th Century; to farms and agriculture in
the late 19th Century and when electricity was applied to factories in the 1920s. More
recently it can be seen in computerisation and automation via microprocessors.
The impact of these waves was/is to destroy the old paradigm of business and replace it with
a new way of working. The consequence was mass unemployment of the work force as
capital adjusted to the new technologies and labour took time to retrain. This paradigm shift
can then be seen in the impact of micro-processors (PCs), the internet (www) and now in
mobility and interconnectedness (The Internet of Things) (Witchalls, 2013).
The original theories posited that long business waves occurred every 50 years, as evidenced
in 1879, 1929 and 1979. However, the latest wave of Mass Mobile computing power has
come much earlier and has caught many commentators by surprise. The change is dramatic
though still fluid. So what will be the impact of mobile devices which are always on and
personal? What will be the impact of the interconnectedness of 50 billion devices via the
internet let alone the incredible increases in processing power coming from the ‘second half
of the chess board’?( Brynjolfsson and Mcafee, 2014).
Environmental Scanning
Marketers need to constantly watch or scan the environment (to spot the next trends
(wearable technology?) and the new opportunities that accompany them; and monitor
emerging uncertainties.
Figure 1.1 The Kondratieff Wave Source:
http://blog.nationmultimedia.com/home/blog_data/5/5/images/kondratiev5.jpg
20. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
6 Innovation for Marketers
How do we do this?
• Reading source journals – (these are the ones that journalists use to find stories. They
are the scientific publications, e.g. Nature, Scientific America; the economic press,
e.g. F.T, Economist; the technology press, e.g. New Scientific, etc.).
• Scanning peripheral sectors – keeping a watching brief on sectors that could be a
substitute (remember Porter?) for what you do, e.g. mobile phone companies
entering the banking sector!
• Debate – be part of the new thinking; speak at conferences; become a member of
technical standards committees; but above all talk to your target audiences.
The standard and most obvious model to use here is Porter’s 5 Forces model, though this is
limited in the areas it looks at so you need to think more widely and include extended PESTER
analysis as well (Porter, 2008).
Figure 1.2 PESTER analysis of the macro external environment
Find the prime source journal(s) for your sector.
21. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 7
To give you some examples of the current level of change in technology, look at
www.gartner.com. Gartner is a leading Management Consultancy and specialises in looking
at the latest technology opportunities. However they recognise that not all ideas come to
fruition – new ideas generate increasing expectations but then some fade as they fail to
take-off, leaving others to change our lives forever. Consequently they created the Hype
Cycle to separate the hype from the real drivers of a technology's commercial promise
(Gartner, 2015).
The Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of
technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business
problems and exploiting new opportunities. It provides a view of how a technology or
application will evolve over time, providing a source of insight to manage its deployment
within the context of specific business goals.
Figure 1.3 The Gartner hype cycle
Observing is only part of the task; it is knowing what you see that is key. “Looking where all
are looking, seeing what no-one sees” is often considered to be a definition of genius – but
we need to do this if we are to be innovative.
2. Interpreter
How do we understand what we see? In The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle Conan Doyle
describes Sherlock Holmes inspecting a battered bowler hat and then handing it to Watson
to see what he makes of it. Read the passage below and consider what is seen by Watson
but not interpreted.
22. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
8 Innovation for Marketers
Extract from The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“I beg that you will look upon it not as a battered hat but as an intellectual problem. And,
first, as to how it came here. It arrived upon Christmas morning, in company with a good
fat goose, which is, I have no doubt, roasting at this moment in front of Peterson’s fire. The
facts are these: about four o’clock on Christmas morning, Peterson, who, as you know, is a
very honest fellow, was returning from some small jollification and was making his way
homeward down Tottenham Court Road. In front of him he saw, in the gaslight, a tallish
man, walking with a slight stagger, and carrying a white goose slung over his shoulder.
As he reached the corner of Goodge Street, a row broke out between this stranger and a
little knot of roughs. One of the latter knocked off the man’s hat, on which he raised his
stick to defend himself and, swinging it over his head, smashed the shop window behind
him. Peterson had rushed forward to protect the stranger from his assailants; but the man,
shocked at having broken the window, and seeing an official-looking person in uniform
rushing towards him, dropped his goose, took to his heels, and vanished amid the labyrinth
of small streets which lie at the back of Tottenham Court Road. The roughs had also fled at
the appearance of Peterson, so that he was left in possession of the field of battle, and
also of the spoils of victory in the shape of this battered hat and a most unimpeachable
Christmas goose.”
“Which surely he restored to their owner?”
“My dear fellow, there lies the problem. It is true that ‘For Mrs. Henry Baker’ was printed
upon a small card which was tied to the bird’s left leg, and it is also true that the initials ‘H.
B.’ are legible upon the lining of this hat, but as there are some thousands of Bakers, and
some hundreds of Henry Bakers in this city of ours, it is not easy to restore lost property to
any one of them.”
“What, then, did Peterson do?”
“He brought round both hat and goose to me on Christmas morning, knowing that even
the smallest problems are of interest to me. The goose we retained until this morning, when
there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten
without unnecessary delay. Its finder has carried it off, therefore, to fulfil the ultimate
destiny of a goose, while I continue to retain the hat of the unknown gentleman who lost
his Christmas dinner.”
“Did he not advertise?”
“No.”
“Then, what clue could you have as to his identity?”
“Only as much as we can deduce.”
“From his hat?”
“Precisely.”
