Recently, we have observed companies grabbling with the innovation challenge and have witnessed their shortcomings in conceiving of and vigorously pursuing breakaway innovation. A key bottleneck: the lack of outstanding ideas that can fill the gap of blockbuster new products. Their most common substitute: a lot of small bets that are generally destined for mediocrity or failure.

Wouter Koetzier said it best, “The best ideas rarely appear out of thin air. The only way to come up with the best innovative ideas – consistently and repeatedly – is to make innovation an essential part of how you do business, of your strategy.” Indeed, according to an Accenture report in 2011, just one in every 1,000 innovative ideas actually proves successful. Innovation requires higher quality ideas, which is why we have developed Sparxoo’s Breakaway Innovation process which emphasizes The Vital Idea Ecosystem.

The above illustration outlines the innovation process. The remainder of this post introduces the first step (Mission). We will follow-up with details, tips and suggestions on the full breakaway innovation process on our digital and brand innovation blog.

Mission. The mission is akin to setting business goals and objectives. We choose to use the term “Mission” because this implies there is more purpose to innovation. During the Mission stage of innovation, top management identifies market/target groups for innovation, criteria for success, and a core team to accomplish goals. Top management should have a vested interest in a successful project outcome. To set business goals and strategic guidelines for innovation, start with strategic questions such as:

• What’s the business problem?
• How is the business or market changing?
• What is the potential opportunity?
• What will it take to achieve success?

The pursuit of breakaway innovations requires breakthrough-specific capabilities and significant strategic commitment . Breakaway Innovation is transformational, resulting in the emergence of a new state that is a radical reconceptualization of the mission, culture, and leadership for the organization, and can result in new-to-the-world products & services. We suggest a kickoff workshop in which all team members discuss common success factors in innovation (requirements of the innovation process) such as:

• Core project team is assigned with strict deadlines
• Fits organization’s overall goals
• Differentiation (stands out in the market)
• Getting customers to say “Wow” (very appealing to customers)
• Financial opportunity (revenue and profit)
• It is considered operationally feasible
• Gathers its own internal support

Once the mission is set, we move into The Vital Idea Ecosystem, which is so named because new product success and failure is often decided before the new product project even enters the product development phase. Accordingly, we recommend emphasizing Inspiration, Ideation, and Prototyping.

Inspiration, step 2, is the foundation upon which ideation can flourish. The goal of the Inspiration step is to develop in-depth insight into what is moving your (potential) customers – their hidden needs – and what is driving markets inspires you to take the next step, to develop the foresight required to identify your future growth markets and products. Research has shown that a strong market orientation and superior skills in marketing research are associated with successful product innovation programs. That’s why we suggest prioritizing the customer for inspiration.

We also note that as technology allows manufacturers to deliver as much and often more functionality than the typical consumer can use, the bases of competition will change. Rather than compete on yet more features and functions we will see manufacturers compete even more on style, on design and on emotional connection, with approaches used in the luxury and fashion markets being increasingly adopted in more traditional sectors. (Read more)

From Inspiration, we move to Ideation (or Step 3), at the heart of innovation, which is why we’ll be dedicating a full follow-on blog post to this topic. For now, we’ll convince you to increase your attention to this step: a major benchmarking study undertaken by one of the authors reveals that only 19% of businesses have a proficient ideation front-end to feed their development funnel. (Read more)

If your team prioritizes innovation, we applaud you for recognizing the importance of innovation in gaining competitive advantage. For best results, prioritize ideation and embrace non-traditional methods to come up with ideas. The extra weeks and months of ideation (see 6 innovation exercises) can be the difference between pursuing a winner and a loser. More tips and insights to come in a follow–up post. Good luck as you ambitiously pursue breakaway innovation.

Effective networking doesn’t happen over night. Don’t worry if you felt like sulking in the corner at your first networking event, feeling too shy to approach a random stranger. For beginners, networking can seem scary, intimidating and could go against everything you thought was appropriate in social situations. Fear not. There are strategies, tips and tricks to help you network better and more effectively to make meaningful connections and ultimately get new business. At Sparxoo, we believe in networking and building social influence and have provided tips such as building a social network on Facebook and Twitter and here are a couple of tips to get your started:

First Impressions
Behavioral psychologists estimate it takes only a couple of seconds for others to pass judgement upon you, or “stereotype.” That means your window is very, very small to make a good first impression. It begins with appropriate dress. If it’s a formal event, wearing your high school khakis and an ill-fitting polo shirt says a lot about you: that you do not take care of the details, might be disorganized amongst other things. It’s about not only dressing to the occasion but looking good.

