Small steps called innovation
Posted at: Thursday, 27 October 2011 | Posted by: Sonja Specks, Vincentz Network
New developments are sometimes "only" slight changes in the formulation. Not every new product has really been newly invented. Why should it? Researchers know about a good basic mixture. A core which is already okay and just needs to be pimped a bit for a few performances. The company target to be innovative is one of the bullet points on the portfolio presentation. This puts a company's reseach department under strong pressure, so that the company is forced to sell products featuring only minor changes as new products.
I accept that slight changes from time to time are real positive changes in the performance. But that's rare. Additionally the researcher knows that substituting a formulation item usually leads to negative consequences for the original product. In this case research needs to be widened, more work has to be done to create a new product successfully. Or this project is killed as it can be seen that much more time and effort is needed. Then no innovation is happening. I am simply asking if we can really call it an innovative step with such a slight product change. Or do we need other numbers when innovation is really happening - a performance plus, depending on the different products? For example: Increasing corrosion resistance by 50 %.
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