As retailers strive to reinvent their customer experience and drive loyalty, many are opening innovation labs or centers that are focused exclusively on digital efforts or product innovation. While some view labs as a ‘skunkworks’ effort, at some point in time, they will need to demonstrate value and show that the lab is impacting the business – and driving results. ...

As retailers look to drive profitable growth through loyalty and differentiation, innovation usually plays a prominent role. Innovation can take many different forms, such as product, customer experience, business model, service and process innovation. However, becoming innovative is not easy. Innovative retailers are those that excel at solving high-priority problems for their target customer and help meet unmet customer needs – often ...

More than two-thirds of organizations with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions in place don’t realize the expected value from their implementation. As PLM system implementations have become more prevalent, analysis of PLM value has shifted from the theoretical to the empirical. There is now a sufficient historical basis to examine where the promises of PLM have fallen short and why. ...

Does every innovation need new technology, or a new manufacturing process, or a new patent? Does it need to be new for the sake of it? Not if you understand exactly what you have before you start, and how it can be exploited further to meet new demands in the marketplace.

Question: We’re a very large, well-known consumer products company, and our portfolio is actually quite complex, as we have many different types of initiatives included, all at vastly different stages. In fact, we often debate whether certain projects should be included at all. Do you have any leading practices related to defining what should be included, what should be left ...

If you want to gain ground on your competition you’ve first got to know where things stand. Where are their advantages? Where are your advantages? Where is there parity?

Do you have a clear innovation strategy that directly links your innovation investment decisions to expected results? Many companies don't. Here's how to get started and close the gap quickly with Portfolio Management.

What’s in your toolbox for conducting consumer and market research? Does it include Conjoint Analysis? Well, if not, it will after you listen to this interview. To explore the topic and walk through an example of using Conjoint Analysis, I tracked down the market research tool master Brian Ottum, who has 30 years experience in new product development.

The more innovation, the better. That seems to be the going mantra. After all, who wouldn’t want to come up with something new? You can gain additional share of existing markets, or even create new ones. But there comes a tipping point. One where more innovation doesn’t help a business. It hurts it. When improperly paced (i.e., pacing too many ...

The results of our study indicate that patents owned by licensors that are strong in technological prestige, experience at licensing, and combined technological depth and breadth have a greater chance at being chosen by licensees.