Innovation

For product innovation, magazines, particularly business to business titles are now branching out to create brand extensions. For example many now have industry awards, networking events, and seminars. This has also led to position innovation in that magazine publishers now consider themselves as ‘brands’ rather than a magazine plus extra bits.

Spotify is an example of quite explicit process innovation in that it completely changed the way music was delivered, by drawing on file-sharing developments but adding limitations to keep the music producers happy.

A good example of almost ‘backtracked’ position innovation is the kindle cover in the style of book sleeve. It managed to steer the kindle away from being a high tech gadget to being something you can still curl up with, having it resting in your palm. And essential context move particularly for older consumers.

As Bessant & Tidd point out, the internet and technology are a great catalyst for paradigm innovation and one assumes most organisations today would like to think they are ‘changing the way we do things’, even if some are really still rather stuck. Perhaps the most essential change in mental models today’s technology is its social and interconnected nature. People are desperate to share and connect which has led for example to innovations in ebooks to allow sharing of passages and even temporary lending of books between ebooks.

Overall it seems that digital provides massive potential for position and paradigm innovation. We know now that product innovation will happen insanely fast and effectively – our technology and skill levels make this relatively easy. What is more difficult is knowing what to do with more abstract concepts of what all these potential developments mean in terms of how they could change our culture and day to day lives.