“But you are joking. What can you gather from this old battered felt?”
23. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 9
“Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the
individuality of the man who has worn this article?”
I took the tattered object in my hands and turned it over rather ruefully. It was a very
ordinary black hat of the usual round shape, hard and much the worse for wear. The lining
had been of red silk, but was a good deal discoloured. There was no maker’s name; but,
as Holmes had remarked, the initials “H. B.” were scrawled upon one side.
It was pierced in the brim for a hat-securer, but the elastic was missing. For the rest, it was
cracked, exceedingly dusty, and spotted in several places, although there seemed to
have been some attempt to hide the discoloured patches by smearing them with ink.
“I can see nothing,” said I, handing it back to my friend.
“On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what
you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.”
“Then, pray tell me what it is that you can infer from this hat?”
He picked it up and gazed at it in the peculiar introspective fashion which was
characteristic of him. “It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been,” he remarked,
“and yet there are a few inferences which are very distinct, and a few others which
represent at least a strong balance of probability. That the man was highly intellectual is of
course obvious upon the face of it, and also that he was fairly well-to-do within the last
three years, although he has now fallen upon evil days. He had foresight, but has less now
than formerly, pointing to a moral retrogression, which, when taken with the decline of his
fortunes, seems to indicate some evil influence, probably drink, at work upon him. This may
account also for the obvious fact that his wife has ceased to love him.”
“My dear Holmes!”
“He has, however, retained some degree of self-respect,” he continued, disregarding my
remonstrance. “He is a man who leads a sedentary life, goes out little, is out of training
entirely, is middle-aged, has grizzled hair which he has had cut within the last few days,
and which he anoints with lime-cream. These are the more patent facts which are to be
deduced from his hat. Also, by the way, that it is extremely improbable that he has gas
laid on in his house.”
“You are certainly joking, Holmes.”
“Not in the least. Is it possible that even now, when I give you these results, you are unable
to see how they are attained?”
“I have no doubt that I am very stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you.
For example, how did you deduce that this man was intellectual?”
For answer Holmes clapped the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and
settled upon the bridge of his nose. “It is a question of cubic capacity,” said he; “a man
with so large a brain must have something in it.”
“The decline of his fortunes, then?”
24. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
10 Innovation for Marketers
“This hat is three years old. These flat brims curled at the edge came in then. It is a hat of
the very best quality. Look at the band of ribbed silk and the excellent lining. If this man
could afford to buy so expensive a hat three years ago, and has had no hat since, then he
has assuredly gone down in the world.”
“Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the foresight and the moral
retrogression?”
Sherlock Holmes laughed. “Here is the foresight,” said he putting his finger upon the little
disc and loop of the hat-securer. “They are never sold upon hats. If this man ordered one,
it is a sign of a certain amount of foresight, since he went out of his way to take this
precaution against the wind. But since we see that he has broken the elastic and has not
troubled to replace it, it is obvious that he has less foresight now than formerly, which is a
distinct proof of a weakening nature. On the other hand, he has endeavoured to conceal
some of these stains upon the felt by daubing them with ink, which is a sign that he has not
entirely lost his self-respect.”
“Your reasoning is certainly plausible.”
“The further points, that he is middle-aged, that his hair is grizzled, that it has been recently
cut, and that he uses lime-cream, are all to be gathered from a close examination of the
lower part of the lining. The lens discloses a large number of hair-ends, clean cut by the
scissors of the barber. They all appear to be adhesive, and there is a distinct odour of lime-
cream. This dust, you will observe, is not the gritty, grey dust of the street but the fluffy
brown dust of the house, showing that it has been hung up indoors most of the time, while
the marks of moisture upon the inside are proof positive that the wearer perspired very
freely, and could therefore, hardly be in the best of training.”
“But his wife – you said that she had ceased to love him.”
“This hat has not been brushed for weeks. When I see you, my dear Watson, with a week’s
accumulation of dust upon your hat, and when your wife allows you to go out in such a
state, I shall fear that you also have been unfortunate enough to lose your wife’s
affection.”
“But he might be a bachelor.”
“Nay, he was bringing home the goose as a peace-offering to his wife. Remember the
card upon the bird’s leg.”
“You have an answer to everything. But how on earth do you deduce that the gas is not
laid on in his house?”
“One tallow stain, or even two, might come by chance; but when I see no less than five, I
think that there can be little doubt that the individual must be brought into frequent
contact with burning tallow—walks upstairs at night probably with his hat in one hand and
a guttering candle in the other. Anyhow, he never got tallow-stains from a gas-jet. Are you
satisfied?”
“Well, it is very ingenious,” said I, laughing;”
Source: (Conan Doyle, 2014)
25. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 11
The key point here is to spot the indicators that lead to the bigger picture. In the Marketer’s
world we are looking for indicators of change that lead to scenarios of opportunity.
The first and obvious indicator is the pattern. There is evidence all around that people react
in different ways to PESTER events and forces. But when you can see a pattern forming in
these disparate acts then you can observe, predict and react e.g. seeing people using
fitness bands or reading blogs about a desire for a healthier diet allows the marketer to make
assumptions about the future.
The second indicator is the trend. With the pattern comes identification but we need to know
if this is an opportunity we can use. So we need to observe if and when the market is
nascent. We need to spot a trend. Here we need to collect indicative data of the growing
conformance to the pattern. standard market research and monitoring techniques should
be used.
3. Identifier
So how do we see new opportunities?
