Adam Jolly, Computing Business 23 Nov 2006
Jonathan Bean is a senior inventor at What If, an innovation company with offices in London, Sydney, Shanghai and New York. He spends his time working with technologists and brand managers to create new products at firms such as Pepsico and Unilever.
Unlike a product designer, he and his colleagues aim to span the whole innovation process from insight to pilot. Most ideas die in the corporation pipeline, he believes, because they are just passed from one team to another.
‘We try to maintain momentum. You want to keep the good ideas alive and quickly kill the bad ones,’ says Bean. ‘It is easy to generate a lot of rubbish. The temptation is to put it in a greenhouse to see if it might flourish. Most companies have thousands of initiatives running. So they just get bogged down and end up doing nothing.’
In his experience, IT managers can end up being seen as the bad guys. ‘Brand managers might take them an idea, only be to told that it is not a priority and will take two years to implement,’ says Bean. ‘As likely as not, brand managers then bring in freelancers to get a web site up and running in the three months.’
It is a pity, says Bean, because there is a clear need for technology support for innovation in terms of idea generation, insights and implementation.
‘A key task for the IT director is to make sure that they create an infrastructure that supports the innovation process,’ he says'
For instance, millions of pounds are spent on researching consumer insights, but is often not made available. ‘At a basic level, you have to make information user friendly for anyone who might want to dip in and use it,’ says Bean.
‘At the moment, IT directors are often on the back foot because they tend to see things late. If they are involved earlier and have better visibility of what is coming through the pipeline, they can be one step ahead.’
Ideally, says Bean, you want your IT director to be more proactive in bringing forward ideas, and say: ‘Here is a great tool for interacting with customers or for generating ideas,’ he says. ‘In particular, they should become the front door to the virtual world, making team leaders aware of how to immerse themselves in consumer groups.
‘Rather than plunging straight into the techie side of things, you want to hear what is interesting about people of a certain age or what is hot in interest groups. IT managers should be up-to-speed on sites such as My Space and You Tube, showing how web crawlers can be used to look at the language that people are using to help you create a trend guide.’
As an innovator, Bean says technology teams want help in creating interaction zones for consumers. ‘For the past 10 years, web sites have been created around a particular demographic to encourage interaction through newsletter and blogs,’ he says.
‘The interest now is piling into Second Life, where you use virtual worlds to interact with consumers. The interesting question is whether your consumers’ alter egos reveal more about them than through a focus group.
‘For IT directors, it will mean a willingness to experiment with new web formats and virtual environments to try to help a company become leading-edge in interaction.’
Jonathan Bean is a senior inventor at What If, an innovation company with offices in London, Sydney, Shanghai and New York. He spends his time working with technologists and brand managers to create new products at firms such as Pepsico and Unilever.
Unlike a product designer, he and his colleagues aim to span the whole innovation process from insight to pilot. Most ideas die in the corporation pipeline, he believes, because they are just passed from one team to another.
‘We try to maintain momentum. You want to keep the good ideas alive and quickly kill the bad ones,’ says Bean. ‘It is easy to generate a lot of rubbish. The temptation is to put it in a greenhouse to see if it might flourish. Most companies have thousands of initiatives running. So they just get bogged down and end up doing nothing.’
In his experience, IT managers can end up being seen as the bad guys. ‘Brand managers might take them an idea, only be to told that it is not a priority and will take two years to implement,’ says Bean. ‘As likely as not, brand managers then bring in freelancers to get a web site up and running in the three months.’
It is a pity, says Bean, because there is a clear need for technology support for innovation in terms of idea generation, insights and implementation.
‘A key task for the IT director is to make sure that they create an infrastructure that supports the innovation process,’ he says'
For instance, millions of pounds are spent on researching consumer insights, but is often not made available. ‘At a basic level, you have to make information user friendly for anyone who might want to dip in and use it,’ says Bean.
‘At the moment, IT directors are often on the back foot because they tend to see things late. If they are involved earlier and have better visibility of what is coming through the pipeline, they can be one step ahead.’
Ideally, says Bean, you want your IT director to be more proactive in bringing forward ideas, and say: ‘Here is a great tool for interacting with customers or for generating ideas,’ he says. ‘In particular, they should become the front door to the virtual world, making team leaders aware of how to immerse themselves in consumer groups.
‘Rather than plunging straight into the techie side of things, you want to hear what is interesting about people of a certain age or what is hot in interest groups. IT managers should be up-to-speed on sites such as My Space and You Tube, showing how web crawlers can be used to look at the language that people are using to help you create a trend guide.’
As an innovator, Bean says technology teams want help in creating interaction zones for consumers. ‘For the past 10 years, web sites have been created around a particular demographic to encourage interaction through newsletter and blogs,’ he says.
‘The interest now is piling into Second Life, where you use virtual worlds to interact with consumers. The interesting question is whether your consumers’ alter egos reveal more about them than through a focus group.
‘For IT directors, it will mean a willingness to experiment with new web formats and virtual environments to try to help a company become leading-edge in interaction.’
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