While these convergent points describe innovation to be centered on improvement, I believe they are still too vague to warrant activation. A clearer way to explain innovation is to look at my favorite definitions:

Although the above two points don’t fully define or explain the whole of innovation, they tell us that innovation is centered upon what the consumer desires; and as marketers, we all know consumers are the rock of our business. Thus, equating innovation with desire will give us all a great jumping off point.

But how can I advocate the importance of innovation and the imperativeness for marketers to debunk the myth of innovation if we can’t understand it?

We must take a step back and examine what innovation means to us. At Logistix, we’ve fully embraced innovation and have found, as have many other organizations, that this is a journey, an evolutionary process that requires deliberate thought, dedication of resources, a regular re-evaluation of what and how we are implementing it to ensure that its results really benefit our employees and our customers. We have developed innovation teams who truly try new things and take chances daily. From these trials we have learned that in order to stand out in our ever-crowded industry as innovative leaders, we must consistently check ourselves and make sure we fall within the imperative five observational benchmarks below:

We must focus on the importance of needs. The efforts that your innovation teams are engaged in must address a problem, issue or product that has real merit or value to your clients and in turn the consumer. It is very easy to create initiatives around items that seem interesting internally. Everybody can identify problems with a commonly used product or service – such as the plastic packaging that everyone uses these days that are impossible to open. But are we benefiting ourselves by focusing on the obvious? The answer is no. Therefore, we must spend our time focusing on issues that are real and big enough to warrant our client or consumer’s investment in our solution or offering.

Our efforts must be close to the client/customer. The innovation team(s) must have strong linkages with the client service and new business development efforts. This is a corollary to the focus issue – important needs cannot be effectively discovered without engaging one’s customer – whoever they are, whether internal or external. Additionally, any products or services that are developed can not be a success unless they resonate with a perspective “partner” or client to make them a reality.

We find opportunity in organization inefficiency. Simply put, your client’s problems provide opportunities for you to provide solutions. Typically the larger the client, the more structured their organizations. Oftentimes, large structured organizations are less adroit than others and as a result, are more likely to resist new initiatives. In order to be successful you need to empathetic when addressing issues and use your “outsider” position to your advantage. Being outside the system allows you to bring really fresh ideas in a very timely manner. It has been very rewarding to see the responses we get from existing and potential clients when we outline how we work and our innovation initiatives. The products may not even remotely have any linkage to their specific business, but they are intrigued by our methods and see real opportunity there.

We must maintain momentum. Efforts and initiatives can easily be trumped by “normal” or traditional business activities. There are briefs to respond to, projects to kickoff and products to develop and deliver. After all, your organization needs to keep delivering “basic” services to your clients and generating much needed revenue to keep viable. As a result, we’ve found that our efforts need to be overseen or directly managed by senior members that can influence resource allocations and activity prioritization. These members report directly into our CEO to insure visibility at the highest level. Our members act as leading advocates of our plan; they insure that momentum is maintained throughout the lifespan of our initiatives.

Innovation is hard work and is reliant on team work. While many companies think that innovation is a single, fully conceived “bright idea” that emanates from the fertile mind of a singular resident genius, I disagree. In reality, there is much more work involved. This is especially true if you are moving up the ladder from incremental to transformational innovation implementation. Ideas frequently need to be iterated at various stages to insure that you are really focused and your efforts will provide real value. This iteration can be looked at as sort of distillation process – the more you work it, the more refined the product is.

While there can be many challenges to conceiving and implementing innovation – ranging from technological to intellectual property – the key is to staff your teams in a cross functional manner. Even though at times one’s solutions can over tax one’s core capabilities, it is up to organizations to augment its resources with a variety of knowledge experts – these can be internal as well as external.

Innovation must be embraced organization-wide. While it may be expedient and initially highly efficient to marshal a launch down the innovation pathway through a dedicated team of resources, in order to be successful over the long haul, innovation needs to be ingrained into the entire organization’s DNA. Some of this is purely practical – every project eventually needs to transition into the normal process flow for it to become real. Therefore, organizational-wide support is key to combating any resistance you may encounter to the initiative.

Embracing and implementing innovation is vital to the livelihood of any enterprise in this day and age. In fact, its power is so strong that it is even being adopted by governments both nationally and internationally. (Recently, the U.S. Commerce Department has formed an advisory committee that is tasked with establishing criteria/guidelines to measure innovation.) Although it might be an arduous journey to achieve innovation, there is no denying that it is a rewarding one and one that we hope you too will be firmly committed to following.

Steve Montalto is a Senior Director in Logistix’ Technovation Worldwide department.

Logistix Worldwide is a global marketing services and product development company specializing in the consumer and retail segments.  For our clients we develop ingenious ideas which we execute flawlessly.  Logistix is fully staffed in London, Paris, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Sydney and headquartered in Los Angeles.