GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Everyday I feel gifted to live in Paris. But some days are exceptional, and the Netexplo event is one of them. I don’t know any event which compares to the worldwide digital symphony that Netexplo plays, collecting trends and gathering start-ups from every continent.

This year again (last year results here), I was amazed once more by the diversity of the awarded start-ups, and impressed to meet in real life outstanding personalities such as Juliana Rotich, co founder of Ushahidi and Brck, Nicolas Shea, founder of Start-up Chile, Dominique Buende, founder of Quick Do, and John Matherly, whom I introduced on stage to present his IoT search engine, Shodan. Those people are true leaders: when you chat with them, you feel boosted to go, and develop your own autonomy.

I believe next year, Netexplo could benefit from having a ‘demo corner’ where start-ups could showcase their value proposition, and be available for networking, and  business opportunities.

What are 2014 digital trends?

Video is the new web grammar, as exemplified by success of Instagram, Snapshat, images shared on WhatsApp or Selfies propagation. But Julien Levy, based on a review of 100 start-ups coming from the four corners of the world, digs in into emerging trends : deriving from data processing, they impact progressively our space, body, and behaviours.

1. Our space is quantified by data capture coming from connected objects (IoT), data crowdsourcing, and data vizualization: Clic and walk, Shodan, Flutura, RoboEarth , Jelly, Wibbitz,  and  Age reduction act in this domain. Other start-ups transform our relationship with space, and create new dimensions and perceptions, like Scentee, Digital Lollipop, inForm, Sono id2studio, Mobike3dscanner, Omote 3d scan, Opendesk, 3D printed batteries, and Contour Crafting imprimante;
2. Our body is measured on multiple aspects. Several apps display analysis and trigger call-to-actions accordingly: Breathometer, Peekvision, Smartdiapers, Cryanalyzer, Owlet Smart Bottle, OMsignal, Melon, Parkinson voice initiative and Electronic tatoo (from last year), Moodies, Simsensei. Somme innovations turn our body bionic: Password Pill by Motorola, Smart Tooth, 3D printed bones, Skinprint, Neurocam, No More Woof (dedicated to dogs), and RoboRoach;
3. Our behaviour is assumed to evolve, as suggested by Hapifork, Ginger.io, Stir Kinetic Desk, Hotseat, Soma Analytics, Happify, Menthal, Coffee Who, Sociometric Solutions. Or it can be predicted: Cignifi, Lenddo, Gigwalk, RTMDx, Cidesi Autonomous, Fireme!, Twitter personality analysis, and Liveson (“when your heart stops beating, you will keep tweeting”).

One take-away is that the Internet of things is the new gold-rush: connected devices will be more important than PCs, tablets and Smartphones in a 3 years time, and it is going to change the way we think. A next move wil be to transform connected objects into inter-connected objects, getting more value by crossing the data created.

In a funny and brilliant speech, Dun Stewart unfolded some opinions and true surprises about predictions:

• Predicted failures are Googleglass and Smartwatches because of a form factor problem;
• People stop wearing fitness objects after 6 months;
• Phablet are non practicle, don’t feet in your djeans, still they sell very well. Nobody likes phablet but they are a sales hit, third largest consumer market, why? People have more than one phone, like women have more than one purse!
• Traditional TV viewing is stable overall, but in Canada OTT TV cuts the amount by one half;
• 4k will boost Netflix and demand for bandwidth: fiber is welcomed;
• Consumer entertainment is all about video, peak time, and downstream;
• Social media is an option for business but it won’t be ten years from now.

To go one step further in the future: 10 SciFi short films collected by Laurent Dupin.

Who are the 2014 awards?

• Dominique Buende from QuickDo (Cameroon) is Orange Social prize winner. He develops a network for publishers and e-reading, disseminating knowledge through digital tech in Africa. He designs BookBox combining a mobile and self-powered mediatheque implemented in universities, cultural centres, bookstores, and a range of dedicated e-readers;
• Nicolas Shea initiated a peculiar venture, called Start-up Chile: its aim is to welcome startups in Chile, helping them to start their business using Chile as a platform to go global. It created a terrific game play for start-ups, valuating entrepreneurs’ social activities, & building social equity. We will come back to this amazing uptake in a next post.

image credits: Titan Aerospace, Quantified Self thenextweb.com, phablet sweetlemonmag.com, skin-print_Netexplo

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Editor’s note: see summary on Netexplo Digital Start-ups 2014.