Through our observations we constantly have to reassemble our notions of satisfying needs
and we have to consider what new needs are created by the changes in the environment
as a result of the waves of creative destruction.
For example, if we extrapolate the increase in computing power from 8k to 32 gigabits on a
microchip, what do we do with this massive increase in processing power? What is more the
power is now portable; what can we do with it on the move to make life easier? Further still, if
we can embed it in clothing or a human body, what can we control with it? These are just
one set of questions from a couple of trends.
If we add to this the observable trend of an aging population, how can we combine the
two? And, finally, if we know we can sequence the DNA of any one person, what can we do
with the data?
Often the answers or new ideas seem to come from science fiction but in reality they are just
the application of desires for a better, broader life of experiences made possible by
imagination.
Discovery and creation theory
There are two contrasting (although some would argue complementary) theories of
entrepreneurship: Discovery Theory and Creation Theory. Whilst both assume that the aim of
entrepreneurs is to identify and exploit opportunities; they differ in their view about the origin
of opportunities and about the nature of entrepreneurs.
Discovery theory assumes that opportunities arise independently of any action taken by
entrepreneurs and are waiting to be discovered. Opportunities in a sector or market are
caused by exogenous shocks and are observable by anyone and therefore, in principle,
exploitable by anyone associated with that sector or market. The reason why some people
manage to successfully exploit a new opportunity and others do not is attributed to
differences between entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs, e.g. they may be more alert or
less risk averse.
26. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
12 Innovation for Marketers
Creation theory takes a different view. Opportunities are not created by exogenous shocks
but are created endogenously by the actions of entrepreneurs as they explore and develop
new offerings. They do not search; they act in order to create new market demand – and
observe how the market or customers react in turn. We will look at the role of Creator in more
detail later in this Section.
Discovery and Creation Theory
To find out more read Alavrez S A and Barney J B, (2007), Discovery and Creation:
Alternative Theories of Entrepreneurial Action, Organizações em contexto, Ano 3, 6,
December
One model to consider when trying to discover new opportunities comes from Murphy
(Murphy, 2011). Murphy recognised that theories about discovery are important to
entrepreneurism but that too many of them were based on the assumption that
opportunities were found by deliberate search or serendipitous discovery. He believed that
this oversimplified the nature of opportunities and developed a multi-dimensional model of
entrepreneurial discovery shown in Figure 1.4 below.
Figure 1.4 Murphy’s model of entrepreneurial discovery
27. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 13
The model identifies 4 quadrants:
Eureka (high serendipity/high deliberation)
Deliberate Search (low serendipity/high deliberation)
Legacy (low serendipity/low deliberation)
Serendipitous Discovery (high serendipity/low deliberation)
and throws more light on the range of approaches taken to discovering opportunities.
Murphy’s full article is available online:
http://condor.depaul.edu/profpjm/pmurphy_files/Murphy%202x2%20(2011).pdf or use
google.
Having observed a pattern you then need to consider how to predict its trend. In this respect
Creation Theory is best summed up in that ‘no-one ever asked for a mobile phone’. You have
to create the market for it by educating people as to what is possible. Leaping from a basic
raw technical possibility to mass market service is unlikely unless the market can see the new
offering as analogous to a previous technology/offering. For example, the introduction of
the VCR cassette recorder for the home took nearly 30 years to reach 99% household
penetration. The DVD player took 10 -15 years to achieve the same penetration because it
was replacing an understood offering.
Mobile Communications
Originally mobile communication was developed for the military as mobile radio for
Command and Control. With the end of war and translation of the same technology into
civilian use it was applied to Emergency Services. However, it required a network and
considerable power to operate, so it stayed as a niche service for those sectors that saw
sufficient benefit to accept the cost of setting up a network and providing large expensive
battery packs.
As the value in speed of information became a pattern in other markets during the
nineteen seventies and eighties, especially in Financial Services and Sales Processing, the
technology was extended to small niche markets so networks could be set up in discrete
areas, such as the City of London, then the M25 belt or major arterial roads. However,
one-way mobile communications remained the norm for several years (known as
telepoint)!
However, with this nascent stage came the ability to gain economies of scale in
production and move down the learning curve. Thus more power, and smaller handsets
meant new general business users and with this came ubiquitous networks and then mass
social users.
At each of these stages in the evolution, different companies led the way or dominated.
Philips and Motorola in the early years, then when the Telepoint market arose it was
Hutchison with Rabbit; then Nokia rose with longer lasting battery life in their phones to
dominate the market, but then lost the trend by not seeing a new pattern of activity and
Apple took the lead with the iPhone.
28. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
14 Innovation for Marketers
Figure 1.5 below illustrates the shortening of the adoption curve for new technology in recent
years. Contrast the adoption of the telephone after 5 or 6 years (it had hardly got off the
ground) with the adoption of the cell phone (at over 25%).
Figure 1.5 Adoption of technology
4. Educator
Ask many entrepreneurs or high-tech start-ups what their customers want and they will tell
you that their customers don’t know: Because they do not understand the technology, they
are not scientists and do not understand what is possible.
Henry Ford’s response when asked what his customers would like if he asked them was “a
faster horse”.
This is where the ‘anticipating’ part of the definition of marketing comes in. It is through
experimentation and education of the customer that markets evolve or revolutionise. Those
on the inside of a company know what their technology is capable of delivering. They are in
advance of the market. The job of marketing here is to create the market, through
education and nurturing of understanding. This takes time and resources and it is often better
to be a close second to the first mover who spends most on market creation.
