The Integration of Innovation and Marketing Best Practices for Business Excellence II
The Integration of Innovation and Marketing Best Practices for Business Excellence II
Share prices reflect the value of existing and future company portfolios. Companies that extract the highest value from existing business whilst continually investing in a strong, balanced innovation portfolio of incremental , disruptive and breakthrough innovation, show consistently higher share price and a more robust, business performance.
Strengthening innovation capabilities has been measured to be the most important lever to increase profitability and growth. Across the cycle, surveys show that top innovators achieve a 4% boost to EBIT compared to their peers. The top 20% innovative firms deliver up to four times the shareholder return of the bottom 20%. Companies generating 80% of their revenue from new products typically double their market capitalization whilst attracting the very best of talent into the company.
An interesting corollary to this is another finding from GEMS Europe’s Benchmark Study of Strategic Marketing in Chemicals, Plastics and Other B2B markets that companies having a higher proportion of marketers with a marketing/MBA education correlate with those making the higher levels of profit.
Putting on the Brakes
Unfortunately, as the financial crisis and global economic downturn take a grip of organizations, top business leaders instruct marketing managers to maximize the value from their businesses with fewer resources , whilst, in parallel, they are expected to accelerate new growth. Marketing managers are forced into a seemingly difficult paradox; to save precious funds and maintain current business and simultaneously to grow new business with a limited or lower budget.
Typically their options are: to save their way through the crisis at the expense of innovation programs; to focus resource only on maintaining current business and at best, push out incremental, low risk line extensions for short term gain; or to “roll the dice” and take a bigger risk and accelerate longer term more valuable but difficult innovations at the expense of short-term profits.
Many surveys show that during an economic downturn, investments in the more valuable breakthrough innovation initiatives are cut in order to fund the short-term, safer, value-destroying marketing incentives. A greater share of shrinking innovation funding is used to release low value undifferentiated product and service extensions that capture more of the ever-shrinking market. Little wonder that forward-looking share prices are affected accordingly.
However, some good news emerged from a recent survey by SpecialChem of over 570 marketers in chemicals and plastics companies, of whom the majority (51%) say that business growth is still their priority in 2009, while one could have expected that restoring profitability would have been their top priority. We clearly see here a diverging voice compared to the recent corporate announcements. People in charge of business development are not ready to give up their growth projects. The majority (74%) were also not ready to sacrifice the longer-term projects for the sake of short-term gains.
Solving the Paradox - The Integration of Marketing and Innovation Best Practices by Marketing Teams
How do Marketers tackle this paradox?
It would be a dream for marketers to switch on the innovation lightbulb and immediately start delivering results. The reality is that creating an effective merger of marketing and innovation requires more than adding innovation on top of existing marketing efforts. It requires the conscious integration of all functions across the whole value chain, to deliver those innovations that align with the company strategy. Marketers must make innovation a core part of the marketing strategies, activities and customer focus.
In high performing companies, innovation management and marketing management best practices are interlinked and inseparable. These organizations understand that consistent investment and strong implementations of best practice value delivery and innovation programs, brings consistently best performance across the economic cycle.
Beginning the Process
Inside innovative companies, Marketers play an important role within a series of (new) cross-functional teams that are ideating, screening ideas, developing concepts, launching new products and managing current and innovation portfolios that maintain alignment with the company strategy.
Armed with a strong business strategy that includes well defined value maximization goals and a clear innovation road map, marketing managers ensure their teams are acutely aware of the business and company growth initiatives and that sales, R&D and customer service teams are tooled and well trained in value management and innovation best practices. Metrics are put in place to measure success and reward systems help create customer centric, innovation culture throughout the team. To promote buy-in from their teams, these marketing managers support, encourage and even participate in risky initiatives. There is a high level of trust in the team to deliver on business goals.
The Integration of Innovation and Marketing Best Practices for Business Excellence II - To learn more about this author, visit Phil Allen's Website.
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The Marketing Paradox: Saving through the bad times whilst investing for the future
Share prices reflect the value of existing and future company portfolios. Companies that extract the highest value from existing business whilst continually investing in a strong, balanced innovation portfolio of incremental , disruptive and breakthrough innovation, show consistently higher share price and a more robust, business performance.
