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Lean Innovation Framework to Fuel Startups
Vishal Goel
Technologist, PMP, Six Sigma,
Executive MBA (Rutgers University)
New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA
Abstract—This paper discusses an Innovation framework
that helps understanding customer oriented perspective to fuel
lean startups and to avoid pitfalls. This uses google glass
analyses as an example to help understand framework.
Keywords— Innovation, Lean Start up, Digitalization, Product
Life cycle, Innovators method.
INTRODUCTION
In this digital age of globalization, economies, facing
international trade and other challenges have made innovation
a practical survival strategy for businesses. Innovation often
results from an idea to further satisfy customer raising
expectation, understanding the seemingly impossible ever-
accelerating consumer expectation economy has become
critical to the change and how businesses react, respond and
innovate.
Innovation, as it pertains, can bring evolutionary change
which is defined as sustaining innovation to bring incremental
improvement in factors to mainstream customers e.g.
improved version of the tide. In contrast, Innovation can also
bring a revolutionary change which is defined as a Disruptive
innovation which takes the time to enter into mainstream
customer revenue but eventually improves and displaces
existing technology or industry e.g. Internet revolution or
Changing Auto industry with self-driving cars or big data with
intelligent analytics. This creative destruction not only
pertains to product/services but it is changing world’s culture
with globalization. A kid sitting in the US can learn from
teachers across the world, Thai schoolgirl can mimic Lady
Gaga, kids can see their grandparents every day sitting in the
different corner of the world, people can experience and watch
Super Bowl as if they are in the stadium. Although, with this
advent of globalization and creative destruction there raised
many questions like if this is subverting local culture? From
an eye of an economist, are market exchanges and aesthetic
quality friends or foes? However, above all, creative
destruction has improved quality of the people’s life and
increased consumer expectations for more.
I. TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENT AND
GOOGLE GLASS INTRODUCTION
Technology is changing faster than what we think.
Wearable technology is grabbing much attention, and many
named players like Google, Apple is throwing their darts by
creating destructive innovation. BI Intelligence is betting big
on the new crop of eye or wrist wearables which may change
consumer perception of technology. According to BI
Intelligence, there will be 300million annual devices that may
be shipping globally (Figure1).
Figure1
In 2010, Google X team with the aim of serving humanity
by solving their problems, challenging status quo, taking a
huge leap of faith into futuristic technology began
development of one of their project called ‘Google Glass.'
First of its kind of wearable eyewear computer which can
interface with phone device and sits on top of the right eye. It
displays 25-inch screen with a miniature camera, voice
modulation, GPS and other fascinating bells and whistles with
the aim of creating an unobtrusive natural and pervasive
device which can remove the distractions of other available
technology. Google team introduced Google Glass with early
adopters in the wake of doing beta testing which was quite
promising and gave Google lot of opportunities to improve the
product but at the same time brought several concerns of
privacy and intrusion into limelight which people are not
ready yet to accept. Breaking consumer phycological barrier
seems to be a big hurdle in the time to come for Google team.
In the midst of all the challenges and opportunities, Google
grappled with growth asked to come up with options for
distribution strategy for the product either directly through the
online channel or open platform to allow for any eyewear or
negotiating a partnership deal with leading eyewear.
So even with the cool technology why so many challenges
and hurdles? The solution is not going to be a simple, as each
has its pros and cons. team should be spending time on
consumer segmentation and marketing mix strategy, being a
technology innovative product company going into a different
eyewear industry may present in itself other industry specific
challenges. We will explore and analyze various options using
frameworks on how we can focus on creating an open
innovation platform collaborating with partners and allow
compatibility and sustainalibility.
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181http://www.ijert.org
IJERTV6IS040545 (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by :
www.ijert.org
Vol. 6 Issue 04, April-2017
607
II. INNOVATION FRAMEWORK
Before we delve further we need to understand an
innovation framework (Figure2). This talks about various
stages that should be used in sequence to create a lean product
innovation start up.
First stage of Insight talks about ideation leveraging
experimentation, observation, networking, and questioning.
There could be many great ideas and innovation but not
necessarily that every innovation is success in terms of
generating revenue and profitability.
Second stage main objection is to find the pain point of
customers, what problem we trying to solve? No product sell
in vacuum, there has to be a customer who is willing to pay
the price. Customers buy real benefits which is the core of
every product and augmented benefits which are added values.
So focusing on these benefits and doing market research about
market and industry at both micro and macro level would
drive open innovation. Some of the questions could be-Is
market large enough? Is this push (are you trying to push your
products to customers) or pull (Customer is asking about your
product) type of innovation? Can I clearly identify my
customers? Is the industry growing?
Third stage is where design thinking comes in place to
create a minimal viable product. Instead of developing full
scale products, leverage multiple virtual prototypes to explore
many solution dimensions, then iterate on each solution to
develop a minimum viable prototype and eventually a
minimum awesome product – one that truly delights on a
particular dimension. Minimum Viable Product is the
minimum set of features your product needs to be useful. This
is where we use agile methodology to keep building,
measuring and learning in iteration. The goal is not to produce
more efficiently but as quickly as possible as we say fail fast
and fail cheap.
Fourth stage is to validate your readiness to go to the market.
