Category Archives: Innovation

Experimentation an Early Competitive Advantage for Startups

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I have a stack of articles that I plan to read, for a while I carry them around in my backpack. Then the article finds a resting place in my office.  Fortunately, the articles get re-discovered and read: eventually.

I found an article on Enlightened Experimentation that had been sitting unread for a while – published in HBR in 2001. But the advice is still fresh more than a decade later.

Large industrial companies such as BMW use “Enlightened Experimentation” for product innovation and experimentation is fundamental to innovation.  The essentials to Enlightened Experimentation are: 1) Organize for rapid experimentation 2) Fail early and often, but avoid mistakes 3) Anticipate and exploit early information 4) Combine new and traditional technologies. 1

Though the concept works both for large corporations and small start-ups can apply the principles of Enlightened Experimentation even more effectively.

Early Thinking:

Experiment your way to competitive advantage: Especially for smaller or start-up firms, quick experimentation can be your earliest, maybe only competitive advantage.  You would think experimentation is natural to young firms, and it is with the best, but certainly not all.  As a new firm or start-up, you cannot outspend a larger well-financed rival.  And non-domestic rivals have other advantages.

Experimenters win: In a globalized market place, your competition may have lower labor cost, less regulation and advanced technology.  Experimentation generates new property knowledge.  Experimentation must expand beyond the R&D teams.  Experiment with product and business model innovation simultaneously.  You have to discover new opportunities before your competition know they exist.

Blink Analysis:

The article entitled “Why Steve Jobs Couldn’t Find A Job”  sums it up.  “Today, value goes to those who know how to create, store, manipulate and use information.  And success in this economy has a lot more to do with innovation, and the creation of entirely new products, industries and very different kinds of jobs.” 2

  1. S. Thomke, “Enlightened Experimentation: A new Imperative for Innovation” Harvard Business Review, February 2001: 66-75.
  2. A. Hartung, “Why Steve Jobs Couldn’t Find A Job” blogs.forbes.com/adamhartung, Web. February 18, 2011.

Related Links:

Treating Innovation as an Experiment

A New Lesson in Innovation for Entrepreneurs

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This entry was posted in Innovation, Social Entrepreneurs and tagged Innovation on February 28, 2011.

Food.  What is the first thing that comes to mind?  I bet it’s not innovation.  I recently had the opportunity to tour Rutgers University’s Food Innovation Center.  Rutgers has built an impressive facility with a food processing plant attached.  This facility is a past winner of NBIA’s  “Incubator of the Year”.  Local farmers can rent a food plant by the day to create new products from produce that would be normally discarded.  The design and flexibility of the facility has enabled a European firm to test launch a new food product. This visit got me thinking how uninventive we can be about innovation.

Early Thinking:

Avoid just a better product: Product innovation by itself is not sufficient for competitive advantage.  Thinking just about the product is a missed opportunity for more innovation.  The farmer that cannot sell bruised or imperfect fruit as fresh produce could focus instead on growing better peaches.

Or make a new drink product with unused product with greater profit margins. One peach grower did just that.

The simultaneous change in product delivery, value proposition, and profit model need to be farmed for innovation opportunities. That is, do not confuse product innovation with the broader concept of business model innovation.  This point is well made in a whitepaper entitled Business Model Innovation; When The Game Gets Tough, Change The Game. Take the example of Apple; its success is due to multiple simultaneous innovations in product, technology and service. The whitepaper outlines other company examples too1.

Simultaneous multiple innovations:  Think beyond your original innovation.  What other areas of your offering have not been looked at for change?  Look at innovative business models outside your industry for ideas.

Blink Analysis:

More than a better mousetrap: Thinking beyond product innovation is a seriously difficult task.  However, it appears organizations that do have been rewarded with market leadership.

  1. Z. Lindgardt, M. Reeves, G. Stalk, M. Deimler “Business Model Innovation, When The Game Get’s Tough, Change The Game”, Boston Consulting Group, (12/2009): 1-8. Bottom of Form