02 03 - insites consultingstart-up acquisitions are a common way to extend a brand’s portfolio...

I N S I T E S C O N S U L T I N G

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t all started with a random conversation at a party one night in

2012, when two guys (Michael Dubin and Mark Levine) discussed

the discomfort of buying razor blades. How razors were not only

extremely expensive (considering their simple concept of a handle

carrying a metal blade), but also a very frustrating experience to

buy: you must drive to the store, locate the grooming section to

then discover a shelf with razors in all shapes and colors, often

under lock and key. After a massive mental choice exercise where

you trade off brands, number of blades, all sorts of add-on razor

features and price, you need to locate a staff member to open the

‘razor fortress’. Their conversation grew into the idea to start a

direct-to-consumer razor subscription service: Dollar Shave Club.

The domain dollarshaveclub.com was registered within a week, with

Michael Dubin resigning from his job a few months later to launch

the concept. On March 6, 2012, a slapstick video introduced Dollar

Shave Club to the world. The video turned into an instant success

with the website crashing after two hours and the company register-

ing 12,000 orders the very same day.

I

This is one of those famous success stories where newcomers disrupt

the market (almost literally) overnight. Dollar Shave Club became one

of the fastest growing e-commerce start-ups ever, reaching a 16% unit

share of the U.S. razor cartridge market. And there are many similar

stories out there, ranging from the well-known case of Airbnb (where

two room-mates living in San Francisco couldn’t afford to pay the rent

and decided to turn their apartment into a place for young designers to

crash overnight during the yearly design conference held in their city),

to the 24-year-old German vlogger Bianca Bibi Heinicke launching her

own foamy shower gel Bilou, snatching away 15% of the market share

from established brands in the German market.

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© Dollar Shave Club

© BibisBeautyPalace

According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, in North America

alone, about $22 billion in industry sales shifted from large to smaller

companies between 2011 and 2016. While in 2017 the revenues of

large Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies remained roughly

flat (only 0.2% year-over-year growth), small companies grew 2.3%

on average. And this goes beyond the CPG environment; this Da-

vid-and-Goliath scenario is visible across sectors, with small entrepre-

neurs with bold ideas outpacing renowned fully-armed giant warriors.

“So, she (Bianca Bibi Heinicke) came with a new application format at a premium price in very different fragrances. She was really building this hype on her website: I have developed shower mousse and they will come in two weeks. So, what happened: the 3.3 million followers, they ran to the store and started collecting these items. This way she went from 0 to 15% market share, never seen in the industry in the last 20 years.” Ingo Tanger, Beiersdorf

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These market shifts can mainly be attributed to the fact that entry

barriers are lowering; production outsourcing opportunities and new

distribution channels allow a market entrance at small volumes, while a

smart use of social media allows to build a brand at low(er) cost. These

low entry barriers create an environment where newcomers launch

innovations at a rapid pace which established players and their more

process-driven innovation flows have a hard time keeping up with.

Just consider one of the most iconic innovations of the past decennia

in the household sector, the Swiffer. P&G revolutionized cleaning with

the Swiffer. Many households have a weekly cleaning moment, either

done by themselves or by an external cleaning service. We all know

the drill: vacuuming, dusting and mopping the house. Yet in between

those (bi-)weekly cleaning sessions, a house collects its living marks:

dust piles up, floors get dirtier… That is where the Swiffer comes in: a

smart, non-time-consuming sweep ritual to bypass the fixed cleaning

moments. Eureka! Yet, it took the company 1.5 years to go from insight

to idea and four more years to develop the actual product.

“The start-ups are the David to our Goliath. How can we learn from them and become more agile, how can we be more David?”Elaine Rodrigo, Danone

“The rules of the game in beverages have changed. Shorter lead times, low entry barriers, new players, new investors, etc. Innovations need to be re-imagined!” Dieter Deceuninck, Global Director Strategy & Insights - Waters & Aquadrinks at Danone

Not surprisingly, many established organizations experience a sort of

innovation envy towards these successful newcomers. For many big

organizations, the question lies in how they can keep up. How can they

leap in and take their stake in innovation?

© Swiffer

08 09


IF YOUCAN’T BEAT THEM, BUY THEM

In September 2017, IKEA bought TaskRabbit, a start-up that provides

a marketplace for household chores and other simple tasks. By doing

so, IKEA could offer an additional service to consumers that bought

their furniture: hiring someone from TaskRabbit to assemble the thing.

Start-up acquisitions are a common way to extend a brand’s portfolio

with innovation extensions. Even Google, where innovation and entre-

preneurship are at the heart of the company, has acquired over 218

companies since 2001.

As attractive as it may sound, buying innovations or innovative start-

ups is not an option for everyone. Not only does it imply a lot of pro-

cesses and large financial investments, not everything is (or should be)

for sale. Although these innovation buy-ins might contribute to positive

results on one’s bottom line, far too often they remain a separate con-

struction where the innovation is done in isolation and not immersed

in the business. These sidetracks often do not change the actual

innovation environment, process or culture. Simply buying a company

does not automatically imply becoming that company (or inheriting its

innovation culture and practices).

Many established organizations have a clearly-defined innovation road-

map and funnel, yet these are often characterized by many processes,

stages and gates involving a diverse set of departments and stakeholders.

To bypass this often time-intensive process and take a piece of the disrup-

tive innovation pie, it is not uncommon for companies to buy these smaller

players as a means to integrate innovation and grow their portfolio.

