Traditional strategy picture customers as driven by utility: they buy products that have better funcionality and performance. Unfortunately, in a world dominated by fierce competition and many innovative players, products that win on functionality are simply doomed to be rapidly susbtituted by the next incremental improvement. Customers are offered products with minimal differential value and companies are trapped in a relentless innovation rush, with intense investments and poor returns. The only corporations that flourish in the long term are those that create products and services that are so distinct from those that dominate the market and so inevitable that make people passionate. How to conceive these radical innovations that provide real value and that customers do not expect, but that they eventually love? Roberto Verganti, based on his recent book “Design-Driven Innovation” with Harvard Business Press, unveils how leaders such as Apple, Nintendo, Alessi, Whole Foods Market build an unbeatable and sustainable competitive advantage through innovations that do not come from the market but that create new markets. These leaders compete through products and services that have a radical new meaning: those that convey a completely new reason for customers to buy them. Professor Verganti will show how to create this new vision and how to successfully propose it to customers. A strategy and a process that leverage the rich and multifaceted network of a firm outsiders, looking beyond customers to those "interpreters"– such as scientists, customers, suppliers, intermediaries, designers, artists - who deeply understand and shape the markets they work in.
Key takeaway's:
- Creating meaningful products is crucial in the current post-recession markets. Contrary to common wisdom, the more people are concerned with their budget, the more they look for products that are not simply better in terms of functionality and performancance, but that provide real meaningful value.
- Most innovation studies and practices have focused on user-centered innovations. i.e. innovations that come by getting closer to users. This approach however tends to create incremental innovations. Radical innovations instead occur by stepping back from users and from proposing meaningful products that they still not envision.
- The speech will describe how successful leaders are capable to anticipate and influence how people would love to give meanings to the things they buy. A particular focus is given in how to leverage both new technologies and new meanings (the utilitarian and cultural side of markets) to build a sustainable competitive advantage. Therefore participants will learn how to leverage internal people in their organization and external parties to anticipate market needs, create value innovations, and influence the market. In addition they will learn how to nurture their personal executive skills in developing innovative visions, and selecting and attracting talented innovators.
- The presentation is central to the theme of the conference. Indeed it will focus completely on how to innovate the meanings of products and services, and therefore create innovations that provide real value to consumers and sustainable profits to corporations.
Bio
Roberto Verganti is the author of “Design-Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating what Things Mean” published by Harvard Business Press, which offers a provocative new view of strategy and innovation thinking and practice.
Roberto is Professor of Management of Innovation at Politecnico di Milano, where he teaches in the School of Management and the School of Design, and where he directs MaDe In Lab, the laboratory for executive education on the MAnagement of DEsign and Innovation and is a Visiting Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He has been visiting the Harvard Business School twice. Roberto serves on the Board of the EIASM – the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, that affiliates more than 40’000 management scientists from all over the world and all major European business schools. He also serves in the Editorial Board of the Journal of Product Innovation Management and on the Advisory Board of the Design Management Institute of Boston. His research on management of design and design clusters has been awarded the Compasso d'Oro (the most prestigious design award in Italy).
Roberto Verganti is also the founder and chairman of PROject Science, a consulting institute dedicated to helping companies achieve strategic innovation and collaborates as an expert in innovation and design with Keystone Strategy, the consulting firm founded by Marco Iansiti of the Harvard Business School. He has served as an advisor, coach and executive educator to senior managers at a wide variety of manufacturing and service firms including Ferrari, Volvo, Ducati, Whirlpool, Indesit Company, Xerox, Kodak, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, B&B Italia, Snaidero, Masco, B-Ticino, Barilla, Kraft, Nestlè, Unilever, Rackitt-Benckiser, STMicroelectronics, Intuit, Microsoft, Ericsson, Solvay-Solexis, Corning, Bausch&Lomb, Pirelli, Astra-Zeneca, Pharmacia-Upjohn, Tetrapak, Sandvik-Coromant, Vodafone. He has also helped national and regional governments around the world to conceive design and innovation policies.
Roberto Verganti has issued more than 150 publications, which lie at the intersection of strategy, design and technology management, and investigate the challenges and processes of innovation in companies ranging from dominant players such as Microsoft and Vodafone to small and dynamic firms such as Alessi and Nintendo. His publications, which have been acknowledged several international awards, include “Developing Products on Internet Time” published on Management Science, and “Innovating Through Design” and “Which Kind of Collaboration is Right for You”, both published on the Harvard Business Review. He has been featured on The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek. He is a regular blogger of the Harvard Business Review online magazine.
www.verganti.it
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