What is the ultimate goal of process-driven innovation? Open a bottle of Coca-Cola, and read its performance reports to get a true taste of the answer.
In 1980, the Coca-Cola Company was struggling, and its market share was underperforming compared to its competitors. So at a worldwide management conference in 1981, CEO Roberto CrÃspulo Goizueta decided to refocus the entire organization on putting value creation first.
The company refined its marketing investment, expanded into new markets and acquired new bottling companies and the intellectual property and patents they held. The company created new products, including Diet Coke. It embraced a global vision; to wit, some market researchers say the company became the world's best-known brand.
This transformation of company and IP doubled the company's market share in 15 years, and Goizueta reportedly created more shareholder wealth than any other CEO in U.S. history.
Much has been written about innovation -- the imperatives that drive the process and the results borne from the exercise. The purpose of innovation ostensibly is value creation that translates to enhanced stakeholder value. Process-driven organizational innovation drives value creation that transforms ideas into vital intellectual property, IP into revenues, and revenues into increased stakeholder value.
In any for- and not-for-profit organization, "value creation" can be translated in many ways. It is
- Improved, silo-busting, team-building collaboration
- Amassed IP and new product development, which gives the company or organization a competitive edge on the market or competition
- Strengthened fiscal performance, which lures additional investment
This is why organizations invest the time, energy, creativity, research, planning, refining, modeling and retesting that it hopes will pay off in terms of improved process, better teamwork, a new business model, a refined brand -- and black-ink results. These are assets that add value to the company, which is why it is absolutely crucial to protect these ideas.
Yet Intellectual Property will drive the future. As we move past the Industrial Age and the Age of Technology, the future era will focus on process that drives IP -- and the real value it delivers. It is imperative to build and protect IP through the use of patents. Patents protect and define the innovation so they are the key step to commercialization and enhancing value.
It is essential for every company to keep a patented Intellectual Property portfolio. The IP portfolio of Airspray doubled in value because of the patented technology that turned liquid hand soap into foam. Airspray realized -- and its fiscal results proved -- that the regular and persistent renewing, refreshing and updating of patents was well worth the cost.
To this day, IP remains arguably the most powerful driver in innovation's Value Creation.
Follow Robert F. Brands on Twitter: www.twitter.com/innovationrules
Ian Fletcher: The Death of the Postindustrial Dream
Postindustrialism is now a blatantly dead letter, as the U.S. economy has ceased generating any net new jobs in internationally traded sectors of any kind: manufacturing or services, industrial or postindustrial.
Dave Lerner: The Coming Entrepreneurial Tidal Wave: University Entrepreneurship 2.0
It is my belief that we are now hearing the first rumblings of what will be an enormous tidal wave of entrepreneurial innovation emerging from the academy throughout this country.
Also, this is a great call except much of our intellectual property has been given away over the last 30+ years in the pursuit of ever higher profits by way of Low Cost Countries. Our Corporations gave away all of the knowledge of how to design, market, manufacture and manage a company. It is almost like parents speaking in front of the kids, while thinking they aren't picking any of this up. Wrong!
And in maintaining their intellectual property, much of the actual work you speak of will be done overseas and only the upper class will benefit. The patents will be 'Sold' to holding companies in countries with low corporate taxes and we the American taxpayer will get shafted on the profits.
One other point in my rambling post, To cite Coke for expanding market share, by marketing more than anything else is simply selling more Coke, just tells us not to make the product better just advertise more. I know we can go into New Coke and Classic Coke now with HFCS. and Diet Coke, but for the most part it is the same basic product they just sell the hell out of it.
Nice little thing the rentier class has got going, USers still think of it as 'their' US intellectual property... haha how much preventable morbitdity and mortality is there because people cant access medicines, or how much more expensive is Medicaid or Medicare because of the monoplistic distribution chains and IPRs of BigPharma...
Time to not just look at the score, but to identify what sport is played sunshine...
Corporations (And/or the Uber-Rich) are killing America and part of how they are doing it is by Owning a large chunk of our elected officials.