In July 2016, Unilever announced that it was entering the razor business

by acquiring Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion. A similar story for RXBar,

the iconic nutrition bar company that started up in one of the found-

ers’ parents’ kitchen. In 2017, four years after sampling at events and

pitching their new product

(recognizable by its simple

ingredients which function

as the distinctive packag-

ing design), the company

was acquired by Kellogg’s

for $600 million.

© IKEA

© Kellogg’s

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A second popular practice established companies undertake is incor-

porating a start-up innovation mentality by borrowing and copy/pasting

start-up thinking and best practices, and merging them into their current

processes.

One of the most common principles these organizations tend to ‘bor-

row’ is the whole ‘agile innovation philosophy’. Agile methodologies,

after successfully transforming the software industry through increased

quality, productivity and speed-to-market, have found their way

throughout all business spheres. A recent article by Harvard Business

Review shows how, for everything from production to logistics, agility

Agile innovation is often seen as the holy grail: what if a company could

achieve positive returns with 50% more of its new product introductions

- just like its success rates in information technology? This explains

why many organizations try to embed agile thinking in their organiza-

tion through inspiration sessions with ‘agile gurus’, to transform current

practices and reorganize existing structures.

In June 2018, Fidelity, a multinational financial services corporation

based in Boston, gathered hundreds of associates to learn more about

‘agile’ through an offline and online session presided by Stephen

Denning, author of The Age of Agile. A key deliverable of this effort was

to apply the agile approach to their project management, where more

than 700 associates will enter agile pilot projects to drive value for

clients at a greater speed. Along with this effort, they have also been

running Fidelity Labs as a place to experiment with different ways of

doing business by approaching customer problems through experimen-

tation and iteration.

has been adopted across industries and sectors, ranging from the

American National Public Radio which employs agile methods to man-

age their programming, through machine manufacturer John Deere

to develop new products and Intronis, cloud back-up services for their

marketing, to Mission Bell Winery, the company behind Corona Extra.

IF YOUCAN’T BUY THEM, BORROW ANDSTEAL SMARTLY

LET’S INVITE A GURUTO GUIDE US

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However, despite its enormous potential, the implementation of agile

practices in industries outside Information Technology comes with

mixed results. According to Stephen Denning, more than 70% of scrum

implementations fail to achieve their goals. This inconsistency can be

attributed mainly to the fact that many fail to turn their whole organiza-

tion around. While some agile principles are already in place, such as

working in short cycles, most companies continue to manage things the

traditional way (often counter the agile philosophy). One could speak of

‘selective agility’, since the agile principles are not embedded through-

out the entire line. Even with the best intentions, the benefits and

opportunities of working with agile team structures get lost once team

decisions are overruled and top-down review layers stay in place.

Just like IT professionals organize hackathons - events gathering com-

puter programmers, graphic designers and project managers to create

a functionable product within a specific time frame - many organiza-

tions try to fuel their innovation

funnel by organizing idea-boost-

ing events. These initiatives bring

together a broad range of people

from the business, that can group

and work out potential innovation

ideas.

Zalando SE, the German e-commerce company based in Berlin, orga-

nizes innovation hack weeks where employees can ‘hack’ the fashion

ecosystem. All that week, anyone from the company can free up their

calendar to work on an idea. The initiative was launched in 2013 to drive

open innovation and experimentation within the company. While initially

this took place once a year, the company broadened the initiative to four

events a year, each edition hosted by a different business unit.

A similar example can be found in the financial industry, with ING

organizing an Innovation Bootcamp where employees can come up

with smart ideas and turn them into reality. The second edition took

place in 2018, with ING employees from across the world submitting

more than 1,800 ideas for five strategic challenges. The 100 best ideas

entered their Innovation Bootcamp, to be fine-tuned with the support of

innovation mentors.

There are many similar

innovation-boosting ini-

tiatives: executives going

on inspirational innovation

tours, the set-up of inno-

vation labs, the launch of

brainstorm weeks… Yet

kickstarting the innova-

tion process goes beyond

installing agile processes, launching a turbo-innovation factory or

working in innovation sprints alone. These initiatives often just lead to

superficial changes without truly affecting an organization’s innovation

culture.

LET’S ORGANIZEA BOOT CAMP

© Zalando

© ING

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Installing an intrapreneurial innovation mindset requires a deeper shift,

where all organization processes are aligned to point in the same

direction. To be more like these disruptive innovators, one needs to

understand what factors lie at the basis and deeply embed these in the

current processes and innovation routines.

When analyzing the parameters of successful newcomers, we find that

these are composed of three important factors, namely friction, passion

and pilot mentality. Friction boils down to understanding and experienc-

ing a real unmet need. Passion represents the newcomers’ drive and

persistence to take their idea forward. And last but not least, innovation

is not predictable and requires a portion of gutfeel, a pilot mentality.

These are the three components that established organizations rightful-

ly envy and should strive to embed in their DNA.

WHY NOTBE MORE LIKETHEM

friction

passion

pilot

THE NEWCOMERS’ DNA WEWILL RIGHTFULLY ENVY


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frictionMany disruptive innovations start with a friction, a frustration, an unmet

need: the founder experiences a problem for which there is no solu-

tion. Just consider the story of Michael Dubin, who recognized buying

razors was a dreadful experience costing a lot of money. Or how Nova

Covington, founder of Goddess Garden, a mother whose daughter

suffered from allergies, was in search of body care products that would

not cause any allergic reactions.