Here are some tips on body language:

• Always smile
• Give a firm handshake
• Tilt your head to demonstrate you’re listening
• Speak firmly and clearly, as networking events can be loud

At this point, you’ve already made a good impression and need to stay on a roll.

You’re Not a Used Car Salesman
Although your objective might be to obtain business referrals, giving your pitch from the get-go can seem self-centered and superficial. Your pitch should come naturally in the conversation, not be the starting point. The first step is to develop trust. That can be done by finding something, other than business, that you have in common. Do both of you like hockey, tennis or even old horror movies? This will help you construct a strong base for your relationship, on which you can build trust.

Think of Your Best Friend
Crack “inside” jokes with someone you’ve just met. That’s not what we mean by “think of them as your best friend.” When talking with individuals, have the enthusiasm, passion and compassionate tone you might have with your best friend. If they say, for instance, they lost a big client, then implore about what happened, how did they feel, share a similar experience if appropriate. Remember, you’re building a meaningful relationship with them and treating them with the same compassion and enthusiasm as a friend is a good next step.

Spend Quality Time with Quality People
It’s a tried and true sales technique. If your conversation is slogging along and neither of you are clicking, it’s time to move onto the next person. Politely say, “Well, it was nice to meet you, good luck on…”  Conversely, it can be tempting to spend half the night chatting-up one person. Neither is going to be the best use of your time. Entrepreneur.com recommends spending no more than 10 minutes with each person. Then, after the event, making notes about the conversation with each individual on the back of the business card. This will help you with the next step, which is following up.

Have a Follow-Up System
When you were in high school, did it take one encounter to make you feel comfortable enough to bear your deepest secrets with your best friend? Let’s hope not for the sake of your friend. Relationships take time and work. The same is true for networking events. A day or two after the networking event, take a look through your cards and begin your follow-up emails. My Excel contact sheet has the following: name, company, industry, position, date I follow-up up, notes regarding where we left off, e-mail and whether you’ve connected with them on LinkedIn. We recommend following up 2 times, then adding them to a do not contact list if they haven’t responded.

Least Likely Places
Your first inclination might be to attend marketing events it you’re a marketer, or entrepreneur meetups if you’re an entrepreneur. In tough times, every other person at that marketing or entrepreneur event is also looking for new business. Not very productive. Attend events and participate in sports that are in-line with your hobbies or adjacent to your work. For instance, if you’re selling life insurance, you might want to go to an entrepreneur meet-up or golfing event.

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Keep Your Ideas Simple — Your manager likely has numerous employees reporting to him / her, which results in a lot of information to oversee. By keeping your ideas simple, you should be able to get their attention and get your idea through to them.

Be Direct — Communicating your ideas should not involve a lot of fluff. Eliminate excess, irrelevant information. For instance, let’s say you have 10 pages of research that led to your insights. Provide those insights, then have a conversation where you can draw upon your research. Overloading your manager with excess fluff can derail your conversation.

One Step at a Time — Let’s say you have an idea to increase productivity that includes 10 steps. Before you outline the 10 steps, have a brief conversation about productivity in the workplace. It’s best to take a logical, beginning-to-end approach to ensure your manager can follow your rational.

Ask Questions to Arrive at Mistakes — Being direct is important to get to the point, but should not be used when pointing out errors. If your manager is clearly incorrect about his / her conclusion, try leading them to their mistakes by asking questions, such as “what will be the end result of [fill in the blank].”

Use Lists to Stay Organized — Instead of sending your manager long paragraphs about what you’d like to accomplish, send them bulleted lists with additional info if completely necessary. This will help them understand where you’re adding value and can help eliminate confusion of where your priorities lie.

Adapt to Their Management Style — Does your boss like hard facts or prefer more of a narrative? The more you can understand what makes your boss tick, the easier you can adapt to their management style. Understanding their management style doesn’t happen over night. You’ll likely have some personality conflicts at first, but over time you should better understand how you can work together.

Honesty is the Best Policy — If you have disappointing numbers, sugar coating it will only point to your inability to accept responsibility.  If you made a mistake, point out your mistake, why it happened and how you’re going to avoid it in the future. This will show your ability to take responsibility and sync with your bosses expectations.

Take Initiative (While Keeping the Boss in the Loop) — Taking initiative demonstrates your dedication to make the company / department succeed. But that doesn’t mean you should spend 75 percent of your time working on a “secret initiative” only to find out you wasted your time and didn’t meet your agree-upon goals. Let your boss know what you’re doing and ensure you’re going to meet your goals but would like to dedicate extra time on new initiatives.