Nicolas Shea, as founder of Start-up Chile, initiated a peculiar venture: its aim is to welcome startups in Chile, helping them to start their business using Chile as a platform to go global. Beyond mundane money appeal, Nicolas created a terrific game play for start-ups, valuating entrepreneurs’ social activities, resulting in building social equity. Below are a few extracts from Nicolas’ presentation at Netexplo.

Start-up Chile mission

Start-up Chile is a program on behalf of the Chilean Government that seeks to attract early-stage companies to start their business using Chile as a platform to go global. Its mission is to transform Chile into the leading innovation and entrepreneurial hub of LatAm. There are various incentives:

• One year work Visa;
• $40,000 nonequity seed capital;
• soft Landing and hospitality;
• Latin America networking and market access;
• Chilean cultural experience, language learning, and history making opportunity.

The magic social trick

A creative social gaming triggers start-ups networking:

• Start-up Chile asks all hosted start-ups to engage in social impact activities with the community;
• It shows Chileans that ‘it is possible’;
• Dedicated activities are focused on schools, sharing their experience as entrepreneurs;
• Giving specific tools such as business model, lean canvas, and more.

Susbtantial payoff

Start-ups entrepreneurs come from every part of the world:

Capital invested is over $50 m USD, 8 companies were acquired, and 1025 jobs created. Let’s zoom on some succes stories among the yearly selection of 300 start-ups:

1. WeHostels, ‘finding a hotel right from your phone’

2. Pact, collecting fines when you don’t achieve your weekly exercise goals, and pays out real money when you do!

3. SaferTaxi, ‘Book a taxi fast and free, and travel safely’

4. Nubelo, leading marketplace for freelance services

Apply now!

Accelerate your business while transforming a country, and experience a life-changing moment!

Next round is June 2014: Startupchile.org/apply

image credits: Start-up Chile, pulsosocial.com, WeHostels, Pact, SaferTaxi, Nubelo
Wait! Before you go…

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Conxa Romaguera Camarena is Coordinator and Community Manager at Allfoodexperts, responsible of attending both challengers and members/associates, helping them to understand main concepts, and onboarding them into the cloud company. She explains to us the main drivers of AllFoodExperts.

A clear focus

Allfoodexperts is an independent open innovation project and focused exclusively on the food industry. It is different from other open innovation platforms because it is composed of a community of senior freelancers from the agri-food sector and posting challenges is free. Moreover, it is very much geared to facilitate applied innovation to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), lacking the resources and R & D centers of major “players” in the sector.

A challenging context

The project is just over a year of life and was driven by Henrik Stamm Kristensen, also founder of the companies Premium Ingredients and Blendhub (now united in Premium Blendhub), to meet two challenges of the food industry.

On the one hand, the growing need for innovation in a context in which the food products life cycle is becoming shorter, without reducing the quality and safety requirements demanded by such a sensitive sector like food. This forces companies, especially smaller ones, to collaborate to compete and bring innovation to the market, not only in terms of products, but also in regards to their processes and management systems.

On the other hand, the change emerged in the labor market. There is much more mobility and temporality has become an important factor. Professionals with high expertise circulate freely and work for different employers during shorter cycles. They feel free to search for companies with the best challenges for them. That is what the professor of ESADE Simon Dolan defines as the “portfolio employment”. Allfoodexperts allows this type of profiles to expand their ability to find attractive and interesting projects, without losing their autonomy.

Allfoodexperts emerged as an integrated solution to these two issues. Its “Why” is to lead applied innovation to the agri-food sector and bring together the best talent to generate it.

Key benefits

But what does it give to the agri-food industry?

