Innovation as a business opportunity!

Many startups or companies encounter difficulties in making their innovation project a commercial success.
The purpose of this article is to remind what we believe to be the fundamentals of innovation in order to help those who are wondering about the best practices to carry out a successful innovation project.

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A definition of innovation

We felt it was important to go back to the definition of innovation as we approach it in the context of our clients' projects.
When we make queries on the Internet, for example, we often find confusion about its definition. An innovation is often summarized as an invention, because it is usually reduced to a solution to a problem. But this is the definition of an invention, not of an innovation.
Both start from a problem, a "pain point", and an intelligent solution in response to it. We will come back soon in an article on what the notion of pain point means in a more concrete way.

I download the white paper "Innovation through use in 6 key points

But the fundamental difference for us lies in the fact that innovation leads to a commercial purpose. It can therefore be defined in 3 points:

• Identify the problem
• Find a solution
• Create a business

For more information, discover our series on the innovation pyramid.

It's all about bringing a solution to a problem that will resonate with the market, thus creating business in that market.

Creating a profitable business

An innovation project must be seen as the creation of a profitable company, ofa profitable innovative business.
Let's take for example the case of digital transformation, very topical at the moment:

• or the company digitalizes its business at all costs (influenced by the "fashion effect"),
• or it considers that digital tools are a way to solve an identified hot issue andimprove the company's performance

And it is obviously this last point that is the right approach. In no case is digital transformation an end in itself, it is a means, an economically efficient solution to an identified problem.
As we have already mentioned when discussing the innovation pyramid in our article "How to succeed in your innovation project like no one else", the company must start from its pain points (its own and those of its customers) and see digital tools as a means to solve them.

Because, although it is not always apparent in the publications dedicated to this subject, digital transformation is above all an innovation project. The emergence of digital solutions has offered a gigantic panel of tools - which only make sense if they respond to identified pain points. The interest is indeed to improve the company's performance, to create profitability and therefore to increase the company's margin by limiting costs:
Problem → Solution → Business

Focus on innovation in large companies

Large groups need to find the agility of a startup to successfully complete their innovation projects. Of course, it is not the same environment, nor the same means, but the project must be approached and structured in the same way as a startup, with the same pace and the same dynamism. In all cases, it is an innovation project and therefore a profitable business.

Beyond the technical and business expertise that is often present in project teams, we sometimes see a gap in the agility but also in the skills present in the project team. Let's look at the 3 links that characterize innovation (Problem, Solution, Business), the business development part is of course key to the successful market deployment of an innovation.

In the end, the judge of peace is the market

Whatever the project you want to develop, go test your business model or solution hypotheses. Meet your customers, test your solutions on your target market with mock-ups, especially thanks to digital tools such as landing pages.

With these mock-ups, you will limit costs because you will be selling your solution before you have even developed it. Have a frugal approach and don't take too long to validate your assumptions. We will have the opportunity to develop this topic in a future article.
Whether it's in a company or during a hackathon, you have to get out of meetings and confront the reality on the ground. You absolutely need to validate each of your fundamental assumptions because the justice of the peace will always remain the market.

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