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This friction is what drives these entrepreneurs to exploring the solution

space and starting a quest to answer their needs. For established

innovators, this means investigating underlying market frictions and

translating these into insights. Yet, as obvious as it might sound, many

innovations do not have an insight at the basis. A possible explana-

tion is the lack of know-how as to what an insight is and how it can be

used to feed business decisions. ‘Insight(s)’ is one of the most mis-

used terms in marketing and market research. In essence it is a short,

single-minded statement written in consumer language that reflects a

consumer need, a wish or a desire and can be defined as ‘an under-

standing of the inner nature of things, leading to a discovery of some-

thing that is not yet obvious but at same time recognizable and real,

and providing the basis for relevant and actionable innovation, ultimate-

“I started my company as a way to solve a problem. My baby daughter, Paige, was the inspiration for our first prod-uct. As a six-month-old, she was allergic to most synthetic ingredients (even in so-called “natural” body care products).

Poor baby! As a mom, I started looking at all of the junk we were using on our kids and ourselves. This was the beginning of Goddess Garden.”Nova Covington, founder of Goddess Garden

ly leading to a competitive advantage’. Moreover, we see that the agility

buzz (and organizations’ quest to work more agilely) as described

before has often been a detriment to insights. There exists the belief

that there is no room for insights in an agile innovation philosophy, yet

the opposite is true, considering the multitude of examples showcasing

how a friction and a mono-insight have been at the basis of successful

market entrees.

Insights should form the cornerstone of any new product or service in-

novation. In order to drive business impact, we find that a good insight

is a unique combination of 3 key ingredients:

It’s me – A good insight is relevant for a consumer. Relevance can be

driven by personal identification or by peer identification (which is when

an insight is called contagious).

Aha! - An insight should be fresh and present a new way of looking at

things. This includes both discovering something completely new and

uncovering an existing reality in a new or fresh way. An insight should

not be apparent immediately. It is rather something that is present

latently; you only realize that it is true the moment you hear it. It brings

to the surface what was there subconsciously.

Emotion - An insight should have an emotional valence. This could be

a problem that consumers want to solve, but it could also be a desire

for something. Consumers should be excited about having a potential

solution.

© N

ova

Cov

ingt

on

20 21

So where does one start? Where do you obtain those insights from?

Unlike the entrepreneurial success stories, where the founder expe-

rienced a friction (and cracked the insight) from their personal life, as

an employee you might not be the target consumer yourself. It is thus

essential to truly immerse yourself in the consumer reality and detect

those insights that can fuel innovation.

Ever heard of Gemba? It is a Japanese term originating from the Total

Quality Management era and is a synonym for ‘the real place’. By go-

ing where the real action is taking place, whether it is a crime scene, a

supermarket or a living room, managers can sharpen their senses and

enhance their creative potential, thus stimulating their consumer brain.

To research consumers effectively and extract fresh insights, we need

to go to the real place, immerse ourselves in the consumers’ lives and

look at the consumer reality from a ‘traveler’s viewpoint’. Think about

how you behave differently on holiday; you’re on high alert, spotting

details. You may notice things that even locals do not see. And it’s a

vicious circle: the more people (want to) know and discover, the more

they realize what they don’t know. Finding those insights that can drive

your innovation is therefore a matter of immersing yourself in the con-

sumer reality to uncover consumers’ frictions and unmet needs.

GENERATING INSIGHTS TOFUEL YOUR INNOVATION


CASE:

How Royal Canin used consumer immersion and is becoming

more pet owner inclusive and reinforcing effective innovation

Royal Canin, a Mars company, is a global leader in delivering health through

nutrition for cats and dogs. Royal Canin develops nutrition solutions based on

science and observation, and is now increasingly considering the perspective

of pet parents and prescribers in the new developments. To gather stakehold-

ers company-wide around pet owner insights, Royal Canin embarked on an

immersion journey connecting 460+ pet owners around the world in a 3-week

online community. The scope was to understand in depth the experience of

having a cat or a dog along the pet-owner journey, from acquisition all the

way to parting. This resulted in an insight-driven pet owner journey, high-

lighting opportunities and priorities for innovation. Royal Canin is using the

Square now as a structural capability to immerse with specific pet profiles

when needed.

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The stronger the insight, the higher the business potential. A good

insight has the power to unlock marketing innovation on different levels:

brand innovation, product innovation, service innovation, communica-

tion and consumer activation. Key here is to prioritize and select which

insights should form the cornerstone of your innovations. Essentially

this is also what you see amongst successful market entrants: they do

not aim to solve a multitude of problems at once but they rather focus

on one key friction, something we could call a ‘mono-insight’. An essen-

tial step is to prioritize, find that mono-insight and take it forward in your

innovation funnel.

Even companies that put consumer insights at the core of innovation

sometimes lack the discipline to validate these insights before moving

to the idea generation phase. Yet, research has shown that ideas and

concepts based on validated insights perform significantly better, with

the unpriced buying intention of concepts based on validated consumer

insights scoring up to 20% higher in comparison with concepts based

on insights that were not tested upfront.

CASE:

How insight validation strengthens the consumer-led innovation

process at Heineken

As part of an organizational drive to strengthen their consumer-led innovation

process, Heineken International is a strong believer of insight validation as

a necessary step in the innovation routine. Since 2010, Heineken has tested

hundreds of consumer insights across the globe using our Insight Validation

approach. The solution allows to detect the most potent consumer insights to

use as a basis for product innovation or branding/communication initiatives.