Faster innovation and a structured process for SMEs. SMEs in the food and beverage industry can count on the collaboration of an international portfolio of experts who have been through companies such as Unilever, Kellogg and Cargill, thanks to the open innovation model. Currently, the community of experts of Allfoodexperts has about 200 experts in different areas within the food industry, in addition to a structured workflow through both incoming challenges and solutions are selected to transfer to the challenger a unique response, tailored to its needs.

Reduction of the innovation cost. AFE is a social and non-profit enterprise so its challengers pay only once when they get a solution that meet their specific needs, namely applied innovation.

Confidentiality and IP protection. Confidentiality is secured during the whole process and can be formalized by a NDA if required. At the time in which the company considers the solution presented as optimal, a collaboration agreement is signed between the Allfoodexperts’ team, the solver and challenger which defines who is owing  the Intellectual Property (IP) of the solution.

A high value project to the industry. Allfoodexperts reinvests all its profits in its members and in the maintenance of its platform. As a social business, it takes all the technological capabilities of its platform to align value, connecting different stakeholders and facilitating dialogue and networking to bring new concepts , services and products to market.

Q&A

[NB] What are the skills if the experts one can target with a challenge?

[CRC] They need to have at least 10 years of experience and know-how specialized in food industry, and of course, to be freelance not having exclusivity clauses or confidentiality agreements

[NB] What is the typical timeline of a challenge?

[CRC] It depends on the kind of challenge and company requirements. We had a couple of headhuting challenges that obviously were more urgent that the technical ones which are maximum 6 months deadline.

[NB] Is there a way in the platform to help experts identify other experts to compliment their skills, network, and provide a collective answer to the challenge?

[CRC) By default, experts cannot see the identity of the others in the platform, however there is an app in the platform called ask the experts which is a free forum where they can publish questions and people can deliver their suggestions, and with it, we assume that new project-based teams will be created using this forum.

Conxa Romaguera Camarena
Community Manager

image credits: el-bulli-blog-williamdeshazer-com, el-bulli-harvardmagazine-com, el-bulli-theapprenticegourmet-com, dupont, food-en-wikipedia-org, kids_pic-letsayfood-in

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

French Tech is utterly vivid in Paris. Paris Region Lab is a team of 30 people headed by Jean-François Gallouin. Jean-François is concurrently a teacher at engineering school Ecole Centrale Paris, an active school in the playground of Entrepreneurship.

Paris Region Lab is a non profit organization initiated by Paris municipality and “Ile de France Region” in 2009. Its purpose is the development of Parisian incubators, and the support for innovative experiments over the Greater Paris territory.

Spreading a culture of innovation within Ile de France and Parisian administrative services, opening progressively Request For Proposal to creative ideas, enabling large companies, SME, and innovative start-ups to test their concepts in real life,  iterate, and improve their solutions, are some of the directions Paris region Lab is heading to. What is amazing is the scope of the hundred of experiments it has covered  since 2009: actually Parisian public services handle a wide range of activities from water distribution and environment to nurseries and elementary schools, or city libraries.

Regarding business incubation, Paris Region Lab focuses on late stage ventures: start-ups have shaped their offer,  and have earned their first customers. Paris Region Lab accomodates 150 start-ups over various locations, and partners with La Ruche, a coworking space for ‘social business’.

Paris Region Lab relationship with corporates is thriving on the basis of open innovation: Paris Region Lab cooperates with companies launching an open innovation program, or wanting to set-up an incubator, alone or in synergy with other industries, and acts as a very linchpin. Thus, Renault got involved in an incubator dedicated to mobility. And many different partners shared an open innovation approach for Tourism and Health portals.

With the ‘Open Innovation Club’, Paris Region Lab gives companies the opportunity to source ideas and methodologies out of their industry: requests for proposal are launched by large companies on a regular basis on the web site, and innovation dating stage quarterly 20 start-ups pitches in front of 30 large companies. Beyond innovation practice sharing, the 50 Club members participate to a Tech-Tour: this year, the journey will take place in the Silicon Valley, and be centered around connected objects, big data, robotics, and customer relationship. Investigating future through prospective works with start-ups, and setting-up a Fab Lab for service delivery are additional topics at the agenda of the Open Innovation Club.

No doubt Future is bright and dizzying at Paris Region Lab!

