This chapter explores various businesses' strategies to innovate around their core products, such as Victoria's Secret shifting focus to romantic love and complementary products, companies using drones for better customer service, and Gatorade diversifying its products to meet athletes' needs. It also highlights the importance of understanding customer needs, the challenges of acquiring existing businesses, and the balance between disruptive innovation and supporting current products.
What do LEGO, GoPro, and CarMax have in common?
Wharton professor David Robertson says they all have a similar strategy for growth that involves building families of complementary innovations around a core product or service. It’s an approach to innovation that’s neither disruptive nor incremental, but rather somewhere in the middle. And Robertson argues it’s a strategy that any company, no matter the industry, should consider.
In this episode, you’ll learn how to use customer feedback to identify a product or service that can anchor a family of complementary innovations as well as how to prepare for common challenges.
Robertson is the author of The Power of Little Ideas: A Low-Risk, High-Reward Approach to Innovation.
Key episode topics include: strategy, innovation, growth strategy.
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