The insight validation phase has become mandatory in the Heineken Inno-

vation process and the quality of product concepts generated further down

the innovation funnel is clearly benefiting from this. By conducting insight

validation, Heineken significantly reduces their chances of using weak insights

further down the innovation funnel. As a result, ideas and concepts based on

validated insights have shown to perform significantly better.

VALIDATING INSIGHTS TOSET YOUR FOCUS POINT

“A protocol for Consumer Insight testing, which is in line with our HNV Consumer Insight criteria, allows us to understand our consumers and their language even better, adding significant value to our innovation proj-ects while helping minimize the risk to the company”Marion Hoek-Koudenburg, Global CMI manager at Heineken International

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You might have selected those key insights, yet to make sure your

idea, concept, product or service truly embraces these insights, all in-

volved parties need to truly ‘live’ them. They need to feel like a consum-

er, understand their mindset and use this insight-first, consumer-centric

thinking throughout the innovation process. This can be reached by

connecting your stakeholders with actual consumers to make sure they

feel and breathe the insight, that they experience the insight from up

close, by immersing themselves in the consumer reality, which helps

them experience how consumers think, act and feel.

After an extensive global survey to reposition its Dove brand, Unilever

found that only 2% of women would describe themselves as beautiful.

And worse so, by frequently showing perfect women in their advertise-

ments, they had a part in affecting women’s self-esteem. When con-

fronted with these insights, Dove’s executives couldn’t believe it. So,

they were sent out to interview their own wives, daughters and nieces

on the subject of beauty, to hear it firsthand. The insight (and the belief

in it) led to Dove’s highly successful Real Beauty campaign.

ACTIVATING INSIGHTS TO GAIN AN ORGANIZATION-WIDE IMPACT

CASE:

How Van de Velde makes their male employees experience what

being a woman feels like

Van de Velde, the company that has been designing and manufacturing luxury

lingerie since 1919, wanted their employees to deeply understand the role of

good, high-quality supportive lingerie. One of their leading brands, Prima

Donna, focusses on women with larger cup sizes. In order to make male em-

ployees understand what it feels like to have (larger) breasts, they organized

‘the national E cup day’ at their offices, with male employees having to carry

1.5kg weights per breast (the equivalent of an E cup) around their neck. This

(at first sight humorous) initiative definitely made an impact: while many expe-

rienced the expected back aches, neck tension and uneasy situations, it created

a shared understanding and increased motivation to create products that give

maximum support to women.


© Van de Velde

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CASE

How Viacom inspires executives to visit Millennial hotspots

After conducting a study on the Millennial lifestyle in ten capital cities around

the world, Viacom wanted senior executives to truly grasp what it means to be

young today and use these insights in their advertising and television formats.

For these senior executives to really immerse in the Millennial world, small

city guides were created capturing the tips & tricks gathered through research.

When on a business trip, executives were motivated to use these guides to

explore the places their target group recommended for eating, shopping, going

out and sleeping. This way they really immersed in their target audience’s

environment, almost stepping into their shoes and truly experiencing the

research insights. This initiative showed to be truly valuable, as the Viacom

executives fed back that experiencing some of the insights opened their eyes

and triggered them to take action.

In order to embed friction in the innovation routine, organizations

should thus build an insights-led culture where consumer insights form

the corner stone of all decision making. They can do so by extracting

insights through consumer immersion, validating the insight, selecting

their focus and activating the insight throughout the organization. It’s a

matter of finding that friction or mono-insight and staying true to it.


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passionAfter the friction comes the drive to ideate and create, where newcom-

ers nurture and fine-tune their idea and take it forward. These friction

solvers are characterized by an immense drive and passion to bring

their idea to life. Whilst these entrepreneurs are often also the idea

initiators, they surround themselves with passionate people to help

shape their idea.

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This passion is also expressed in how tightly they hold on to their idea;

it’s their baby, which they nurture, curate and grow towards a final

product.

“There were a few natural sunscreen alternatives, but they had the texture of toothpaste and felt greasy to me. I knew there had to be a better way. Enter my super-supportive husband, Paul, who created our first natural sunscreen. He helped me turn our basement into a lab. As a nutritional scientist, he used the best food-grade ingredients he could find and made it with only sheer minerals, plant-based organic oils and pure lavender for the scent.”Nova Covington, founder of Goddess Garden

“One can steal ideas, but no-one can steal execution or passion.”Tim Ferriss, productivity expert and author

Just like the founders of successful innovations passionately hold

on tight to their idea as if it’s their newborn (which one could argue it

theoretically is), innovation stakeholders should hold on tight to their

insights, ideas and concepts rather than pass them around without any

sense of ownership. Passion thus also boils down to carefully

curating your innovation assets. Yet in many organizations, even with

the best intentions, the innovation process can be seen as a relay-

race-like approach. The insight, idea or concept is passed around (like

a relay baton) from one person or department to another with people

letting go as soon as it is handed over. Just think of a typical stage-

gate innovation process (which is still the norm in many organizations),

where the gates function as serving hatches and ownership stops as

soon as the insight, idea or concept enters the next stage. Yet idea and

concept ownership and curation are key throughout the whole funnel.

While the terms ‘idea’ and ‘concept’ are often used interchangeably,

there exists a clear distinction. An idea is a rough notion, a raw sketch

of the potential solution space linked to a particular insight, while a con-

cept can be seen as the final form of an idea, which has already gone

through some fine-tuning and pruning stages.

