Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

FINDING NEW CONCEPTS 183
External scanning should be elevated to be a strategic discipline
supported by an internal information system. A working
intranet should be the cornerstone. Be curious.
Second, create discovery mechanisms. Texas Instruments
holds a “ sea of ideas ” meeting each week to recognize emerging
needs and innovation at the fringe of its business. One such
meeting led to the development of a low - power chip for
mobile phones.
Third, look to secondary as well as primary effects. Johnson &
Johnson has a strategy process termed Frameworks that looks
at regulations, insurance coverage, and competitive moves
and considers their implications. New products and subcategories
can often be expected to have indirect impact on behavior
and products. The iPod has had a host of indirect effects. For
example, iPod - driven speakers have affected music listening and
speaker products.
Global Reverse Innovation
Global reverse innovation aims to develop simpler, less -
expensive products for emerging markets like India and China
and then adapt them to developed markets like the United
States or Europe. Also termed frugal innovation , the idea is to
start over to create a design that will supply the function but
at a fraction of the cost. The conventional global approach to
business development, in contrast, develops sophisticated products
for developed countries and markets stripped - down versions
for the emerging markets, a tactic that is logical, effi cient, and
increasingly unsuccessful.
There are two rationales for participating in global reverse
innovation. First, the only way to get traction in emerging
markets is to innovate for them. Adapting products does not
work. A stripped down, small car is not what the Indian economy
needs — it requires instead a radically different car like the
Nano described in Chapter Four designed for the Indian market.