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.