THE ART OF IDEA ANDCONCEPT CURATION

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A first step in the curation process is successfully moving from insight

to idea by means of ideation. During this idea-generation phase,

stakeholders are motivated to boldly share all that comes to mind. It’s a

divergent process where people can go wild and share thoughts with-

out limitations (e.g. feasibility, pricing, execution). Apart from involving

enough people (which shows to clearly correlate with the number of

valuable ideas that comes out of the process), participant diversity is

beneficial. To cover the broad spectrum of the solution space, it can

be beneficial to involve people with different roles and backgrounds,

each bringing a different perspective to the table. This is also what we

see amongst successful innovators: whilst many are the idea initiators

(having felt the friction themselves), they surround themselves with

others to further shape their idea and concept. Yet in many organiza-

tions, innovation comes with some sort of protectionism, where the

process is done internally without the

involvement of external stakehold-

ers or consumers. Yet, as Stiven

Kerestegian, Design Lead at Lego,

pointed out: 99.9% of the smartest

people don’t work for your organi-

zation. Organizations can benefit

from an outside-in perspective,

where they involve passionate

stakeholders (including potential

consumers) from outside their

company walls to co-create ideas

and concepts.

“99.9% of the world’s smartest people don’t work for us”Stiven Kerestegian, Innovation & Direction Design Lead, Future Lab, LEGO

CASE:

Crafting new-generation cleaning products through internal and

external ideation

Coming up with new, disruptive and out-of-the-box ideas is not easy. This was

also a challenge Reckitt Benckiser was facing when crafting the new genera-

tion of Cillit Bang cleaning products, where traditional ideation did not lead

to fresh or out-of-the-box ideas. A more innovative approach was advisable. A

first stage was centered around uncovering insights and defining the business

challenge the brand wanted to tackle, a step particularly helpful to enrich

the creative brief and select the ideas afterwards in the workshop. In a first

ideation round, Cillit Bang employees were invited to share their ideas in the

Studio platform, using different ideation techniques that stimulate creative

thinking (e.g. brand alphabet, thinking hats…). The purpose of this ideation

round was to scrape the surface and come up with quick opportunities and

new ideas for the brand. In the second round, we partnered with eÿeka, a

community of creative consumers that have little experience in the cleaning

industry but are experts in the creative sector. Users could upload their ideas

directly into the Studio platform, in the form of Tiles. This made it very easy

for them to share their ideas and to read/ build on the ideas of others. Goal of

this second round was to have a fresh eye on the challenge and gain as many

out-of-the-box ideas as possible. By combining technology, expertise and

creativity, we generated 126 ideas for speeding up the cleaning process. This

mix of internal and external ideation through the Studio platform led to three

brand-new concepts, warmly embraced by both consumers and employees.

34 35

Once you have explored the solution space, it is time to enter a conver-

gent mode where you bundle ideas into idea platforms, to then validate

and prioritize which ones to take further. The choice of your validation

approach often depends on the extent to which an innovation is dis-

ruptive or incremental, as well as on time and budget availability. The

approach ranges from a full idea screener where you can add multiple


“By bringing the outside in through deep collabora-tion with consumers, resulting in being more consum-er-centric, we’ve strengthened our innovation pipeline. I was especially amazed by the quantity and quality of the ideas that were generated by crowdsourcing with creative consumers, which were true to the insights we uncovered to recruit our target consumers… Some of those ideas were warmly embraced by the business and are currently under development!”Stiven Kerestegian, Innovation & Direction Design Lead, Future Lab, LEGO

qualitative plug-ins for deeper understanding, to a more lean & mean

approach such as an overnight screener using MaxDiff (i.e. maximum

differentiation - where consumers see a random set of ideas and have

to select their most and least favorite) or even a Tinder-like approach

where ideas are shown and consumers have to swipe left or right (de-

pending on whether they dislike or like an idea respectively).

CASE:

Screening new lingerie ideas using an agile swiping approach

Van de Velde, the luxury-lingerie company behind brands like Prima Donna,

wanted to evaluate which items its summer collection should feature. To do

so, new lingerie ideas were tested on their stopping power, i.e. the extent to

which it makes people stop to look at the item in-store or click on the item in

an e-commerce environment, using an agile swiping approach where items

were shown and participants had to swipe left (disliked) or right (liked). Next,

we measured holding power, i.e. how likely would people be to try it, using 3D

visuals offering a 360° view and zoom. To have a detailed overview of the likes

and dislikes of a specific lingerie concept, we integrated the iTag tool, allow-

ing participants to ‘tag’ what they liked and disliked, and to add suggestions

on how to improve it.

36 37


The winning ideas are then taken further into conceptualization, where

concepts build further on the embryonal idea, bringing it to a higher

and more concrete level. A well-developed concept is both an art and

a science. The science comes from having the right elements in the

right formula - for positioning concepts that means insight, benefit and

reasons to believe; for new product or service concepts an additional

succinct description is required. A good concept has both internal and

external value, as it not only connects the idea with potential consum-

ers but also serves as brief for development and communication. The

success of a concept thus depends on how your concept board is

well-curated: crap in crap out.

Whilst detecting insights is often done with mainstream consumers

and ideation with more creative consumers (just consider the Reckitt

Benckiser example earlier on), concept optimization is preferably done

with heavy category users and innovators that are keen to share their

opinion and feedback.

