Sunday, May 31, 2009

Value Innovation

If you're working in a large organization, running your own business or thinking of starting a career you might as well familiarize yourself with the concept of Value Innovation. You will find this concept heavily discussed in the best selling book - Blue Ocean Strategy. But for the sake of simplicity here's a quick intro to Value Innovation and how it can set you apart from your competition.

We've all heard about 'Adding Value' to the customer. Nowadays, customer satisfaction is an expectation. Organizations and individuals are expected to go beyond by giving customers added value! But the problem is significant 'Added Value' most of the time means ADDED COST! If you're trying to add value at your job, you're most probably getting frustrated because you're ideas are being shot down even before they're allowed to take flight. And that's simply because your ideas are busting the budget and that's a big NO NO in today's ecnomy!

Value Innovation talks about adding value while reducing cost! But how do you do that?

By being INNOVATIVE of course!

Value innovation talks about finding innovative ideas to add value while reducing cost and the concept isn't new. There have been plenty of businesses that have become overnight success stories simply because they Value Innovated.

A classic example would be the low cost airline industry. These jokers take away all the luxuries of flying, dump us in what seems to be a flying bus and even make us book our tickets online. But the genius is in the fact that they reduce the cost of flying. They reduce it so significantly, that even with the lack of luxuries, questionable aircrafts and inconvenient  booking, they have created value for us. It's so cheap that it has become so valuable to fly even without the traditional luxuries of flying.

Value Innovation is applicable to all ranks of employees. No matter what your position is in your organization you have an opportunity to value innovate. In fact, with the recent economic recession, value innovation might be a necessity for you if you wish to hold on to your job. If you're looking for a way to stand out from the crowd and to gain a sustainable competitive advantage over your peers, Value Innovation is definitely a great first step to take.

Of course, there is a guide available to help you value innovate. But I'll be talking about that tomorrow. In the mean time, just brew on possible innovative ideas you may have on how you can reduce cost at the work place while adding value to your customers at the same time!

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