This is the difference between being market driven and market-driving. These approaches
come to market development from very different angles and the main characteristics of
each can be seen in Table 1.1.
29. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 15
Market-driving Market-driven
Disruptive Reactive
Innovative Incremental
Creative Insignificant
Value Features
Agile Rigid
Competitive Tentative
Decisive Unsure
Clear Confused
Dynamic Static
Table 1.1 Characteristics of market driven vs. market driving
One of the most successful, recent books on Strategy has been Blue Ocean Strategy: How To
Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim
and Renee Mauborgne (Chan Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). The authors postulate that instead
of trying to find way to compete in crowded known markets (Red Ocean), we should look for
completely new markets that are apart from the crowd (Blue Ocean).
30. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
16 Innovation for Marketers
Blue Ocean vs. Red Ocean Strategic Thinking
Blue Ocean Strategy, suggested by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, is a theory that
challenges traditional strategic thinking (Chan Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). It proposes that an
organisation will find the greatest success in markets where there is no competition, and
advocates that the greatest efforts should be spent in identifying such opportunities. Not
only is this theory new in its approach, the authors have been widely regarded as
disagreeing completely with conventional thinking such as Porter’s generic strategies.
The blue ocean is the metaphor for open space, tranquil and bountiful whereas the red
ocean is inhabited by competitive sharks which have bloodied the waters with repeated
attacks on rivals. It is colourful stuff, but there is substance beneath.
Firstly, the theory avoids any no-brainer tag by making it very clear that this is not about
diversification, i.e. new products or markets. Instead, organisations can retain their basic
core competences but reinvent the process of bringing themselves to market by looking at
the marginal gains that can be achieved by doing everything better, or differently, instead
of in a blind response to competition, in the heat of battle.
There are also consequences for how you do the external audit, since you may need to
gather information about markets that you had not previously considered. So in this way the
audit is at least partially driven by the anticipation of possible strategies (which you would
not have done last year!). This is an important example of how planning does not go in a
straight line. Just as audit information immediately feeds into strategic decisions, so the
anticipation of strategic options feeds into what is done in the audit.
In addition, the authors propose a model called the Four Actions Framework which breaks
the trade-off between differentiation and low cost. In doing so, the framework poses four
key questions:
Raise – what factors should be raised well above the industry's standard?
Eliminate – which factors that the industry has long competed on should be
eliminated?
Reduce – which factors should be reduced well below the industry's standard?
Create – which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
You can find out more about Blue and Red Ocean thinking at:
http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/
where you will also find a link to a webinar hosted by the Harvard Business Review
in which Rennée Mauborgne discusses Blue Ocean strategy and leadership.
31. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 17
Observation and identification will get you into a rising market but it does not get you that
First Mover Advantage. There is much debate over the merits of being first to market but in
order to ‘own’ or lead a new market you have to be in very early on (if not to have created
it). To do this, you have to experiment and you have to be able to cope with uncertainties
and with failures.
Experimenting is a learning process otherwise known as ‘trial and error’; and many great
companies have stumbled on their way to the top: Apple with the Lisa computer and the
Newton Digital Assistant or Sony with its mini disk and DAT tape technology. Each time,
however, lessons are learnt by the company and the market is educated about what is
feasible. The downside, of course, is the impact on reputation and brand image.
Many companies do not see the opportunities of a new pattern until a product is launched
and the market created. Many great entrepreneurs who are market creators are
characterised by robustness, not to say ‘bloody-mindedness’ in their determination to drive
through new ideas to create new markets.
In discussing the early dilemmas of the SMART car I was concerned at the concept and its
positioning in the market. The concept was for a cheap, eco-friendly car for young, trendy
consumers. Yet it was being made by Mercedes (an expensive, old, industrial car brand) with
customer interchangeable side panels (environmentally wasteful) and boot space for “the
week’s shopping and a case of Perrier”. The founder, Nicolas Hayek, was convinced that the
market would understand the concept only once it had seen it and understood the
possibilities. The SMART Car has created a niche after 16 years but it still does not dominate
it.
This ‘build it and they will come’ approach was also tried spectacularly by The Sinclair
company when expanding beyond its successful home computer and calculator market.
The launch of the ‘revolutionary’ C5 car was carried out by a team convinced they had
found a need for a new emission-free car.
Figure 1.6 The Sinclair C5
It was a disaster.
32. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
18 Innovation for Marketers
For most innovative companies the approach is to build slowly at first and then more quickly
as the market responds. Often this is underpinned by seeding the primary source market of
users. By this we mean giving young staff, students or children access to the offering as they
are more likely to engage quickly, and then build relations with these users as they move into
the workplace and take up positions of influence.
5. Creator
On what basis do you set out to create a market? How do you manage the internal risks,
when you could be “betting the company on it ».?
For many, ‘gut’ instinct is what they go on. Jobs and Hayek did, but this is only possible if you
(co) own the company and can empathise with the customer. It is the latter aspect that is
critical in doing this successfully. Can you consume your own offering and be your own
customer? If so, then you have a good understanding of the market. However, if you are not
in the main target grouping you will need market research. After 10 years the creators of MTV
stopped making judgement calls on the business and started using market research when
they realised then were no longer in the target market.