When it comes to concept screening, and thus selecting which poten-

tial concepts to turn into reality, unpriced and/or priced buying intent

is regarded as one of the key performance indicators of a particular

concept, as it has shown to have a strong relationship with the actual

purchase. While online concept testing is traditionally done using a

mobile or web survey, in some instances it might be relevant to do this

in a particular and controlled context (e.g. testing an iced drink concept

in the summer rather than the winter or a laundry concept when people

are doing their laundry). This is supported by the belief that context

drives consumer behavior.

CASE

How JDE measures concept performance in coffee-related

contexts

D.E Master Blenders, an international coffee and tea company active in

45 countries, wanted to understand how much context influences concept

ratings. Using a gamified mobile design, participants had to complete 2

missions, each referring to a given (coffee) occasion (i.e. at the supermar-

ket, at breakfast, after lunch, when tired and when taking a break). Only

when participants were in that specific occasion could they unlock the

mission and rate two random concepts on 5 core KPIs, allowing for real

in-the-heat-of-the-moment measurement. To unlock a mission, participants

had to prove they were in the middle of that occasion by uploading a picture

through their mobile device. The in-context measurement shows to be more

predictive when it comes to actual behavior. Moreover, we saw differences

in predictability depending on the context occasion, demonstrating that

context should be recognized as a key influencer. Next, the mobile image

capturing, where we gathered a total of 351 pictures, enabled us to grasp

the contextual background of these coffee occasions.

38 39


At the end of the day, we all want to know how our idea, concept or

product is performing. You might have tested performance on a broad

range of metrics and derived an overall concept stength score, yet

what does that absolute score truly mean…? This is where benchmark-

ing comes in, where you compare your scores to a previously tested

set of items. But even this requires caution, as traditional benchmark-

ing has several flaws, one being the fact that benchmark databases

are reflections of the past and that changing demographics and market

dynamics affect consumer attitudes and purchase intentions.

Moreover, one needs to carefully understand which items one is bench-

marking against; one can’t simply compare apples to oranges. Just

consider a new soft drink with high-caffeine content; should you bench-

mark it against refreshing soda concepts or against energy-boosting

product innovations? These aspects as well as the type of innovation

(incremental or disruptive) and the extent to which you are evaluating

a rough idea or a finalized concept will drive the choice of your bench-

marking approach.

CASE

Nomad Food’s agile innovation routine

Nomad Foods, the UK-headquartered frozen-foods company, recently

embarked on a mission to move towards more agile innovation. This shift

required an adapted research approach supporting fast decision making.

Rather than recruiting large samples on an ad-hoc basis, a consumer net-

work was built to service these research needs, resulting in an input (where

ideas are fed to consumers) to output (validated results) time of only a few

days. Alongside this lean and mean testing approach, there was the use of

an alternative benchmarking method, removing all contextual or biasing

factors. This ‘individual Innovation Potential Index (IPI)’, reflects how

well a specific idea or concept performs for a consumer compared to that

consumer’s natural tendency to adopt a new product within the category.

Rather than benchmarking against a database, participants were firstly

asked about their openness to new frozen-food products; this openness to

new category introductions was then used to calculate the benchmark score,

allowing for better benchmarking across countries as well as across target

groups - where segments can be compared directly due to the within-sub-

jects measurement approach applied (Verhaeghe, De Wulf, Schillewaert, &

De Boeck, 2008).

For established innovators, passion thus boils down to idea and con-

cept curation, namely carefully managing your assets throughout the

different phases of the innovation funnel, through an iterative approach

alternating exploration and validation, where one moves from ideation to

idea screening, conceptualization, concept optimization and ultimately to

validating concepts. Ownership is key throughout this process of small

loops; it’s about carefully and skillfully holding on to your assets rather

than pushing them through the funnel from one stakeholder to another.

marking approach.


41

pilotLast but not least, entrepreneurship comes with a necessary portion

of gut(feel), a pilot mentality; you must be brave enough to trust your

hunch and launch your product in what could be an unfamiliar or es-

tablished market. Inventors often have a launch & learn attitude, where

they don’t consider the market launch as the finishing line, but rather as

the start for optimizing and growing their product or service.

42 43


Consider the Microsoft Zune, launched in 2006. The Zune, Micro-

soft’s portable music player, was built to take on the iPod. Although its

interface and quality were appreciated by its users, it did not convince

the masses sufficiently to outperform Apple. Reason is a combination

of bad timing and a lack of innovative features. The first Zune was

released five years after the first iPod which had taken over almost the

entire mp3 market, but it did not come with any advanced features and

was simply a me-too product.

A launch & learn approach isn’t custom amongst established organiza-

tions as it involves a sizeable portion of risk. Instead, these innovation

roadmaps are often characterized by many traffic lights at the back of

the funnel. To bring a degree of certainty and affirmation before launch-

ing a product or service, these innovation routines are often driven by

validation overdrive, traffic-light syndrome and benchmark fever. Not

only is this paired with demanding time and financial investments at the

end of the funnel, this may also lead to a delayed market entrance or

the risk of being obsolete upon product launch. There is nothing wrong

with outlined practices in innovation, on the contrary. Innovation needs

procedures and timely checks, yet these need to be spread throughout

the process rather than concentrated at the end of the funnel. One

could say that removing all the risk is a risk on its own, or as Winston

Churchill once said: “Perfection is the enemy of progress”.

