• Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Special Offers
Business Intelligence Info
  • Business Intelligence
    • BI News and Info
    • Big Data
    • Mobile and Cloud
    • Self-Service BI
  • CRM
    • CRM News and Info
    • InfusionSoft
    • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
    • NetSuite
    • OnContact
    • Salesforce
    • Workbooks
  • Data Mining
    • Pentaho
    • Sisense
    • Tableau
    • TIBCO Spotfire
  • Data Warehousing
    • DWH News and Info
    • IBM DB2
    • Microsoft SQL Server
    • Oracle
    • Teradata
  • Predictive Analytics
    • FICO
    • KNIME
    • Mathematica
    • Matlab
    • Minitab
    • RapidMiner
    • Revolution
    • SAP
    • SAS/SPSS
  • Humor

Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. Innovation

March 24, 2019   SAP

The following is the first in a series of conversations about marketing innovation with Jeff Janiszewski and Ginger Shimp from SAP North America Marketing. In this blog, they discuss what innovation is, and why it’s important.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: I’m excited about this blog series because we need to reflect on what we’ve learned from our marketing innovation projects.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: I couldn’t agree more. It’s helpful to share what we’ve learned and get feedback from others too.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: So, let’s begin with why it’s important to innovate.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: They say, “If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Who are “they?”

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: The ubiquitous “they.” The people who just know things.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: I’ve never been convinced that “they” are the best authorities.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: You’re such a cynic. It’s just a saying. It speaks to the inexorable need to innovate.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Okay, but they’re wrong.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: What do you mean, “they’re wrong?” We’re talking about marketing innovation. Don’t you think there’s a need for marketers to innovate?

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Absolutely there’s a need to innovate, but that’s not exactly what the saying implies. What if you’re satisfied with what you’ve always got? The implication is that you simply need to do what you’ve always done, but that’s not true. That contradicts the law of diminishing returns. If you keep doing more of the same thing, you’ll ultimately get less return on your investment. So, it should be that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get less and less until you have nothing.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: This isn’t an economic argument, we’re talking about marketing.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: If you send out an email to a targeted audience, it might be effective. If you send out that same email to the same audience every week for five years, it won’t be as effective. Just because you keep doing what you’ve always done doesn’t mean you’ll always get the same results.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: But clearly the initial assumption is that you’re not satisfied with what you’ve always got, so you need to innovate.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Okay, fine. Let’s say you don’t like what you’ve always got. Just because you start doing something different doesn’t mean you won’t continue to get what you’ve always got. In fact, you could get something worse than what you’ve always got.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: To me, that points to one of the key distinctions between invention and innovation. While it’s possible to make a useless invention – a waterproof towel for example – innovation, by definition, is a pragmatic shift in the status quo. While the light bulb was a great invention, by itself it’s pretty useless. It was the innovation of the electric power system that made the light bulb valuable. More than just an object or process, innovation is about adopting a new way of doing things.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: And while the idea for an invention might randomly strike you out the blue, innovation is necessarily an ongoing process because the world is changing at an increasing pace. The status quo is not an option. There are no phone booths anymore, so if you need to make a phone call – or change into a superhero costume – you need another solution. You need to innovate. The same is true with marketing. Things keep changing, so we can never anticipate that we’ll always get what we always got.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: But we can anticipate the market. It’s not guesswork. We can look for trends and response rates, compare our program with other marketing initiatives, run tests, analyze the results, and so on.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Which is exactly what most marketers do. We begin with a specific goal – we’re told that we need to generate X number of qualified leads. Then, because the goal is a quantifiable metric, we naturally look for a pragmatic, engineered solution. But that’s not innovation, that’s invention. Inventions are engineered, but innovation is designed.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: What’s the difference? you may ask.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: We’re so glad you did. Engineers are problem solvers. Once they’ve found a solution, they’re done. They collect their paycheck and go home. True innovators are never done working. Instead of solving problems, they look for elegant solutions. Instead of minimizing variables and trying to control the results, they embrace variables. They love the challenge of change. Marketing innovation isn’t focused on filling pipe; it’s focused on finding a better way of doing things.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: I think a lot of businesses may be uncomfortable with that idea. They’re not interested in running a marketing thinktank; they just want to sell products. But I think we can make the case that marketing innovation not only benefits the bottom line, but it’s critical to the business.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Peter Drucker, the father of business consulting, said businesses have only two functions: marketing and innovation. In his mind, you only needed to create something new and tell people about it, and everything else would fall into place.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: Most great startups begin that way. They have a passion for their innovation and it draws people in. But once a company matures, it becomes more conservative and the first things to go are marketing and innovation. It would rather do what it has always done in hopes of getting what it always got. Satisfying investors, employees, and customers is a lot safer than delighting them.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: We’re fortunate that our company has such a strong commitment to innovation. Ten years ago, Hasso Plattner, one of the founders of SAP, admitted we had lost the desire to innovate and he took the company in a new direction. He began by creating two new institutions, The “Stanford d.school” and “The School of Design Thinking” at the Hasso Platter Institute at the University of Pottsdam in Germany. Both of these schools are dedicated to teaching the process of innovation.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: Plattner was then able to apply the lessons learned there to not only create new product innovations at SAP but also to innovate the way our company does business – including innovative marketing.

