Archive for consumer products
Reaching Out to Get a Grip on Innovation: The Story of the Bionic Glove
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The Bionic Glove
The latest issue of Consumer Goods Technology has a story that indirectly reveals some important secrets of successful innovation. The article is the cover story by Alarice Padilla, “Game-Changing Innovation: The Maker of Louisville Slugger Revolutionizes the Sporting Good Market with Bionic Glove Technology,” which describes the rise of a remarkable new glove that gives athletes better control. The glove has a unique padding system that fills recesses in the fingers and palm to give better contact with what the hand is holding. This results in a better, less stressful grip.
What I’d like to emphasize is that this innovation was the result of open innovation that began with a random encounter. Bill Clark of Hillerich and Bradsby Company, the company behind the Louisville Slugger and Powerbuilt Golf, was visiting the Louisville Slugger Museum when he met James Kleinert, a famous orthopedic hand surgeon. They began talking, and this would later lead to collaboration and the successful introduction of the only sports glove on the market designed by an orthopedic surgeon.
The real secrets for success behind this story, in my opinion, involve efforts to build and maintain relationships. First, Bill Clark wasn’t sitting at his desk. He got out into an environment where he could meet outsiders that might share some interest in the kind of products his company made. Then he took the initiative to talk with others and learn from them. When he found someone interesting through a chance encounter, he obviously took the initiative to follow up and keep that relationship alive long enough to explore the possibility of learning from or working with the new contact. I wish more had been reported on these steps, but it’s clear that it began with a seemingly random encounter enhanced with follow-up and and a willingness to collaborate for innovation.
Maybe Hillerich and Bradsby Company just got very lucky, or maybe they actively encourage open innovation approaches that motivate innovation leaders to get out and meet people, follow up, and collaborate when it makes sense. I hope the latter is the case. Whether it is or not, all of us can learn from this success. Creating an open innovation culture in your company and in your life will greatly increase the chances of random meetings leading to non-random success in innovation. (These principles relate to my previous post on the social aspects of innovation in which I plug one of the few business books that have genuinely changed my life, Keith Ferrazzi’s Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
Disruptive Innovation in Progress? The Pixetell Story
Posted by: | CommentsAt Innovationedge, we enjoy spotting incipient innovation success, and work to coach our clients on how to turn their products and services into more successful innovations. We have seen that many innovation failures begin with clever people looking for problems to solve with their cool technology. Some of the best innovation successes begin, on the other hand, by understanding what jobs users really need or want to do, and then providing solutions that make life better. The essence of disruptive innovation success often comes when these solutions are more convenient, less expensive, and more accessible than existing solutions in the marketplace, as Clayton Christensen has documented. Based on what I can see as a new user, I believe that the Pixetell screen recording and information sharing system is an example of an early stage disruptive innovation in progress.
For quite some time I’ve struggled to find a convenient way to make videos of PowerPoint presentations. I tried a popular commercial screen recording system and found it to be expensive, difficult to use, and so resource intensive that I gave up and removed it from my computer. I tried some other lower cost screen recording systems but found the limitations in features and the quality of the service to be inadequate. Then I ran into Pixetell, and have been surprised in several ways at what it does. I’ve also been surprised at the level of support provided by the start-up company. They’ve won me over and gained enough interest that I reached out to them and asked about their story. How did their founded, Sebastian Rapport, get started with this? Here’s what I found out, courtesy of Dan Cook, Manager of Content at Ontiier, the company providing Pixetell.
Pixetell traces its roots to 2007. It really grew out of necessity. There were a couple of catalysts. Sebastian’s wife, Gabrielle, was working with a team of web designers and struggling to communicate design changes to them in text and email. She would not get back what she was looking for. So Sebastian set to work on the problem. He showed her how to capture her screen, draw some circles and arrows on it, and share the result with the designers. That was fairly effective for her. Sebastian continued to enhance that initial product.
Additionally, at about the same time, he was working with a group of off-shore folks and they were supposed to be on Sebastian’s clock. The reality was, he was oftentimes up from 9 p.m. till 2 a.m. to talk through designs, architectures and so on. He realized that what was needed was a more effective way to communicate visually rich information that was disconnected from time (asynchronous is the word we use). This solution, combined with the work he was doing on behalf of his wife’s business, came together as a single rich communications product. Once again, necessity proved to be the mother of invention.
