From Invention to Innovation: A take from “The Game Changer” by A. G. Lafley & Ram Charan.

While we all chant the marketing mantra of “The consumer is King”, it is very difficult to practice it in real life management of Brands. I found the book really relevant for the middle level business/brand managers. It has derived a brilliant equation of how to make inventions an Innovation by practicing the business mantra of “The consumer is king”. 

Consumers expect brands to improve their life. An Innovation shall be centered on the consumers but not the fantasy of a business leader.  Innovation doesn’t mean an invention of a product or service but it mean lot more about serving consumers better. It could be a technology, could be a better supply chain or a brand building exercise may be a slogan, a punch line or could be an interface with consumer. According to Ram Charan, “An innovation is the conversion of a new idea into revenue and profits”. What it means is an Invention which get materialize to add value to the consumer’s life thereby generating revenue for the inventor is an Innovation.

The process of innovation shall start from consumer and end at consumer. According to A.G. Lafley, “We need to understand your consumer at both the rational and emotional levels. This goes well beyond the basic of demographics and psychographics.” We need to do the need gap analysis based on not only the need of consumers but also their aspiration, their dream and how our product can help them achieve their aspirations. It was impressive to know about the P&G’s “Consumer closeness program” where P&G employees live for several days with lower-income families to understand the equation of family income and buying decision making about the brand they choose to buy.

The story of P&G and other company’s such as GE, HP, Apple, DuPont, Honeywell etc. is opens up a new spectrum of thoughts and insight. To become an innovation driven organization one needs to put the innovation friendly structure in place. P&G’s various structures and divisions such as CIF (Corporate innovation fund), Future works, NBD (New business development), EBD (External Business development) and Innovation Hot zones helped them to become an Innovation driven company. The culture of connect and develop which allowed employees at P&G to willingly come up with new idea and become part of the innovation team, helped the company to achieve a sustainable business growth. HP’s IPO (Innovation program office) is chartered to work closely with business units to deliver the breakthrough products. Honeywell disintegrated the process of innovation and made it the job of each business leader but not the exclusive domain of the chief technology officer. Later part of the book talks about the building the culture of Innovation in the organization by virtue of which departments, customers internal and external, collaborate and teamwork across to fuel in the innovation process.

Overall the book has got smooth flow of the Innovation process. The language is simple and easy to grasp. The examples and explanation through various chart and grid has made the job easy for the reader to understand the process. Both the writers A. G. Lafley and Ram Charan have adopted the story telling style of writing which helps readers to stick to the book.

A Brand Manager within you..

As a marketeers we all would agree that brand management is a complex process, a real blend of an art and science. We intend to complicate it further by putting across marketing jargon to prove our worth. If we intervene/question the consumer inside us, it gives the real perspective of brand preference and its subsequent role in our life. If we understand an individual as a product, we realise how much care we do to create our image (Brand image). If we do a careful observation of our day to day activities, we realise it helps to create a self identity (Brand Identity). When we get feedback from others, we realise our perceived value. Believe me this entire process is a set of sub-conscious actions. Putting all behavioural aspects in perspective we get certain attributes which defines our brand personality. These set of attributes are different for different individuals very subjective to external and internal factors. External factors could be Religion, ethnicity, society, political and climatically. Internal factors may be upbringing, physical, mental, Social status, education, economic status, age, profession and gender. It could be many more.

Brands similarly are live and have attributes by virtue of which It carries a personality. Let us look at our expectations out of the self brand management process. We certainly expect to have a positive disposition of others about us. We want to differentiate our self from the mass thereby creating a self identity. A brand necessarily will have an emotional appeal to hook the consumers in. As a brand we hook in to somebody who fits into our scheme of things. We as brand connect to some other brand (individual/product) who share the similar attributes or at least complements each other. This where the role of a brand comes into the picture. Imagine a situation you went to a mall to buy a toothpaste, you had an option of all the best brands to buy. But, you ended up buying the brand X but not the Y. As a human we try to act smart and give rational reason always when asked. But, while doing that we cheat our self. I do not have a syndicated data to support with but out 10 buying at least 7 does not have rational while preferring a brand. What we bought unconsciously is the trust of a brand or at least the brand whose imagery intersect with our self imagery.