In a traditional approach to creating a new market a separate division may be formed to
pioneer the creation and development, untrammelled by the structures and cultures of the
parent company. Such a strategy is famous in the development of the Personal Computer
(PC) by IBM. Here, the parent company was the leading mainframe supplier and saw
desktop computers as a threat to its dominance. Yet others within the firm saw the rise of
Apple, Atari and Commodore as a new dawn in productivity and recognised Moore’s Law
was not on IBM’s side. So they set up a ‘Skunk Works’ (originated by Lockheed Martin for
secret aircraft research), which was a secret team and development area to create a
working prototype. Once the product concept was proven, the company saw the
opportunity and launched the IBM PC. However, if this project had been proposed in parallel
with other computing ventures, IBM would not have allowed the development in the first
place and the world would be a different place.
For other organisations, the method is to externalise the development – either to a separate
company or offshore location in order to hide the activity until it is proven. A similar approach
can be taken with time. Here, companies (such as Xerox and Google) allow staff a certain
amount of time each week /month to devote to developing their own ideas and prototypes,
which they then present to the company for mainstream adoption. One very successful
result from one electronics company called Racal was Vodafone!
These are somewhat deliberate approaches to allowing new ideas to take shape. However,
in many companies, formal planning processes are weak and strategy – and hence
development – is ‘emergent’, evolving in response to what is happening in the market. This
emergent approach has its strengths in allowing constant evolution in response to change,
but may not allow the whole company to focus on the task, as would be the case with a
formal plan.
33. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 19
Further Reading
1 D’Aveni R A, (1995), Coping with hypercompetition: Utilizing the New 7S Framework,
Academy of Management Executive, Vol 9(3), pp45-57. Available in EBSCO.
2 Charitou C D and Makrides C C, (2003), Responses to Disruptive Strategic Innovation,
MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter, pp.55-63. Available in EBSCO.
1.2 Converting Ideas into Opportunities
There are a number of different ways in which business ideas can be converted
into entrepreneurial opportunities:
Intuitive, ‘gut feel’, insights
Traditional business plans
Developing business models
Internal and external approaches
1.2.1 Intuitive vs. traditional approaches
With the considerable changes in the business environment over the last decade, there is
debate about the best way to exploit a given idea and convert it into a profitable
opportunity. Many of the standard practices of the past – local manufacturing, physical
distribution, off-line advertising - no longer easily apply. In addition traditional research and
planning processes may be too slow or, given the newness of the opportunity, there may not
be the data to populate the models. We need to add to this the rising role of crowdfunding
and peer-to-peer lending which reduces the requirement for traditional bank funding and
the detailed, formal business plans they required.
As countries now compete actively to generate businesses in order to grow their economies
it becomes easier for entrepreneurs to start up as evidenced by the “Ease of Doing Business”
surveys by The World Bank and The Economist that rate and rank the ease with which it is
possible to create a business indifferent countries. Companies are now able to exploit ‘gut –
feel’ or intuitive market insights without recourse to traditional funding and the constraints
that went with it. We will look at the merits of this approach in more detail in Section 1.3.1.
34. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
20 Innovation for Marketers
1.2.2 Developing innovative business models: the blank canvas approach
Several commentators over the last five years have developed new approaches to creating
innovative business models. Taking the ‘blank sheet’ approach they have created what they
are calling ‘canvases’ to guide entrepreneurs in developing new business market models.
The aim is to set the entrepreneurial spirit free and not to constrain it with linear planning
models. This resonates with several of the most successful US social media and internet
companies where instead of the usual business planning meetings that would occur in the
UK, they have multi-disciplinary ‘Growth Meetings’ to thrash out the next stage of
development.
Developing different business models requires insight and confidence. Resources are no
longer the main constraint. Access to resources can now be gained via the internet. The task
is knowing what resources are required and how to manage them.
Osterwalder and Pigneur see nine key building blocks for a successful model (Osterwalder
and Pigneur, 2010):
1. Customer insight
2. Value proposition
3. Channels
4. Customer relationships
5. Revenue streams
6. Key resources
7. Key activities
8. Key partnerships
9. Cost structures
Peter Fisk on the other hand sees the model developing from thinking differently (Fisk, 2014):
Power of imagination
Audacious – ideas with attitude
Foresight – seeing the future and working back
Ambition – what is your purpose
Rethink – seeing things differently
Questioning – redefining the problem
Creativity and connection
He also addresses the downside of what to do with too many ideas and the need to focus.
Both of these approaches facilitate the ability to see opportunities and build a variety of
business models.
35. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 21
Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and
Challengers by Osterwalder and Pigneur, John Wiley & Sons, 2010.
Gamechangers: Creating Innovative Strategies for Business and Brand by Peter Fisk, John
Wiley & Sons, 2014.
Innovative Business Models
The Free or Freemium model
Whilst this concept was somewhat revolutionary when introduced, it is now widely accepted
that many services can be provided seemingly free. Business models have now developed
where the income stream is delivered through advertising or through the ‘bait and hook’
approach, where initial services are offered free and additional or enhanced services are
offered at a price. Examples here are obviously many of the Apps that are freely available
but require in-App purchases to gain the best of the software. Or the ‘Paywall’ model for
newspapers where headline information is available free, but in depth analysis is available at
a price. Examples here are Skype, Google and Newspapers such as The Times and Financial
Times.
The Long Tail model
This concept was developed when organisations began to consider the idea of deselecting
products in the book or music industry that were no longer mainstream. In the old physical
world these products took up a considerable amount of storage and stock which was costly.
In the new business model of the dematerialised product there is no cost in holding this
particular type of ‘long tail’ or limited appeal product. Examples here are the bookselling
sector which can still sell titles long after they are no longer bestsellers, by utilising either
ebook downloads or print on demand. It also applies in a variation to Lego which allows
users to generate their own kits from the brick styles available on the web.