As Sebastian pursued what would eventually become Pixetell, he began to gather more input from people who saw new and different applications for such a product. A small team of software engineers gathered in Portland to move the project forward. In March 2009, the concept received rave reviews at Demo ’09, a conference where entrepreneurs can demonstrate “how their product will change the world,” according to Demo’s web site. With that additional impetus, Sebastian and his team have raced ahead to put Pixetell into the highly competitive position it now enjoys in the market for visual communications software.
Sebastian’s closeness to the needs of real users helped him identify a huge unmet need and offer a convenient solution.
Part of what makes it so convenient is the speed at which you can set up a recording, make it, and share it. It can include what you do on your screen as well as what your webcam sees. A compact recording is quickly uploaded to a server and is then ready to be shared with others by simply sending them a hyperlink. Compare this to my experience in using movie-editing software to record a simple presentation. Saving a 20-minute presentation in a movie format can take over 20 minutes, and then you have a massive file that needs to be converted to YouTube or uploaded to a server. Pixetell takes away that pain. In moments, I can answer an email with a recording showing someone how to do something such as a patent search and send it right to them. Or I can record a PowerPoint presentation with very little time from the end of the presentation to the time that it is up for others to see. Part of the convenience and flexibility of Pixetell is that the recording can be shared via email or embedded directly on a webpage or blog, as I’ve done here. it can also be saved as a flash video file directly on your computer, so you are not dependent on Pixetell always being in business.
Piexetell files can also be edited. You can split the recording into multiple clips, delete unwanted ones and record new ones in between. That’s a lot of power. It’s a tool that stays active and ready to use whenever you want to make a recording – no lengthy waits for bulky software packages to load. Swift, easy, and convenient. I’m predicting this will be a winner that force some big companies to flee upstream by focusing on advanced features while Pixetell gets a foothold. They have some patent applications filed which may be important in the future. Time will tell if they can adequately protect their intellectual property, which often becomes one of the key factors for success later on.
What innovations do I see coming next for Pixetell? There are already some pretty advanced features, including the ability to attach files to Pixetells and have multiperson conversations. While there is a risk that a start-up will fall into the temptation of adding too many features at the expense of focusing on marketing and delivering the simple, convenient core that gives it disruptive potential, there are also opportunities for some simple audio enhancement such as filters to make recordings sound better or take out some noise, or adding the ability to capture system sounds rather than relying on microphones alone. But I think the most exciting future innovations with Pixetell might come from collaboration with other partners and industries. What could Pixetell do to help health care workers, customer service providers, retailers and Ebay merchants, or primary and secondary educators? What will Amazon reviews look like when reviews start adding Pixetells to their work? What synergies could be found with Skype, Ebay, Flickr, Hollrr, Google Earth, and the hottest social networking tools? How will Pixetell interact with smart phones? So many possibilities–some of which would be distractions at this point for Pixetell, but rich opportunities for the right minds with the right business models.
This will be an interesting experiment to watch.
(Note: I have no financial interest in Pixetell and offer these comments purely out of interest and enthusiasm for the product.)
Innovative Packaging to Alleviate Competitive Threats: Lessons from Aleve®
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Some tremendous products don’t reach their potential in the marketplace due to inattention to packaging. Smart entrepreneurs in consumer goods, medical products, and other areas understanding that packaging not only governs much of the response of shoppers to your product on the shelf, but also can affect its value and function after purchase. Child resistant packaging is a classic example of this. Medications with child-resistant packaging can frustrate and irritate many consumers, and even lead to non-use of the product and failure to repurchase. Many child-resistant caps are hard top open for adults with limited mobility, hand injuries, arthritis, etc. Some frustrate strong, healthy adults, and have even led to injuries as people strive to pry a lid open with a tool.