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Now, we can leverage these lessons to help our customers become more innovative and successful, helping the world to run better.

Jeff Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationJEFF: These blogs are part of that. If we can share with our customers how to innovate their marketing, it’s great for us in the long run. Throughout the series, we’ll discuss how marketing innovation works in principle, and more specifically how we achieved it. We hope you’ll all stay with us. If you’re up for checking out some of the innovative things Ginger and I’ve done, tune into our radio drama, Searching for Salaì, on Apple/iTunes, Stitcher, Castbox, or whatever platform you prefer. Then think about the innovative ways you use technology in your everyday life.

PR 015056 Podcast R4 2 16 9 jf Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. Innovation

Ginger Icon V2 300x200 Marketing Innovation For The Intelligent Enterprise: Invention Vs. InnovationGINGER: Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment below. We’d love to hear from you.

Let’s block ads! (Why?)

Digitalist Magazine

Enterprise, Innovation, intelligent, Invention, Marketing
  • Recent Posts

    • Syncing Dynamics 365 User Permissions with SharePoint
    • solve for variable in iterator limit
    • THE UNIVERSE: A WONDROUS PLACE
    • 2020 ERP/CRM Software Blog Award Winners
    • Top 10 CRM Software Blog Posts in 2020
  • Categories

  • Archives

    • January 2021
    • December 2020
    • November 2020
    • October 2020
    • September 2020
    • August 2020
    • July 2020
    • June 2020
    • May 2020
    • April 2020
    • March 2020
    • February 2020
    • January 2020
    • December 2019
    • November 2019
    • October 2019
    • September 2019
    • August 2019
    • July 2019
    • June 2019
    • May 2019
    • April 2019
    • March 2019
    • February 2019
    • January 2019
    • December 2018
    • November 2018
    • October 2018
    • September 2018
    • August 2018
    • July 2018
    • June 2018
    • May 2018
    • April 2018
    • March 2018
    • February 2018
    • January 2018
    • December 2017
    • November 2017
    • October 2017
    • September 2017
    • August 2017
    • July 2017
    • June 2017
    • May 2017
    • April 2017
    • March 2017
    • February 2017
    • January 2017
    • December 2016
    • November 2016
    • October 2016
    • September 2016
    • August 2016
    • July 2016
    • June 2016
    • May 2016
    • April 2016
    • March 2016
    • February 2016
    • January 2016
    • December 2015
    • November 2015
    • October 2015
    • September 2015
    • August 2015
    • July 2015
    • June 2015
    • May 2015
    • April 2015
    • March 2015
    • February 2015
    • January 2015
    • December 2014
    • November 2014
© 2021 Business Intelligence Info
Power BI Training | G Com Solutions Limited