Strengthening innovation capabilities has been measured to be the most important lever to increase profitability and growth. Across the cycle, surveys show that top innovators achieve a 4% boost to EBIT compared to their peers. The top 20% innovative firms deliver up to four times the shareholder return of the bottom 20%. Companies generating 80% of their revenue from new products typically double their market capitalization whilst attracting the very best of talent into the company.
An interesting corollary to this is another finding from GEMS Europe’s Benchmark Study of Strategic Marketing in Chemicals, Plastics and Other B2B markets that companies having a higher proportion of marketers with a marketing/MBA education correlate with those making the higher levels of profit.
Putting on the Brakes
Unfortunately, as the financial crisis and global economic downturn take a grip of organizations, top business leaders instruct marketing managers to maximize the value from their businesses with fewer resources , whilst, in parallel, they are expected to accelerate new growth. Marketing managers are forced into a seemingly difficult paradox; to save precious funds and maintain current business and simultaneously to grow new business with a limited or lower budget.
Typically their options are: to save their way through the crisis at the expense of innovation programs; to focus resource only on maintaining current business and at best, push out incremental, low risk line extensions for short term gain; or to “roll the dice” and take a bigger risk and accelerate longer term more valuable but difficult innovations at the expense of short-term profits.
Many surveys show that during an economic downturn, investments in the more valuable breakthrough innovation initiatives are cut in order to fund the short-term, safer, value-destroying marketing incentives. A greater share of shrinking innovation funding is used to release low value undifferentiated product and service extensions that capture more of the ever-shrinking market. Little wonder that forward-looking share prices are affected accordingly.
However, some good news emerged from a recent survey by SpecialChem of over 570 marketers in chemicals and plastics companies, of whom the majority (51%) say that business growth is still their priority in 2009, while one could have expected that restoring profitability would have been their top priority. We clearly see here a diverging voice compared to the recent corporate announcements. People in charge of business development are not ready to give up their growth projects. The majority (74%) were also not ready to sacrifice the longer-term projects for the sake of short-term gains.
Solving the Paradox - The Integration of Marketing and Innovation Best Practices by Marketing Teams
How do Marketers tackle this paradox?
It would be a dream for marketers to switch on the innovation lightbulb and immediately start delivering results. The reality is that creating an effective merger of marketing and innovation requires more than adding innovation on top of existing marketing efforts. It requires the conscious integration of all functions across the whole value chain, to deliver those innovations that align with the company strategy. Marketers must make innovation a core part of the marketing strategies, activities and customer focus.
In high performing companies, innovation management and marketing management best practices are interlinked and inseparable. These organizations understand that consistent investment and strong implementations of best practice value delivery and innovation programs, brings consistently best performance across the economic cycle.
Beginning the Process
Inside innovative companies, Marketers play an important role within a series of (new) cross-functional teams that are ideating, screening ideas, developing concepts, launching new products and managing current and innovation portfolios that maintain alignment with the company strategy.
Armed with a strong business strategy that includes well defined value maximization goals and a clear innovation road map, marketing managers ensure their teams are acutely aware of the business and company growth initiatives and that sales, R&D and customer service teams are tooled and well trained in value management and innovation best practices. Metrics are put in place to measure success and reward systems help create customer centric, innovation culture throughout the team. To promote buy-in from their teams, these marketing managers support, encourage and even participate in risky initiatives. There is a high level of trust in the team to deliver on business goals.
The Integration of Innovation and Marketing Best Practices for Business Excellence II - To learn more about this author, visit Phil Allen's Website.
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. We specialize in internet consulting & internet marketing. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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John PowerJohn Power, founder of Biltmore Franchise Consulting, has extensive experience developing and marketing franchises and business opportunities. He has been in and around franchising for over twenty years. From 1980 through 1990 he conceptualized, organized, and developed the American Video Association. He grew AVA to 2,000 national members, before selling the company it 1990. It was later merged into another home video marketing company. From 2000 to 2005 he worked as a contract marketing and human resources consultant to several local and national companies. In 2005 Mr. Power began working as a franchise development consultant on a full-time basis. Since that time he has helped more than three dozen companies initiate and develop their franchising program. He notes that there are many companies interested in developing a franchise program, and who need his specialized assistance. Mr. Power is a “hands-on” franchise consultant. He said, “I am the ‘nuts and bolts’ person who tends to the details for my clients.” Mr. Power holds a B.S. degree with a major in Marketing. See: www.biltmorefranchise.com You may contact Mr. Power at: jpower@biltmorefranchise.co - Visit John Power's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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