Credits: Paris Region Lab, La Ruche, Paris Decideurs en Region

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

A hundred of OI flowers

Let a hundred open innovation flowers blossom. Beyond the traditional one-to-one partnership for coinnovation, whopping initiatives are thriving on a one-to-many scale: it seems we have already entered Spring.

Taking a closer look, one can sort out different intents, resulting in distinct open innovation processes. First thing to is select the process which corresponds to your purpose.

1. Acceleration Program, Incubation and Tech hubs are very popular organizations right now: OrangeFab, Veolia Innovation Accelerator, Canalstart, Afrilabs, Tech City in London, Paris Numa, Camping, Dojoboost or Paris Pionnières. Value proposition for start-ups is clear: it’s about supporting creative entrepeneurship. From a corporate point of view, it’s more like a toe in the water. Start-ups are often selected on a beauty contest, rather than on a specific need formulated by the corporation: due to this loose coupling, the output might not enrich directly corporate innovation.

2. Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, and Ideas Contests unfold various forms: dedicated platforms BtoB platforms scouting new technologies or out-licensing technologies  (Innocentive, Quirky), crowdfunding platforms (Kickstarter & Indiegogo), call for ideas or solutions (Netflix prize of $m1, Cisco IPrize of $250k), or tapping MBA students Teams (Hult Innovation Olympics involve 5 teams competing to create best growth options for their sponsor); it’s the kind of ‘search for solutions’ approach that P&G, Open Innovation forerunner, has operated with its ‘Connect & Develop’ team in the famous Pringles story.  It’s ‘collecting from the outside” as Pr. Chesbrough puts it, a ‘one shot’ operation that brings back a large number of inspiring ideas, and feedbacks on the brand and ideas crossevalution by the community. Screening of a winner might drive to new business model;

3. Cocreation platforms are a more permanent endeavour of the brand with its users, it’s opening the doors in a lasting relationship, with a view to enhance product portfolio with customers’ wishlist: Lego Cuuso (crowdsourcing platform where people post their Lego creations: if the creation gets more than 10,000 supporters, Lego will commercialize it and the winner, in turn, will receive royalties), P&G Cocreation channel, Cvous.com (expressing wishes and creating Casino tomorrow’s products, sample testing,  a club of super consumers, Castor (mobile apps store for Crédit Agricole customers), Employee-driven innovation (Facteo La Poste, BNP Paribas Jump, Eurêka Solocal);

4. Codevelopments and Hackatons engage material collaboration with users to develop new products: Open App SNCF Transilien (crowdsourcing on open data, bold ideas turned into prototypes), Mio first 100% open source car developed by Fiat (11,000 ideas submitted by 17,000 subscribers in 120 countries, progressive making of the car synchronized with the consumers). It’s developing new businesses out of collaboration, or even community-driven business like in Threadless HBS case study.

Prepare for intense dialogue

Regarless of what form you will go for, launching an open innovation project seems to me like starting a relationship:

• You better know what you look for, and reach out with a clear brief of your problem;
• Spot shrewd trigger for your community: a reason why, incentives in cash or product  discount, grades, and peer recognition;
• Open Innovation forms show that frontiers are blurring between innovation community and user community: thus open innovation includes a community branding dimension;

• Instead of listening to, Open Innovation might put you in the reverse position of exposing unused ideas and ‘sleeping beauty’ technology from your corporation to the community;
• You have to involve the internal side of your company from the start, and organize for adoption of the external ideas or know-how;
• Think of the dynamics over time: nothing worse that an empty promise.

What, why, how, who, and when?

Tom Culver, Senior Innovation Advisor, drafted an exhaustive mode of operation for Making Open Innovation stick, and detailed the role of an Open Innovation hub, and especially the interactions with the internal business units.

Another angle to frame your process towards external community, is to come back to the overarching questions raised by Malone, Laubacher, and Dellarocas, with regards to collective intelligence:

As innovation funnel presents many opportunities to capture ideas, cooperate on technology, and thrive an external innovation ecosyste, across its porous borders, one last question I would add is: when do you want to develop your open innovation gateway?

