Innovation: Myths and Mythstakes

Citation

Cuthill, I.D.H. (2010), "Innovation: Myths and Mythstakes", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 383-384. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610421011068649

This book purports to teach readers to become, “truly world class, successful innovators” (p. viii). The authors, Tim Coffey, Dave Siegel and Mark Smith, are principals in LaunchForce^®, an insight and innovation consultancy, who have many years experience in new product development.

Instead of a “Preface”, the book starts off with what the authors call an “Afterword.” They explain they called it that since they wrote it after writing the book. In the “Afterword” they explain that they have read virtually every book on innovation ever written and have distilled the wisdom of all prior writers into this slim volume. Add in the cutesy title, and one fears for the worst, but such fear soon proves to be unfounded. The “Afterword” leads into a chapter titled “The Situation”, which does a very good job of making a case for the importance of innovation in organizational strategy and of the importance of marketing in developing and managing innovation strategy.

The main structure of the book is built around 27 chapters that each deal with a myth about innovation that the authors think prevent prevent innovators from being successful, as follows:

Myth #1 80 percent of all new products fail.

Myth #2 The ROI on innovation is terrible.

Myth #3 Don't bother unless it's perfect.

Myth # 4 When it comes to investment in R&D, size matters.

Myth #5 The best innovations come from following trends.

Myth #6 To successfully innovate you must deeply understand and listen to the consumer (a.k.a. The consumer is king).

Myth #7 There is a secret on how to be creative.

Myth #8 When looking for insights, focus groups are best staffed by “fresh” consumers.

Myth #9 Only “right” brainers are creative.

Myth #10 Brainstorming works!

Myth #11 Crowdsourcing delivers great ideas on the cheap.

Myth #12 There is no such thing as a bad idea.

Myth #13 Great ideas will make you rich.

Myth #14 A great idea speaks for itself.

Myth #15 It is more important to be liked than to be unique.

Myth #16 Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Myth #17 There's no such thing as too much innovation.

Myth #18 Concept testing is a great way to minimize risk.

Myth #19 Facts convince people to buy.

Myth #20 BASES testing will show the way.

Myth #21 It's not worth doing if it's not invented here.

Myth #22 R&D should lead the way.

Myth #23 You don't need a process to innovate.

Myth #24 Stick with the plan no matter what.

Myth #25 Innovation means never looking back.

Myth #26 You have to please your audience.

Myth #27 We'll innovate when we need to.

They proceed to demolish each myth in turn and in its place provide their guide to success. Myths are grouped as follows: Myths 1‐4 deal with investment and risk (new product success rates are higher than 50 percent if you do it right); Myths 5‐8 deal with innovation opportunities (they don't really demythologize “the consumer is king,” they just explain how to involve consumers better); Myths 9‐13 deal with ideation (team competition is more productive than individual brainstorming); Myths 14‐20 deal with marketing (you can screw up a good product with bad marketing); Myths 21‐23 deal with the innovation process (best to have some formal structure provided it's flexible); Myths 24‐26 deal with case studies of innovation (I liked the Alaskan pipeline case study, a description of a huge undertaking); and finally Myth 27, the response to which provides tips on how to keep an innovation program going.

This is a book for the practitioner rather than the academic. Scholarly references are few. It is very readable, well written, generally to the point, and has numerous relevant examples. Despite my initial misgivings, it accomplishes largely what it set out to do. It does encompass most of the issues that arise in planning and conducting new product development programs, although understandably not in great depth. There are some interesting ideas provided, for example, that the value of focus groups might be enhanced by using them to identify the better participants who might subsequently provide input throughout each stage of a product's development. Also, the use of competition and hypnotism to break down inhibitions in participants in brainstorming sessions is intriguing (the authors, three wild and crazy guys with marketing backgrounds, are trained hypnotists).

The authors were at pains to refer throughout to innovation rather than new product development (NPD), although their ideas are mostly applicable to NPD programs and they referenced Product Development Management Association studies to back up their assertions. This may have been because they wanted to emphasize that innovation can be applied profitably to any part of an organization, such as manufacturing. There was more emphasis on consumer product innovation, especially food products, than on business‐to‐business products. Although comprehensive in scope, the book failed to mention Bob McGrath's library of 80,000 consumer product failures painstakingly collected over many years, and I would have liked to have had an explanation of how there can be 25,000 new consumer products launched each year at a success rate of +50% when the average supermarket stocks at most 30,000 SKUs. I did not disbelieve the authors, I would just be interested in their explanation. They mentioned that the growth of private label products is putting increasing pressure on national brand marketers to develop truly unique new products. They might also have mentioned that the development of low‐cost sophisticated inventory tracking and analysis systems has shifted the balance of power in the consumer product distribution channels from manufacturers to retailers, further increasing the pressure to develop products that will generate more profit for retailers. There was no mention of Eric von Hippel's lead user method of using consumers to identify breakthrough new business opportunities. If there is a second edition of this book, the authors might also want to correct the reference to Linus Pauling on page 103. Although one of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century, he did not discover a cure for polio and never worked at the University of Cincinnati. I believe they intended to reference Dr Albert Sabin who did work there and invented one of the two effective polio vaccines.

My criticisms are minor. I would recommend this book for any CEO, Marketing, or R&D executive charged with the management of a new product development program. It may not transform them into “truly world class, successful innovators,” (p. viii) without a lot of effort on their part, but they will find it a useful companion. And while it may not have distilled down all of innovation knowledge, it has distilled the wealth of experience of three creative marketers into an invigorating draught. In closing, I note that the publisher has discounted the book from the list price of $39.95 down to $24.95. At that price it is a bargain.