One clever and perhaps under appreciated innovation in this space is the “Safety SquEase®” bottle developed by Procter & Gamble for Aleve® (now owned by Bayer), the over-the-counter (OTC) pain reliever that is the nonprescription strength of Anaprox® (naproxen). I held a bottle of Aleve® for the first time recently and was really impressed with how they combined ease of opening with child-resistance. Turns out there’s a real story of innovation behind this product, with at least three patents that I’m aware of:
- US Pat. No. 5,038,454, “Injection Blow Molding Process for Forming a Package Exhibiting Improved Child Resistance,” issued to Thornock et al., August 13, 1991.
- US Pat. No. 4,948,002, “Package Exhibiting Improved Child Resistance Without Significantly Impeding Access by Adults,” issued to Thorncock et al., Aug. 14, 1990.
- US Design Pat. No. D330,677, issued to Thornock and Goldberg, Nov. 3, 1992.
The system took years to develop and drew upon fundamental insights into the capabilities of children. Their inability to do two different things at once was the key insight that guided the clever, low-force development of Aleve®’s package. Rather than requiring high forces to be applied or complex operations that could frustrate many adults, the Aleve® package merely requires light force on two opposing tabs on the side of the bottle at the same time the cap is turned. Press gently with one hand, turn with the other: two different motions that stymie young children but are easy for adults. Looks like a minor packaking tweak, but the simplicity of the solution has extensive data and years of serious work behind it. Many elegant innovations are that way. Anyone can make something complex – it’s elegance that demands real brains and real sweat. Or grit, as some would say.
The Aleve® packaging system was the topic of a presentation to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on March 28, 1995 as part of their Safety Sells Conference, available online at http://www.cpsc.gov/businfo/6001.html. The presentation by Gordon F. Brunner, a Senior V.P. at Procter and Gamble, provides valuable insights on how packaging innovations can provide potent competitive advantage while solving critical real-world problems such as safety. Here is an excerpt from Grodon Brunner’s talk:
P&G developed and patented a new bottle closure, “Safety SquEase,” that meets government requirements for child-resistance. It also adds value and consumer satisfaction to a new P&G over-the-counter analgesic by making it easy to open for most adults, including senior citizens.
My case study concerns P&G’s patented new child-resistant closure, which we have named the “Safety SquEase.” One year ago this Thursday we were honored to receive the CPSC Chairman’s first-ever “Commendation for Significant Contributions to Consumer Product Safety” for our invention and marketing of this new closure.
The “Safety SquEase” closure has been used on bottles of Aleve, our new, long-lasting, over-the-counter analgesic drug, since its introduction last year. We have also begun using it on our Scope mouthwash product and will introduce it on our Vicks NyQuil and DayQuil cough relief products this coming fall.
To really convey how we developed the “Safety SquEase,” I need to give you the context. Two long-standing corporate policies had a major influence. The first was P&G’s policy regarding the human and environmental safety of its products and packages. The second was P&G’s stated corporate purpose to create and deliver products of superior quality and value that best satisfy consumer needs. . . .
The development of the “Safety SquEase” cap for P&G’s Aleve brand analgesic is an excellent illustration of our drive for product and package superiority. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Aleve is the result of a joint venture between P&G and Syntax Labs. The aim was to introduce an over-the-counter version of Anaprox, a fast-acting sodium form of the medicine in Naprosyn. Naprosyn, sold by Syntax, had been the leader in the Rx non-steroidal anti- inflammatory drug market for a decade. The thinking was to do what had been done in the early ’80’s when Rx ibuprofen, led by Motrin, was converted into the Advil’s and Nuprin’s of today.
When used at over-the-counter (OTC) dosages, sodium Naproxen has advantages over acetaminophen, ibuprofen and aspirin. . . . At the same time, we knew that our competitors in the highly contested OTC analgesics business would not take Aleve’s entry lightly. Consequently, we wanted to increase Aleve’s margin of superiority with consumers if at all possible.
Our packaging people thought they had an answer — develop a truly user-friendly child-resistant package. Child-resistant packages are required for products like Aleve to help prevent very young children from consuming toxic amounts out of curiosity. Personal experience, feedback from family and friends, and consumer research, however, told us that adults regarded existing child-resistant packages as hard to open. Read More→