And as in every innovation project, my 2 cents on getting started is: learn by doing, focus on a perimeter and a pool size you feel comfortable with, iterate and prepare to scale.

Credits: designobserver.com, Netflix-prize, Cuuso Lego, Fiat Mio, Tom Culver-rti-intl, collective-intelligence-malone-laubacher-and-dellarocas, RTI Intl, lentreprise-com

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Margaux Pelen represents the new generation of French graduates: concurrently to HEC Business School, she completed a Tech master at Telecom Paris, fulfilling her ‘geek’ fiber. Then, she cofounded a start-up, Home’n’go, and has been a fearless entrepreneur ever since. She shares with us some learnings from her experience of visiting Tech-Hubs and communities in Africa (previous episode here).

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Why?

Gemalto has experienced terrific growth from the 80’s: organic growth, combined with merger of Gemplus and Axalto, have transform a company of a few dozen individuals to a multinational of 11 000 people, handling billions of transactions, and involved in highly secured operations such as biometric data management for passport.

At Gemalto, it was innovation without noticing, just like the air.

When a growth threshold was reached, the need for a more organized way of innovating came to the fore.

With 1 500 people in R&D, there shouldn’t be any trouble to innovate. But indeed there was: many creative ideas were presented, but new business had difficulty to emerge. Creativity was lacking structuration, and consequently could not attract funding.

How?

Marc Gemeto was named to design an adequate incubation process called BIG.

BIG was shaped on bespoke design, moulding its own identity based on best practices leveraging collective intelligence. Its relentless innovation cycle is as follows:

• Capturing creativity: working on ideation with Act One innovation methodology, and leveraging cross functional teams, crossing technology, usages, and marketing; involving consumers upstream to get insights (not only expectations); constantly enhancing inital idea, and progressing from rough idea to sharp concept; exposing concept to external people with fresh eyes. Most important priniple, building an environment of trust was essential: trust unleaches emotional, and true creativity;
• Hands-On: looking for concrete achievement; unleashing the guts to stand up and make; prototyping fast, with limited investment that can easily be stopped (few weeks, a dozen of k€);  trying hard, failing fast, learning fast, and bouncing higher: getting inspired from Lean start-up, Frugal innovation, and Guy Kawasaki mantra: innovation as a game of numbers, ‘a hundred flowers blossom…’;
• Engaging: liaising with internal & external customers at early stage, showing quickly, even on paper (MVP: don’t worry, be crappy); removing bruising emotion: screening turns mundane when the idea presented is a mere toe in an ocean of other possibilities; learning how to spot the relevant customer, moving forward from incubation to business unit committed in buy-in, contributing to raise the concept to an high-yelding outcome; starting small, being ready to change, and pivot, and iterating.

2 principles complement BIG framework:

• Managing an innovation portfolio: concurrent incubation of various ideas, generating 10 internal incubations each year, with corresponding funding to let innovation leaders get a busines buy-in or even spin-off ;
• Learning by doing: Marc created a start-up in the mean time, POPwings.

Being a start-up on its own, BIG found itself a vision, summarized in this mantra: ‘Turning ideas into business’.

Assembling previous philosophy pieces, BIG shaped a repeatable process for innovation:

1. Opportunity & ideas generation;
2. Reinforcement;
3. Incubation: early stage then more substantial development involving testing;
4. Business launch.

What results?

Starting with a handful of interships, BIG now runs with 8 employees, internal investment fund, and a demanding timeline of 9 months to prove one’s idea right.

POPwings is one of the first success stories. Other ventures are still classified as confidential.

What learnings?

People are the most important trigger for innovation. They require adequate evaluation and compensation system. Gemalto redesigned its management pyramid to encourage technical skills mobilized for innovation, and foster passionates to follow their creative path. Thus, innovation-savy at the most advanced level, advisor, are akin to a regional manager business position.

Innovation doesn’t thrive out of vacuum: being explicit about innovation prioritary domains for the company is a necessity.

Similarly, innovation soars when collective intelligence is up and running. Activating collaborative research, and tech-communities is the way forward.