Perception is Everything — If your boss sees that you’re taking extra long lunch breaks, leaving a bit early, it’s not unreasonable to suspect you’re not putting in your time like everyone else. Personally, I try get into work before everyone else, take minimal breaks, eat at my desk and communicate regularly on projects. Therefore, my boss perceives me to be putting in the extra hours and respect that I keep him in the loop.

Under Promise and Over Deliver — Before embarking on a project everyone agrees on goals (i.e. if we do this, we should yield that). If you try to impress your boss by trying to exceed their expectations from the start, and you cannot meet those expectations, you’ve just demonstrated your inability to meet goals. If you can’t meet goals, then you are under-delivering and far less valuable. Do yourself a favor and find where your bosses expectations lie, and balance it with what you can reasonably do. This will help prevent from over promising and under delivering.

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In addition to being fun team-building exercise to share ideas over a few micro-brews, we also came away with several strategic areas of focus.  First, we have decided to change our organizing principle from “Think. Create. Impact.” to “Think. Create. Connect.”  At our core, each of our team members are connectors, and we seek to further emphasize our work in connecting brands with customers.  We believe that we can distinguish ourselves from our peers by marrying strategy with creative while having a laser focus on the consumer.  For us, “think” means brand innovation and strategy that integrates thinking from workshops, experts, market research, trends, and consumer insights.  “Create” is the application of brand strategy for design, web & mobile development, pr, events, and advertising campaigns overall.  And “connect” is our immersion into customer thinking through focus groups, as well as the direct connections that we make with our clients, and our clients to their customers through marketing, and in particular through social marketing.  Many firms are great at strategy, and many more at creative.  We seek to be unique in our ability to integrate strategy and creative, all while focusing on making meaningful connections.

Among our team discussions, was our personal passions and areas of highest interest.  We came away from today’s workshop with a stronger focus on sports, media & entertainment, consumer packaged goods, and health & wellness.  As a former leader of ESPN.com, I am personally excited to increase our efforts in sports, media & entertainment.  My partner Katherine Parsons is our resident foodie & wellness expert.  In the coming months, we plan to expand our initiatives in these areas.

Lastly, and most importantly for our blog readers, we plan to overhaul Sparxoo.com.  Many of you may have noticed that we have launched our marketing agency web site at SparxooAgency.com.  We plan to redesign Sparxoo to better reflect our core initiatives and display our creative capabilities.  Today, much of Sparxoo’s blog content is focused on helpful tips and social media commentary.  Tomorrow, we will share deeper thinking through white papers, templates, and diagnostic toolkits for emerging marketing leaders to spark big thinking.  We will also be amping up our trend work to share more creative and innovative ideas.  Lastly, we will be making more connections with our network, and sharing those connections through our blog.  Our Creative Lead, Matthew van Rooyen, will be leading the charge on redeveloping Sparxoo.com.  As we make these changes, we invite you to join us in Thinking, Creating, and Connecting.

Develop a clear and concise overview – Slide four outlines, in plain terms, “what you’ll learn.” After reviewing The Brand Gap presentation, you will learn the modern definition of a brand and understand the five disciplines of brand building. Simple, concise and digestible.

Show, don’t just tell — Images offer tangible evidence of your points. Slide 20 is an image of dozens of cameras — illustrating the authors point about brand differentiation in the market.

Infographics marry visual and textual – Typical charts can often seem dull and tedious. Compare slide 25 with 26. Which is more interesting? Slide 26 illustrates Coke’s market cap in relation to its brand equity. Using a Coke bottle as measure of capital, the authors spice-up typically boring charts.

A presentation can be interactive — A presentation doesn’t have to be a one-way street. Consider injecting questions to get audience members engaged in the presentation. Slide 109 does this well by asking viewers to determine which website looks easier to use: Excite or Google.

Create a story — When reviewing this presentation, the combination of words and images makes it feel as if the authors are presenting the material. Each slide is tightly connected to the next, creating a seamless narrative.

Build off of a theme — It’s helpful to set viewer expectations for what is to come. Slide 25 starts a pyramid that is built-upon with each following slide. This idea-building strategy can help users see how elements work together to create the big picture.

Form a rhythm — Notice in the beginning of the presentation, the author features a quote from Steve Jobs, one element of the pyramid, snapshot of a piece of technology, a quote or two, then repeats. This rhythm builds a momentum and keeps viewers waiting for the next section of the pyramid or next Steve Jobs quote. It is a great way to keep viewers engaged because naturally they see the pattern and can’t help but watch.

An image says a thousand words — Starting on slide 44, the author illustrates the point through simple images. The author lets the viewer make the connections between the previous analysis and tangible examples.