Once you’ve nailed the solution, you’re ready to validate the
other components of the business model, including the pricing
strategy, the customer acquisition strategy, and the cost
structure strategy. There is a business model canvas (HBR)
which can be used to justify various components and
ecosystem of business activities.
Figure2
III. GOOGLE GLASS ANALYSES
Google team has a creative insight (based on our earlier
framework) to come up with really unique idea. Google
created the product and started to see a good response. Wait,
what about the problem identification phase? Let’s see.
Technology companies usually goes through a
lifecycle of a consumer (Figure3) anytime new technology
product comes in the market there will be some fashion
innovators and early opinion leaders; they will be the once
buying the first, they will be the once standing in a long
queue, they are the early adopters.
Figure3
In the case of Google, they are the beta testers for this new
product; these are the people who appreciate technology. Of
course, the early reaction will be positive; there will be a wow
factor to it. Companies usually improve upon the market,
capitalizing these folks before going into masses where the
revenue lies. Time from early adopters to the masses could
significantly vary based on the product, market, and
industries. One most important factor in determining the cycle
time to reach to masses is how the product is benefiting the
consumer, what unmet need product is satisfying, what is the
urge, what significant advantage/benefit that product is
providing over the existing product. So why the consumer
phycology did became barrier? Why did we not foresee as part
of our framework? one can clearly argue they have missed
doing market research but at the same time it’s an innovator’s
dilemma since it’s a new technology and market was
undefined. Google wants this product to be in the hands of
mainstream people or consumers as fast as possible. Since
there was not much urge by the consumer this product
became a push model. Ansoff product matrix (Figure4) talks
about various strategies companies adopt based on the
existing or new product or Market.
Figure4
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181http://www.ijert.org
IJERTV6IS040545 (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by :
www.ijert.org
Vol. 6 Issue 04, April-2017
608
Google glass is in the fourth quadrant of the Ansoff product
matrix trying to diversify their portfolio with new product and
trying to find a new market. Some would argue that Google
already has an existing market but in this case, since it is a
disruptive innovation of a google glass that still needs to find
the mass consumer market who is willing to buy this product.
The question is how soon and what is the correct distribution
channel? Is it Direct online? Should we go for Open Platform?
Should we do Partnership? The issue is not just deciding the
distribution channel but rather how should we generate
revenue and bring the product to the mass population. The
issue is how should we attract large consumer market to buy
this product. As per product lifecycle (Figure5) to generate
high revenue and higher profits, the product needs to be in the
growth phase for which marketing strategy needs to build and
jibe along with the distribution strategy.
Figure5
IV. OPTIONS AND SOLUTION
As google were trying to solve various challenges. One of
the challenges was distribution; first option is to enter eyeglass
and fashion industry to sell their google glass. Both these
industries are in itself a holy grail. Going into that space
would be like forging into a new industry. Second option of
distributing directly under Google supervision and selling this
product online will certainly have a higher control but also
various capabilities and resources would need to build on to
succeed. The third option is to make compatible glass which
can fit with any compatible manufacturer’s eyeglass frames
this may give the advantage to capture higher market share
and comprehend’s Google’s technology openness but may
lose some control over how manufacturers are moving
inventory over to consumers. The fourth option is partnering
with high volume eyewear manufacturers; this will generate
them a royalty of net sales, but this would have to be very
thought agreement. Some of the factors include what kind of
market demand exists for the product, what needs to be the
future terms and conditions, what should be the marketing
support, any exclusivity condition, duration? Etc. Eyewear
industry has become a fashion industry and projected to grow
at a rate of 4% with 2.2billion people would be wearing
eyeglasses by 2020. There is enormous potential to partner
with this industry in the long run.
Just like no one solution fits all need for promoting
growth, here to strive growth we suggest to take two prong
approaches. One, focus on core strength, in this case
technology to improve and enhance the product and use open
platform. Google Glass team should go beyond their early
technology adopters for their market testing. As part of
marketing strategy create customer segmentation based on
demographic, physiological or behavioral patterns and ask
their opinion and try to find and accommodate their unmet
needs/desire with eyewear glass technology and spend on
marketing and advertisement to create awareness and mitigate
a major concern for privacy and intrusion. This is essentially
our second step in the framework. Second, implement open
collaboration with partners to ensure quality and win-win
partnership. This partnership along with open platform could
bring a variety of styles with smart technology to the market at
the great speed with more sustainable business model.
REFERENCES
[1] Clive Thompson, “Googling Yourself Takes on a Whole New
Meaning”, New York Times, August 30,2013.
[2] Daniel J. Simons and Christopher F.Chabris, “Is Google Glass
Dangerous?”, New York Times Blogs, May 24,2013.
[3] Tim Stevens, “Google Glass Review”, Engadegt International Editions,
April 30, 2013.
[4] Honan, “I, Glasshole”.
[5] Tyler Cowen, How Globalization is Changing the World’s Culture”.
[6] Business Intelligence, Wearable market trends and report, 2016.
[7] John Mullins, “The New Business Road Test”, Financial Times.
[8] Nathan Fur and Jeff Dyer, “The Innovator’s Method”, Harvard
Business School Press.
[9] Christensen Clayton, “The Innovator’s Dilemma”, Harward Business
Review.
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181http://www.ijert.org
IJERTV6IS040545 (This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.)
Published by :
www.ijert.org
Vol. 6 Issue 04, April-2017
609