To become a reality, innovation can’t limit to a slack intent; it has to be recognized as a key value of the company, an empowering direction, and as such, be supported by the CEO in his communication, budget allocation, and benefit from dedicated goals.

Innovating in a large company  might sound an impossible bet, as it brings risk in an environment which is risk-adverse. Yet BIG whopping adventure proves it wrong: it is henceforth achievable to frame a disruptive innovation process even internally.

Credits: Gemalto, livingwithgod.org, kibodo.com, uthmag.com, geniuskick.com, geniuskick.com

Editor’s note: Innovation budget breakdown can vary a lot across companies. Nevertheless one rule of thumb could be as follows: 5% of Innovation & R&D budget for speculative or disruptive ideas, 30% for portfolio renewal, the rest for enhancement and support of current portfolio. Another way to sort it is to differentiate the budget allocated to probes & prototypes, to disruptive intense developments, and to quick wins.

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Margaux Pelen represents the new generation of French graduates: concurrently to HEC Business School master, she completed a Tech master at Telecom Paris, fulfilling her ‘geek’ fiber. Then, rather than integrating some prestigious but somehow mundane financial organization or consulting firm, she cofounded a start-up, Home’n’go, leveraging ‘open data’ to help you select your future home. She has been a fearless entrepreneur ever since. Her track lead her to Africa, visiting soaring Kenyan innovation hubs iHub and m:lab, and melting into African start-up ecosystem.

Margaux Pelen shares with us some learnings from her experience in Africa

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Iris Yuster is an experienced designer, delivering innovative apps for mobile and multiscreen, leveraging personalized recommendations for content as well as for shopping.

What is unique about Iris is her ability to combine social understanding of user behaviour with interaction design (UX) skills.

One of the most important keys to the success of an App is the understanding of user behavior. A company can have the most advanced technology and a great idea but if the front-end interface implementation is too complicated, annoying or poor from the perspective of the end user, then user satisfaction is low and the company’s expectations for revenues can’t be realized.

Planning an App involves analyses of: business goals, technological capabilities, and potential user behavior. The right combination of these three components creates the formula for success.

User Behavior

This field has been researched years before the App world was born. The ability to translate behavior theories into a successful App interface is the challenge. In this post I will give some insights into this analytical process with a specific example.

The Idea: Mobile Shopping App

Expanding The Web-To-Store Strategy

Although most purchases are still made in bricks-and-mortar stores the shopping experience starts before this. This is the strategy named Web-To-Store: users browse the web to prepare for their visit by checking store location, product details, promotions and more. Mobile phones have greatly expanded that phenomena from being implemented “before” to “during and after” an in-store visit, since users have the ability to browse the web anytime, anywhere.  The leading retail companies have realized that in order to create a new revenue stream and increase customers’ loyalty they must have a Mobile Shopping App of their own.

Today there are several Mobile Shopping Apps in the retail market that enable direct access to related shopping information (for example, “users reviews”) and actions (for example, “Add to shopping list”).

When entering store, Macy iBeacon
sends reminder to open the Shopping App

Macy iBeacon reminder

The main challenges of these Apps are:

1. Relevancy – send real-time personalized offers;
2. Quality – of shopping services and product information;
3. User experience – easy-to-use and intuitive flows that support “Buying Decision”.

Technology Uniqueness Aspect

The Mobile Shopping App in this case study has a personalization engine, which enables the detection of specific user buying behavior and with that, sends relevant offers, special cross sale and up sale, a personalized shopping list, quick checkout without waiting in a queue and more.

Another important component is the analysis of the users of this App and how they can benefit from it.

The “Shoppers” Analysis

The shoppers’ characteristics can be analyzed at different levels: Demographic – such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, geographic location, family status etc. This level of analysis is important although it’s limited as the users’ groups are treated as segments so it does not necessarily reflect their shopping behavior.

Daily Routine – Users have different journeys, the goal is to choose the most attractive users targeted for the retailer and to illustrate App usage patterns while they are shopping.

We need to understand what happens to the user from the moment he opens the App until the time he decides to tap “Buy”, “Download”, or any other revenue- related action.

