Is constant product development good corporate strategy? - No

Product innovation is really of two types. Type 1 is incremental innovation, and Type 2 is path-breaking product development. Type-2 is good and Type-1 is bad.

Type 1 product innovation is really the bells and whistles type, of which we see so much around. The car that does not need a key to start it with, the key that gets your air-conditioning started, and tomorrow a key that may as well double up as a ear-bud to clean those craggy ears of yours as you wait at the traffic signal, and a myriad sets of so-called innovations that we see in the auto and mobile phone category, for instance. These are really what I call ‘baby-step’ innovations. Anecdotal even.

When I use the term ‘baby-step’, let’s remember that the consumer walks faster in most marketing economies than the marketer. Marketers who offer baby-step innovations actually offer just too little, just too late. Marketers must therefore not walk, but must instead jump. Marketers must not walk one step ahead of the consumer, but instead must jump 50 steps ahead and offer product innovations that might as well create new product categories as well. Big jump product innovations create new categories of consumption. I am for that.

I am against incremental product development that is continuous because it gobbles up valuable R&D resources at the back-end as well. It occupies the band and brain-width of precious product development resources on thinking up ‘sweat’ innovations instead of ‘bleeding-edge blood’ innovations. The output is anecdotal, the sales are temporary and the innovation is the flavour of the quarter, if not the flavour of the week. And I am being rude here.

Most product innovations that hit the market today are outputs of baby-step efforts that fail to capture the imagination of the user at large. Out of a funnel of product development ideas that is large, many corporations find it obligatory to innovate for the sake of innovation as well. Curtail this disease and urge.

Never mind that your product development team has not come up with a brilliant idea for a decade; just be patient. Don’t create that product development launch for the sake of doing it.

Remember, advertising costs money, and when you put good money behind bad product developments, you sully the original equity of your killer brand and its basic offering. Sometimes simple is good.

Instead of spending the time of your R&D team on baby-step product development on what to do with the car key, might as well think of that car that gobbles up CO ₂ and sweats water vapour and spits back oxygen into the atmosphere. Touche !

(The author is a brand expert and CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc.)

Read also: >Is constant product development good corporate strategy? - Yes

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