Our world has gotten so complex and our day-to-day lives so busy that innovation to help simplify our lives is a necessity. But the goal of innovation must be to make our lives, the lives of our customers, or the lives of our team easier. Innovation should streamline what we already need to do, not make life more cumbersome.
What is your favorite innovation? My husband and my oldest daughter love gadgets. My daughter’s latest love is her Echo. I laughed when I visited her in Los Angeles, and she was excited to show me that she could tell Echo “lights out” at bedtime. I kept thinking she could just turn the lamp off, but she may have considered that medieval of me.
My husband’s latest gadgets are remote-controlled security cameras at our beach house. Given we are often not there, it a great way to keep an eye on things. We have a pull-up bar for his workouts under the house. You would be amazed how many people walk by our house and decide to try pull-ups. We have it all on film and it’s quite entertaining.
One of the most profound marketing innovations was digital advertising. I’ve been in marketing a long time, and my company was one of the first to purchase Google ad words. We spent millions on print advertising, so Google ad words were a bargain at the time, as well as something that could be executed much more quickly – so, well worth the experiment. It was an innovation that not only paid off for my company, but the population at large in the years to follow.
Our world has gotten so complex and our day-to-day lives so busy that innovation to help simplify our lives is a necessity. But the goal of innovation must be to make our lives, the lives of our customers, or the lives of our team easier. Innovation should streamline what we already need to do, not make life more cumbersome.
Keep asking yourself what process or approach you can innovate? Where can you make the complex simpler for your customers? For yourself? For your team? Innovation can be incremental or big bang and comes in many forms including technology, process, and ideas. One of the best ways to be an innovator with customers is to bring them new ideas. We can all be innovators so keep thinking about how to make the complex…easier.
At the end of the day… is an expression meaning an assessment of essential facts and truths. It’s a summation of the pros and cons of any situation and a straightforward statement of what really matters. It’s also the title of this blog series by Brenda Hodge, Nuance Healthcare’s Chief Marketing Officer, with insights about leadership, empathetic customer relationships, and marketing techniques.