Now that we’ve shared the dos, let’s discuss the absolute don’ts:

Am I reading a dissertation? — Presentations are intended to support the speaker — not serve as a script. Slide 2 begs the question, should I listen or read? Use text to highlight points, not describe them in long-form.

Wait while I get my glasses – Unless the presentation is displayed on a jumbo-tron, viewers are not going to be able to decipher the impossibly small text on slide six. Ensure if viewers are going read, they don’t have to get a magnify glass.

Keep graphics simple — Graphics should be simple. The author should have explored elements of the complex graphic on slide six across maybe 10 slides. Condensing a complex graphic on one slide causes visual confusion.

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Tony shared the keys to building a customer service focused business that WOWs customers and has achieved 75% of its orders from repeat customers.  For Tony, the Zappos journey began in 1999 when the goal was to offer the largest selection of shoes.  4 years later, in 2003, the priority evolved to become great customer service.  Soon after, in 2005, the company began to transform itslef as it recognized its culture and core values were a platform to success.  Simply put, hire more great people with the right DNA and character and it will have spillover benefits across everything the company does.  As of 2007, the goal became creating a personal emotional connection.  And today, the goal has elevated once more to “Delivering Happiness.”  From an origin of shoes to its current inventory across clothing and retail categories, the future is wide open for the company to Deliver Happiness in new ways tomorrow.  Tony has deemed Happiness to be the Company’s business model.

For emerging leaders who are taught to focus on profits, Tony would say that profits are relevant more as an end state.  Passion and Purpose are key ingredients that will have more impact on long-term profit growth than just a focus on profits alone.  For Zappos, shoes and clothes are just one part of the equation.  As Tony puts it, Zappos is in the stories and memories business.  Think bigger!  “People will never forget how you make them feel.”

3 simple suggestions in making brand culture a priority:  1) figure out your core values, 2) commit to your core values, and 3) be willing to hire and fire based on core values.  This might seem easy, but for too many, there is a temptation to hire someone who “rubs people the wrong way” because they might be able to make an immediate impact.  Tony warns not to chase the money, but instead to chase the vision.  Passion is the ultimate motivator, so make sure that your team is inspired by passion and purpose.

Making customers feel an emotional connection, and ultimately happiness, starts with the brand culture that Tony has set for Zappos. Here are some specifics from the inside of Zappos:

• Training on Day 1 through Day 25.  all employees take a 5 week traning course that includes a heavy does of being on the phone taking customer service calls.  For all those who like to outsource customer service and forget about it, notice that Zappos has made its customer service, including phone experience, a differentiator.
• Be authentic.  No scripts!  It seems that the more complex business becomes, the more policies and scripts are in place.  Tony retorts that scripts and policies are intended for 1% of customers at the inconvenience of the other 99%.  If you are hiring great people, why not empower them to go unscripted and use their own judgment.
• Brand Values for Performance Review.  Instead of focusing exclusively on a small set of tasks, performance review takes a holistic look at the employee’s ability to live and inspire Zappos brand values.  You want your employees to live your brand?  Then take a cue from Zappos and make it count for 50% of the review.
• Respect Your Customer.  Sure, there are opportunities to cross-sell and up-sell, but Zappos has decided NOT to insert an upsell into its phone calls.  Likewise, Zappos has a 365 day return policy.  They give customers 1 freebie in abusing the policy.  Zappos gives the customer respect and expects it in return.  If customers abuse the freedoms that Zappos offers, than Zappos fires the customer.

You might be surprised to see so much attention to phone customer service for a company that does 95% of its orders online.  What Zappos realized is that on average, every customer calls into customer service at least once during their lifetime.  At that moment, the human touch wins out over high tech, and its an opportunity to get the cstomer to say, “Wow.  I like these guys.”  Zappos has even reported a call of 8 hours and 3 minutes.  Can you imagine what a manager would say if an employee spent an entire 8 hour shift on one phone call!  Every executive has to make tradeoffs.  In the case of Zappos, investing in world class customer service is more important that investing in a Super Bowl ad.

At Zappos, passion and purpose are the ingredients that lead to profits.  They’ve got a truly engaged team, a brand culture that embraces “weirdness” and inspired a spontaneous parade of pirates.  We know you want profits, but don’t lose site of greater purpose and happiness.  Your employees and customers will appreciate it.  For further inspiration courtesy of Zappos, you can tour the Zappos offices in Vegas (they’ll pick you up at the airport and drop you off at your hotel after your tour) or download an audio version of the book Tribal Leadership for free on the Zappos web site.