“I think a large part of our success has been: paying attention to what people really want and need... Learn-ing from other moms, Goddess Garden grew up at the Boulder Farmer’s Market.”Nova Covington, founder of Goddess Garden

“Perfection is the enemy of progress”Winston Churchill

“We just weren’t brave enough, honestly, and we ended up chasing Apple with a product that actually wasn’t a bad product, but it was still a chasing product, and there wasn’t a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get that thing.”Robbie Bach, former leader of Microsoft’s home entertainment and mobile business

© M

icro

soft

44 45


This can be overcome by considering the market launch as part of the

innovation funnel and working with a beta-introduction approach, for

example by launching a product in one particular market or pre-launch-

ing a product or service amongst beta testers before the full-market

launch or even by introducing pop-up launch initiatives to get real

market feedback for further optimizations.

Danone recently experimented with A/B testing through pop-up stores

as part of their Innovation Acceleration Manifesto. Rather than inviting

a group of pre-selected tasters to a lab, they opened a pop-up store

in London for three weeks, where consumers could taste their latest

product AYEM, a high-protein almond-based breakfast bowl.

“When you launch it, it is not finished… that’s where it starts.”Dieter Deceuninck, Global Director Strategy & Insights - Waters & Aquadrinks at Danone


CASE

How PepsiCo invited employees to be their Drinkfinity

beta testers

PepsiCo recently embarked on a mission to craft an authentic drink that

gives consumers choices and empowers them to create their own experience.

This resulted in a new product concept called Drinkfinity. Drinkfinity is a new

drink made with no artificial flavors or artificial sweeteners, empowering you

to create completely new enhanced beverages by freshly mixing water with

real dry & liquid ingredients. The product comes with a vessel (the water

bottle) and a variety of pods that are sealed until you pop the pod onto the

vessel. To understand its market potential and optimize the product, PepsiCo

opted for a beta test amongst its employees. An intake survey was sent to the

60,000 people working at PepsiCo; 3,000 of those were selected to try the

new concept - peel the seal; pop the pod; shake the water till it wakes - and

provide their feedback in seven follow-up surveys. Based on these learnings,

the team could optimize the product and fully launch it in market.

EMBRACING PERPETUALBETA THINKING

© PepsiCo

© Danone

46 47


CASE

How Telenet guaranteed their first-mover position through

their Yelo beta launch

Back in 2010, Telenet, a provider of cable broadband services in Belgium,

wanted to be the first mover in the Belgian market for digital television. Time

was critical for them to outplay their biggest competitor, as digital television

was entering the European market after its success in the US. To ensure their

first-mover position, Telenet launched a beta version available only on Apple

devices. This was done during a press conference by their former CEO Duco

Sickinghe, who transparently explained the product being beta and their

eagerness to grow and learn from customer feedback. People could tweet their

questions to the Telenet team that would follow them up during and after the

press conference. After this launch, all online conversations were analyzed

to understand how the first users had experienced the product. To optimize

and co-create the product and prepare for full launch on all devices, a group

of consumers was invited into a 3-week online community to discuss their

experiences and ideas for new features. Based on this tester community, an

optimized product was released 6 months later. Not only did these beta testers

help the brand optimize its product, they furthermore became natural ambassa-

dors that helped new users when issues or questions would arise.

For established innovators, piloting essentially means ‘not waiting

for a final product to initiate your launch to market’. It comes down to

testing prototypes and first executions as a means for optimization and

marketing-mix development. Rather than testing hypothetical paper

concepts, this approach where minimal viable products are tested

amongst (a subset of) consumers leads to more solid decision making.

The real-time user-experience testing does not only uncover meaning-

ful occasions and use cases for a product or service which are essen-

tial for communication and packaging development, but the realistic

setting also provides more accurate input for price setting and other

marketing-mix components.

Consumer-led ethnography

Immersion workshop

Insight-writing workshop Insight validation

Consumer connect

Ideation workshopCrowdsourcingIdea screener

Concept-writing workshop

Concept validation

Communication testingPack testingPricing research

Product testing

1. IMMERSION360° exploration

2. INSIGHTINGShaping insights INSIGHT

CURATION

PERPETUAL BETA

INSIGHT

friction

CURATION

passion

PERPETUAL BETA

pilot

3. ACTIVATING Living the insights

4. IDEATION Idea creation & selection

5. CONCEPTING Concept optimization & testing

6. PERPETUAL BETA In-market testing

48 49

WHAT ESTABLISHED INNOVATORS CAN LEARN FROM SUCCESSFUL DISRUPTORSWith change being a constant, so comes the need to innovate. Innova-

tion comes in many grades, shapes and sizes, yet one must not think

it’s the sole privilege of small players and entrepreneurs. Many estab-

lished players successfully innovate, yet robust organizational struc-

tures often challenge flexibility and agility. This leads to what we could

label ‘innovation envy’, where larger organizations envy the innovation

fast tracks of disruptive newcomers.

What drives these successful entrepreneurs? What are the common

denominators to their success? And what can we learn from them?

These questions formed the starting point of our research. Analyzing a

multitude of successful start-up innovations allowed us to identify three

key characteristics present amongst successful newcomers, namely

friction, passion and pilot mentality. To leverage the intrapreneurial

attitude in the current organization reality, we believe established

organizations can benefit from embedding these components in their

innovation culture and routines.

50 51

One can jump on the innovation bandwagon, by creating an environ-

ment where innovation starts with uncovering relevant insights, making

sure these validated insights are recognized, understood and taken for-

ward by all stakeholders (friction) towards ideas and concept that are

carefully curated (passion) in an environment where timely checks are

in place and where perpetual beta thinking is accepted (pilot). It’s about

embedding these elements and integrating them into current processes

and structures to create a new climate and culture for innovation.

