Adam Hamilton - Innovation & New Product Development (NPD) Strategy - S3 Ep14

Brain-hurt scale = 7/10. "Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two--and only two--basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." Peter Drucker. 

Innovation always seems to make the list of one of the top priorities for businesses. It's always something management talks about and employees want to attach themselves to, but more often than not, the brutal truth is that they completely suck at it. 

Therefore, innovation typically remains an elusive buzzword at best, or at worst, a department that fumbles along like an awkward teenager on a first date trying to get some action. And after a failed attempt or two, they're forced to rely on M&A or side investments in startups (paying for action). It's a much surer bet. 

How do you do it properly? How do you avoid failure? What skills do you need to do it well?

Today we’re talking to an innovation consultant Adam Hamilton. 

And while officially, this chat is about innovation and new product development, the takeaways are relevant and broad for nearly every senior thinker. Especially applicable to anyone in any role who is trying to make something new a success. And this is why having exposure to great innovation has such wide application to so many different roles. 

Maybe you're thinking of starting a business. Or you're an early stage startup trying to get product traction. Or a later stage tech company trying to extend your product line. Maybe you work in product management or growth. Maybe you are launching a new campaign or Go to Market strategy. Maybe you are slowly realizing that real marketing is much, much more than just advertising promotions. 

Innovation at its core, when done well, is about, as Adam puts it, 'product problem fit'. And in a larger sense, 'product-market fit'. 

This is really, really hard. 

But as you'll soon find out, learning this skill set is very multidisciplinary but quite essential if you want to understand how business really works at it's most fundamental level.

And you won't get this knowledge from anyone in finance. Your CFO, finance director or accountant. You won't get it from your marketing agency who are more concerned with scalable, billable ad spend. You won't get it from executives who have never started a business or owned something right through to the outcome. You won't get it from management consultants who are so detached from the realities of true market forces.

You will get it from speaking to real entrepreneurs and business owners. You will get it from really experienced, strategic marketing professionals who have been around the block. Adam is the latter. 

He has worked for massive FMCG companies, small startups and government. He does brand strategy as well as general marketing and product strategy. He was an early adopter of the Ehrenberg Bass Institute's work. And he combines a lot of these principles, mixes it with his own direct experience, work in marketing comms, marketing, innovation, product, B2B, B2C, B2G and everything else in between. And he applies these for businesses of all size as a consultant.

Underneath, most companies will admit that their innovation isn’t working very well and there's a couple of main reasons for that. So If you want to avoid innovation mistakes and learn how to do it properly. You need to listen to this episode.

I think no matter sort of what skill level you're in, whether you want to start a business, whether you just want to do better work within your department - it doesn't matter. If you have any sort of exposure with the market and want to learn how to extract value from it - this episode is for you.