I’m currently travelling abroad, and something happened at the supermarket that got me thinking. Usually at home, I know exactly where to find toothpaste and exactly what brand and type I use. When looking for it abroad, in this new environment, I realised how many options there are, and I was completely overwhelmed with the huge amount of choice. There were at least 10 brands, each with another handful of flavours, and specialities. This very mundane thing, made me realise how the buzz around innovation has pushed brands to constantly try to innovate and create new products. But is it really innovation?
I can’t really say how much whiter our teeth are in the recent years thanks to all of these new toothpastes, however, in the last 20 years, despite having 32 types of paste instead of 2, we haven’t really changed the way we wash our teeth. In my eyes, this doesn’t show innovation in business, but rather novelty. The main difference is that novelty is just something new, something interesting, unusual, such as a new whitening toothpaste, a new McFlurry flavour or a new design. Innovation, on the other hand, is disruptive, it changes the way we do things, it challenges the status quo, such as a new technology, sometimes a new product, or even just a new strategy.
In the ThePowerMBA programme that I am doing, I learned a lot about innovation and saw many examples of companies changing the status quo, such as Waze, Sugarfina, Netflix, and many others. Yet, one of the most iconic examples is Cirque du Soleil. Using something called the Blue Ocean strategy, Cirque du Soleil completely changed the idea of a circus, how it operates and created a new experience focused on a new type of customer.
It would have been a novelty if Cirque du Soleil had decided to add two lions to the cage, or add more balls to the hands of the juggler, or make the trapeze jump even higher. But they didn’t do that. Following the Blue Ocean strategy, Cirque du Soleil was able to analyse what kind of value the traditional circuses were bringing to the market, and innovate their offering. Instead of focusing on fun, clowns, animals and acts for children, Cirque du Soleil decided to focus on the artistic content, creating a more sophisticated experience, for adults and clients willing to pay a higher ticket. Eliminating star performers and animals, was a huge success, as it was one of the most expensive parts of the business, and proved to be irrelevant, once more value was added towards the storytelling and artistic performance of the show. It completely revolutionized how the world looks at a circus show, and changed the market forever.
Novelty is a great thing, and it keeps moving us forward, and in fact there is a lot of novelty in innovation. However, not all novelty is innovative, and it is important to make the distinction. To be innovative is to think outside the box, to find new solutions to old problems, to rethink what seems to be the norm, and to realise the unimaginable.
I challenge you to look around you and make the distinction between novelty and innovation in your every day life, and see what services and products have innovated how we live nowadays.
If you want to hear more about business innovation and the Blue Ocean Strategy, be sure to check out the ThePowerMBA, where I learned a great deal on the topic.
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