By no means do we want to frame this as the holy grail; innovation de-

mands a culture shift which takes time and can’t be reached overnight.

Yet one can speed up the time to market, by moving from an envi-

ronment driven by benchmark fever and traffic lights at the end of the

funnel, to a more modular approach composed of small cycles alternat-

ing exploration and validation with the necessary feedback loops. By

smartly embedding friction, passion and pilot mentality in your current

innovation routines, today’s Goliaths can become the Davids.

Are you suffering from innovation envy? Do you want to embed more

friction, passion and pilot mentality in your innovation process?

Imagine a dedicated and always-on hub to satisfy all your innovation

research needs – from fuzzy front end all the way to go-to-market. Our

Square solution combines state of the art proprietary technology, a

hybrid innovation research toolbox and a powerful team of experts and

consultants to create impact among the different innovation stakehold-

ers. Our Square capability allows you to design a tailored innovation

research track to get to the right insight faster and cheaper.

[email protected]

@insites

Contact us to learn more about our Square solution and how you can

turbo charge your innovation!

“By bringing the outside in through deep collaboration with consumers, resulting in being more consumer-cen-tric, we’ve strengthened our innovation pipeline. I was especially amazed by the quantity and quality of the ideas that were generated by crowdsourcing with cre-ative consumers!”Levy Mathilde, Senior consumer & insight manager at RB on how we turbo-charged the innovation process, achieving in-market success with a go-to-market time of only 6 months.

“We have more bang for the buck, are on average three times faster than comparable ad hoc project and can build on our learning, being able to pivot mid-research.”Kelly Laher, Consumer Insights Manager CPUK on how we fast-tracked the innova-tion pipeline by leveraging on the power of ongoing iteration.

REFERENCES

Bronner, S. J. (2018, January 29). The Founders of RXBar, Acquired by Kellogg for $600 Million,

Built the Company by ‘Having a Bias Toward Action’. Retrieved from Entrepreneur: https://

www.entrepreneur.com/article/308136

Covington, N. (2017, January 31). How My Baby’s Allergies Inspired a Multi-Million Dollar Natural

Skincare Business. Retrieved from Working Mother: https://www.workingmother.com/how-

my-babys-allergies-inspired-skincare-business

Damra, S. (2017, June 27). Why the Zune failed. Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/@

shiriendamra/why-the-zune-failed-132784522ff0

Danone. (2018, June 6). From the Lab to the Street: Danone Adopts a Start-Up Mentality.

Retrieved from Danone: https://www.danone.com/stories/articles-list/from-the-lab-to-the-

street-danone-start-up-mentality.html

Denning, S. (2011, April 29). Scrum is a major management discovery. Retrieved from Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/04/29/scrum-is-a-major-management-dis

covery/#76aa85df7782

Marcus Bokkerink, G. C. (2017, September 6). How big consumer companies can fight back.

Retrieved 2018, from Bostong Consulting group: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/

strategy-products-how-big-consumer-companies-can-fight-back.aspx

Rigby, b. D. (2016, May). Embracing Agile. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.

org/2016/05/embracing-agile

Trop, J. (2017, March 28). How Dollar Shave Club’s Founder Built a $1 Billion Company That

Changed the Industry. Retrieved from Entrepreneur: https://www.entrepreneur.com/arti

cle/290539

Verhaeghe, A., De Wulf, K., Schillewaert, N., & De Boeck, F. (2008). Beyond Benchmarking:

Concept performance across countries.

Zalando. (2017, December 12). Hack Week Becomes Hack Weeks: Zalando’s solution-bearing

“hackathon” now celebrated in multiple events. Retrieved from Corporate Zalando: https://

corporate.zalando.com/en/newsroom/en/stories/hack-week-becomes-hack-weeks-zaland

os-solution-bearing-hackathon-now-celebrated

52

Katia PalliniContent Impact Manager

Katia is part of the marketing team at InSites Consulting, where her focus lies on research innovation and content marketing. As a Content Impact Manager she translates the research side of things into easily digestible content, since marketing research is only useful when triggering marketing actions and driving business impact.

[email protected]

@KPallini

53

@filip_deboeck

[email protected]

Filip De BoeckManaging Partner

Filip has a passion for innovation and has been working on front-to-back-end innovation projects at InSites for 15 years. He moved back to HQ in Belgium in 2018 after spending 7 years in the New York office.He is a partner for companies that want to drive consumer centricity throughout their innovation practice.

nnovation is a top priority for all established organizations, yet many

companies struggle with the speed and quality of innovation and are chal-

lenged by successful disruptors and start-ups. The old ways of innovat-

ing often lack the DNA of what makes the disruptors successful: friction,

passion and pilot. This creates what we label as ‘innovation envy’ among

incumbents. There are multiple ways for large corporations to deal with this

envy: simply buy the disruptor, borrow - often short-lived - agile innovation

practices, or try to become more like them. This paper focuses on the latter:

we highlight how established innovators can - in a simple way - embed the

DNA of successful disruptors in their innovation research process, creating a

new innovation culture.

By Filip De Boeck (Managing Partner) and Katia Pallini (Content Impact

Manager)

ABOUT INSITES CONSULTINGFrom the start of InSites Consulting in 1997 until today, there has been only one constant: we are continuously pushing the boundaries of marketing research. With a team of academic visionaries, passionate marketers and research innovators, we empower people to create the future of brands. As one of the top 10 most innovative market research agencies in the world (GRIT), we help our clients connect with consumers all over the world.

www.insites-consulting.com

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