The Unbundled Business
This is an intriguing concept whereby the operations of a company which may have been
seen as integrated if we use the old Value Chain model, can now be unbundled and
distributed to other companies, suppliers or indeed customers, and the company now
concentrates on the aspect where it can gain the greatest return. Examples here are Telcos
where they have outsourced the infrastructure to others and in-sourced new innovative
content services .
The Open Business model
This is the concept of externalisation of almost any aspect of the company. It is possible to
source new ideas from customers, to develop products with suppliers, to outsource delivery
to distributors and indeed even to create products with competitors. Examples here are
Proctor and Gamble crowdsourcing new products and the GSK Patent Pool, which allows
others to exploit the patent for third world drugs.
36. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
22 Innovation for Marketers
Unconstrained by the internality of old business approaches where everything had to be
internalised or under the company’s direct control, the 21st Century business externalises all
but the idea.
1.3 New and Traditional Marketing Approaches
There is a range of mainstream and new marketing approaches which are
appropriate in different entrepreneurial contexts:
Deliberate vs. emergent approaches
Exploiting gaps in dynamic markets
Market tests vs. market research
Market sizing and potential in incipient and latent markets
Competing and collaborating
Market entry via niches and highly segmented markets
Exploitation of market adjacencies
Short-term ploys (see Chapter 2), cannibalisation and hypercompetitive markets
Innovative use of social media and ICT
Modifying the marketing mix in entrepreneurial contexts (see Chapter 2)
There are many different ways in which business ideas are converted into entrepreneurial
opportunities. We have already touched on some of these – now let’s consider some
additional alternatives.
1.3.1 Deliberate versus emergent strategies
The standard theory of marketing would demand that we create a plan for what we are
about to execute. For all the reasons that we know and believe, the creation of a marketing
plan is the best way to focus an enterprise’s attention and resources on the opportunities
ahead.
Strengths of planning:
Focuses the effort of staff
Gains agreement and commitment
Provides clear leadership
Allows balanced assessment of risks and rewards
Sets out roadmap for the enterprise to follow
37. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 23
When creating a marketing plan the first stage is to carry out an audit, then to assess the
strengths and weaknesses of the organisation versus the opportunities and threats. However,
this presupposes that we have not yet identified an opportunity and therefore need to take
a balanced approach to those opportunities that may exist in the environment. Using
techniques such as gap analysis and Ansoff’s famous matrix presupposes that the
opportunity in the marketplace is developmental from the current starting position. However,
for entrepreneurs the situation is usually reversed in that the opportunity has been spotted
and then the plan needs be constructed. For the entrepreneur there may be no original
starting position in terms of an existing company and therefore many of the standard
business planning models do not readily apply.
Finding and exploiting gaps in existing marketplaces is not that easy when those markets are
highly dynamic. Organisations that currently believe that they can gain significant market
share growth by being two times better than they are at the moment are outpaced now by
organisations that believe that they can be 10 times better than the incumbents in the
market (Fisk, op.cit.). Secondly, the analysis that goes into the audit takes time and carrying
out the research for such an audit process may well show the hand of the company to its
competitors.
The 21st-century world circumstances change quickly and as a result strategies and plans
need to be constantly updated. However the process of planning, which was created at
least 50 years ago, is not quick enough to respond to the changing environment.
Consequently entrepreneurs develop a more emergent strategy which reflects the pace of
the environment.
Strengths of Emergent Strategies:
Quick to respond
Easily adaptable
Easily shareable with modern social media
However this approach has its drawbacks.
Strengths Weakness
Gut feel Passion
Drive
Motivation
Speed
Limited explanation
Exists only in head of leader
Hard to disseminate
Business planning Dissemination
Co-ordination
Communication
Easy to compare for external
Time-consuming
Slower to respond
Dispassionate
38. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
24 Innovation for Marketers
funding
Table 1.2 ‘Gut feel’ vs. business planning
Constantly changing plans need to be constantly communicated. It may also be that, as
strategies change, not all of the consequences of the changing strategy are considered and
this can lead to waste of time, effort and resource, together with conflict.
The slower pace of a deliberate planning process does allow involvement of multiple groups
of people and fuller consideration of the consequences of any change. Emergent strategies
on the other hand whilst they can incorporate robust scenario planning tend to be applied
within organisations that are dynamic and changing on a frequent basis, and as such they
need to maintain rapid movement and to anticipate competitor moves without necessarily
looking at the consequences in terms of resources.
Emergent strategies can lead corporations up cul-de-sacs and leave them with requirements
to reverse out of the latest fancy technology or social media that seemed appropriate at the
time, but can soon be seen as the wrong move. In which case the organisation has wasted
its time and resources, and being small, these losses can be significant.
The dynamism of the marketplace is both an opportunity for entrepreneurs as well as a
threat. Spotting opportunities requires rapid reaction if they are to gain an advantage before
others move in. However there is the likelihood that the opportunities will cease as rapidly as
they began.
As we have already touched on, there are new business models arising which shun the
standard approach to profit maximisation. Firstly the model for many App based operations
is to gain as many users as possible through free pricing in order to sell advertising thereafter.
For others it is the opportunity to sell ‘in-App’ purchases that is the model. In essence size (of
the user base) matters.
A variant of this approach is to pay people to use the service! The model is again to gain as
big a user base as possible, though the attraction for the user is to earn money or discount.
