Putting the Innovation in Product Innovation

With global markets mired in recession and profit margins sliding, many communications and high-tech companies may be tempted to cut back on product development and merely ride out the storm. This would be a dangerous path to follow, since innovation is the lifeblood of technology companies.  Innovation helps companies ensure future revenues, and history shows that firms who are effective innovators typically emerge from a crisis even stronger than before.

A 2008 Accenture global study of 277 communications, media and high-tech executives regarding product development found that companies able to support a more open and collaborative environment for design and innovation are speeding new products and services to market faster than their peers. These companies will be positioned to emerge from the crisis with a formidable market advantage. However, in order to achieve high performance – and survive the down market – innovators must learn how to make the creative process more profitable.   They must consider actions to revolutionize their supply chain, implement networked innovation, increase market definition, and provide a unique customer experience – all based on an open innovation platform.

Revolutionizing the supply chain

The creative process is more flexible today thanks to the pervasiveness of IP technology and the Internet, which have reduced the barriers to application development and laid a new foundation for increased innovation. With Web 2.0 application sharing and  “cloud computing” companies can build new applications with minimal investment. With geographical barrier eliminated, developers are given greater freedom in selecting the appropriate supply chain, or “store front,” for delivering solutions to specific customers.

The case for an open platform for networked innovation

An environment that breeds open collaboration between the largest pool of knowledgeable and experienced developers is essential to developing innovative products.

An effective innovation platform, or Service Delivery Platform (SDP) 2.0, should be based on a scalable, distributed, efficient and open architecture capable of supporting more third party collaborators and a greater number of service activations. By enabling cooperation between third-party developers and content providers, this platform helps innovators to create new value-added services faster, more consistently and with less expense, by delivering a common way to create, provision, and execute multiple service types across different types of networks.

Customer experience 2.0

No matter how creative developers are, it is still vital that they give customers what they want. In large measure, developing better, more customer-centric innovations requires the application of clear analytics that provide a unified customer view. This results in a deeper understanding a unique profile of customer segments, enabling companies to target profitable consumers more effectively.