Quidco and Groupon are classic examples here but also check out Qustodian which pays
users to review adverts and Apps (Roberts, 2012).
Qustodian
Read John Roberts, co-founder and MD UK of Qustodian, Qustodian Case Study in The
Cambridge Marketing Review, Issue 4, Autumn 2012.
You can find more on new business models in Section 3.1.7.
39. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 25
1.2.2 Is the opportunity worth it?
This brings us to the thorny issue of market sizing. How do you estimate the scale of the
opportunity when the product has not yet been created? How can you assess the likelihood
of potential customers purchasing a product that is not yet a reality? This is a very real
problem faced by people such as Steve Jobs at Apple and Hayek at Smart. There are three
main responses:
concept testing
involvement of potential customers in the product development process
creation of working prototypes that can be demonstrated.
In the standard new product development (NPD) process we would find that the
involvement of customers at an early stage is now considered essential. The problem with this
approach in highly dynamic markets is that the consumer may not even understand the
concept at this stage. If the concept being discussed is not analogous to an existing method
or means of solving a problem then the consumer will have difficulty relating to the benefit
that is offered.
Consider the standard concept of a mobile phone earlier this century. A mobile phone was
used to make phone calls and had very little other functionality other than perhaps texting.
Consider therefore the concept testing of a single device that would allow you to surf the
internet, to take photographs, to play music, etc. The consumer would have a great deal of
difficulty in valuing such a proposition (except as discrete devices), or indeed being
convinced that such technology was possible. This is where the entrepreneur’s problem really
lies.
If the opportunity is significant and ground breaking how do you explain this to people who
do not understand the problem that would be solved or understand the technology that
could supply the solution?
The obvious answer here is to educate a group of customers to be in the forefront of, not
only market understanding, but the technological solution. These customers will then
become your advocates and your mavens who will tell the world about your offering. They
will then hopefully take you over the tipping point from fed to main stream. See Malcolm
Gladwell's book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference for more on
this approach (Gladwell, 2002).
In other markets, where technology is not so costly, the prospect of doing market research
may well be super-ceded by actually producing the product itself to see customers’
reaction. One of the common considerations when doing market research is the cost versus
gain conundrum. Market research can be costly and especially so when it is defining in
words and pictures concepts which are better seen in reality. Consequently it can be
possible to produce the product (or Beta version) and get customer reaction to the real
offering at a lower cost than it would be to carry out market research on a theory in a
statistically significant way.
However there is also the issue of ‘showing your hand’ to the competition. By carrying out
market research or attempting to educate the marketplace in an open way (perhaps by
using social media), you are exposing your concept to your competitors and may therefore
be giving them an insight into your strategy.
40. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
26 Innovation for Marketers
Market Test vs. Research
In some circumstances it can be more effective (and cost effective) to produce trial batches
of a new product to test the market rather than carry out market research. Here the cost vs
benefit equation of market research is very important. It may be far more expensive to
produce the trial batches than undertake some market research, but the result from a ‘real’
market reaction to the product versus a simulated response in a questionnaire may provide
far more insight into the consumers’ engagement with the product. Market testing as
opposed to questions about a hypothetical new offering is likely to be far more effective with
a brand new idea or technology with which consumers are currently unfamiliar.
1.2.3 Collaborate or compete
The introduction into the discussion of competitors raises very real issues today. Do we
collaborate or compete? Indeed we now have the term ‘co-opetition’ where we do both.
For entrepreneurial companies the problem can often be that they see opportunities which
they are unable to fulfil. Their resources, manpower and funding may be insufficient or they
may be unable to access the full potential of the marketplace with their own resources in a
short timescale before their main competitors. This then leads to the idea of collaborating
with others who are in adjacent markets or who may offer a simple access route to the new
market.
1.2.4 We all have a book in us
For many, the idea of writing a book is a long cherished dream. For some, the prospect of
setting up a publishing company and revolutionising what is a traditional marketplace has
been a very attractive opportunity. However, the writing and publishing of a book is only part
of the job, and for many has proved to be the greatest joy then followed by the biggest
problem. How do you get the book to market? How do you make it discoverable so that
readers can buy it?
Few new publishing houses have been established in the last five years despite the massive
growth in the software to self-publish and the social media to distribute them. The solution for
successful organisations wishing to exploit self-publishing is to find a collaborator in distribution
and publicity. The creation of platforms such as Amazon's self-publishing programme has
been massively instrumental in revolutionising the sector. The point to note is that the
technology alone is not enough to change the market.
The obvious benefits of collaboration are that the entrepreneurial company gets assets that
it lacks and the collaborator gets products to fill its channel to market, and therefore makes
better capacity utilisation of its resources. Today the concept of ‘not created here’ is not
really applicable anymore. Companies do not have to do it all themselves and increasingly
the quickest way to exploit ways to new markets is to find partners.
41. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 27
1.2.5 So how do we get to market?
For entrepreneurs the challenge is cost and speed. Having seen an opportunity, the
challenge is to secure as much of it as quickly as possible with limited resources before the
competition. The balance is in not creating a market opportunity that is too big and thereby
open to competition.
Figure 1.7 The technology life cycle
As we have already touched on there is something to be said for first mover advantage.
However, in most examples the first mover is not the most successful company in the long
term. It is the company that is able to exploit the full marketing mix including distribution and
marketing communications that is the winner in the longer term. First movers often create a
market and expose the new opportunity to others, but are unable to satisfy all customer
requirements, nor are they able to expand and offer new product variations to a hungry
market. In today’s environment they seek the exit strategy of being acquired by the ‘big
boys’.
The obvious solution is the creation of a niche market which is highly defensible and which
the entrepreneurial company can make its own. A key way to do this is to gain considerable
levels of loyalty from the customers in the niche and thereby defend itself against the appeal
of larger corporations who have limited track record in this area. The best method of doing
so is obviously through detailed segmentation and the gaining of a very clear understanding
of the users’ requirements and preferences in the sector. In addition the use of crowdfunding
ties customers in to being defensive of the sector against competitors.
For many organisations with an existing product range, movement into new areas is often
best achieved through what is termed market adjacencies. This is the move you would see in
an Ansoff matrix into new markets and potentially into diversified fields (Ansoff, 1957).
42. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
28 Innovation for Marketers
Figure 1.8 Ansoff’s matrix
Ansoff proposed 4 strategies:
Firstly, market penetration i.e. the improved use of the existing marketing mix to gain
sales. This often forms the main element of a short term strategy, addressing those
obvious areas where the company is not following good marketing practice or
causing the organisation to be deliberately more savvy in winning incremental
business.
Thereafter there are the options of product development and market development.
Here the risks of the unknown need to be considered plus the considerable cost of
product or market development. These strategies tend to address gaps in the
product range and in overseas or alternative markets.
Finally there is the diversification option. This is the most risky and costly option.
However, bear in mind that the most substantial part of Ansoff's book was about
diversification and the gradual means by which it can be achieved, it was not about
the other three boxes and in this we have some very powerful tools.
43. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 29
General Motors
As an example to illustrate the Ansoff matrix strategies:
1. Market penetration – GM produces and sells cars in the USA
2. Market development – GM sells and then produces and sells cars in Europe
3. Product development – GM provides finance to purchase new cars
4. Diversification – GM develops a manufacturing control system and its own telecoms
network. It now manufactures and sells around the world.
The essential aspect to consider in using Ansoff’s model for strategy making is the degree of
risk inherent in each strategy and the associated costs. You need to understand that the
degree of risk rises exponentially from market penetration to diversification. You need to be
clear where the risks lie in your proposed strategy.
You should also consider the expanded matrix (see Figure 1.9 below) that includes an
intermediate step between both existing and new markets and existing and new products,
which provides a slightly lower risk option in each case and may enable the company to
grow at a more manageable pace rather than immediately taking larger, riskier steps into
new product or new market development.
Figure 1.9 Expanded Ansoff’s matrix
44. Section 1: Entrepreneurial Marketing
30 Innovation for Marketers
In the expanded matrix the first expansions are to find new customers in existing markets or
similar (new) markets for existing products. The next expansion is to invest in similar
technologies that can be used to develop extended products enabling the company to
move into similar (new) markets that are adjacent to the ones already being served. Within
this stage one of the options is for the company to become its own customer using its
products or components in other products e.g. from cars to tractors – the tractor division
consuming components or similar engines from the car division. The final expansions are to
move into new products (first for existing markets) and then for new markets.
Figure 1.10 An interesting idea! (Photo: CWN 2012)
Establishing a presence in adjacent markets can have a negative impact on traditional
product sales. This cannibalisation effect eats into the profitability of the traditional product
and can cause it to become loss making, so careful management of the introduction of new
adjacent products is needed to balance the decline of the PLC of the established product
as the new one rises.
A contemporary example is the balancing of fall and rise of the iPod and iPhone. As the
once hyper-popular MP3 player market is replaced by the same functionality on a
Smartphone then the sales of the former decline. The same was true of the decline of the
VHS cassette machine on one side with the rise of the DVD player on the other.
1.2.6 Hyper-competitive markets
A hyper-competitive market can occur at several stages in the technology lifecycle (when
company shake outs happen) but are particularly prevalent at the take-off stage (see Figure
1.7), when the number of firms entering the market is greatest. As the technology or product
concept is seen to work in the market and early adoption starts, companies pile into the
market place, each with a slightly different offering and all trying to gain dominance. At this
time ‘First Mover’ advantage is often lost as more marketing savvy companies steal a lead
over technology/product orientated companies. This is a wild time when there are few (if
any) standards by which the consumer can judge competing offers.
In addition, there is usually limited inter-operability between competing offerings so
consumers become embedded with one product. Classic examples have been VHS vs,
Betamax; the QWERTY keyboard; and audio cassettes vs. mini disks vs. DAT tapes. In nearly all
instances the best technology lost!
We will return to ‘First Movers’ in Section 3.1.8.
45. Chapter 1: Marketing and Entrepreneurship
Innovation for Marketers 31
1.2.7 New digital approaches
Finally in this section we need to consider the use of new digital approaches. The use of the
internet allows entrepreneurs to ‘punch above their weight’ and gain exposure and
interconnection with markets that would previously only have been possible for large
companies.
The following is a checklist of areas to consider:
New Product Development (NPD):
o Collaborative ideas generator
o Crowd sourcing via social media
o Fundraising via peer-to-peer lending/crowdfunding
o Researching of technologies and consumer behaviour with academia
o Researchgate
Product development via internet collaboration e.g. outsourcing of coding,
etc.
Launching – Raising awareness via targeted social media and journalist
networks
Distribution
Third party sales sites e.g. Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.
o App building
o Social media business sites, e.g. Facebook for business, company
pages on Google + and LinkedIn