Shopping behavior – Shoppers have different types of behavior while shopping such as:

1. Goal Oriented – know exactly what they are looking for
2. Browsers – check for different options
3. Socially Oriented – follow friends and other people’s shopping   activities
4. Explorers – like to see what’s new and to learn more about each product

These different types of behavior are influential factors in App usage as each type has special needs and expectations.

Cognitive Process during Shopping

A user’s cognitive process for “Buying Decision” includes components such as motivation, evaluation and selection. The Shopping App should support this cognitive process and should be planned to minimize the effort and time to make a “Buying Decision”. The longer the process takes, the higher the probability the user will abandon the App.

How to translate it into a successful App?

Taking everything into account we have to deal with the challenge to translate analysis into practice. We know that we have different types of user behavior, we understand their expectations and their special needs, and now we must find a way to fulfill all that with a single App. Is it possible? Although it’s challenging I know it is.

For example:

1. “Socially Oriented” users make their “Buying Decision” based on their friends’ shopping; therefore they need clear access to their friends’ shopping recommendations;
2. “Goal Oriented” users who are focused on their predefined shopping list would benefit from recommendations related to products on this list;
3. “Browsers” can get lost without access to relevant personal recommendations, based on their purchase history and like-minded users. Maximizing the usage is possible by planning an App with the right balance and layout of these options, and to allow each user to find his personal path in the App.

Therefore it is very powerful to use recommendation engine in the right places in the App, and for the right users.

• For example, adding social recommendations for a product in the “Goal oriented” path could have miscorrelation with the main need of quick checkout, and might prevent purchase;
• While having the same recommendation in the “Social Oriented” path will lead to an impulse purchase.

Maximizing the usage is possible by planning an App with the right balance and layout of these options, and to allow each user to find his personal path in the App.

Mobile shopper app by Retalix

To sum up, the Mobile Shopping App case study demonstrates the various aspects that need to be analyzed and integrated in a single App in order to be the leader in a strongly competitive market. The understanding of user behavior and the ability to translate it into a simple adaptive interface is the key to creating the App that users would want and use.

image credits: apprine.com; 3degreesagency.com, canadiangrocer.com

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Inside Innovation: real world experience from innovation practitioners

I’d like to introduce you to Koen Boeykens, a talented innovation expert, focused on “getting things done”. He was a member of the Strategy & Innovation team at KPN as a C-level consultant. He shares with us some thoughtful takeaways from this creative venture.

Within KPN we tried on a very small scale to launch rapid innovation, but we didn’t get everything right.

Organisation & process

First of all a Strategy & Innovation department had to be established. Focus of the department was: coming up with new services & solutions for KPN. There were a couple of teams within this department, amongst others the User Experience team, whose I was part of.

Within this team we strove to build prototypes of solutions that customers really wanted. The process would be as follows, and ideally would take less than 4 months

1. first we would think of a concept of the new service; not in splendid solitude, but in common workshops with all stakeholders: business innovators, marketers, developers, project managers, external innovation consultants, and user experience experts;
2. next step would be to make a first paper design, essentially a text description of what we think would be the concept;
3. this would then be tested with users. Basically we would interview customers on the challenges they see, and how they could possibly be solved;
4. then we would explain/show them our first concept, and record their responses;
5. concept would be adapted, designing and developing would start;
6. several iteration cycles of steps 1-5 were needed;
7. “final” concept was designed, and developed.

Note: designers and developers were external to KPN, and contributing to the solution, they were not just executing. It was basically a whole thought process where the concept evolves, and gets influenced by all contributors. Nevertheless the original integrated vision of our team always prevails.

What happens next is that we would arrange timeslots with the KPN executives (Board level). In general they have always been extremely enthousiastic. What’s even more energizing is that the, no disrespect meant, lowest hierarchical level of employees, meaning employees with no team or P&L management responsibilities, were always very lyrical as well. They see and understand that in order to differentiate as a Telco, integrated solutions need to be implemented, adding value by intelligently combining  several unique products.

Large-scale Implementation

So basically all seemed to be set to start execution, but then it failed. Apparently the middle layers of management acted as an extremely thick layer of clay. A phenomenon which seems to be the case in several large multinational companies.

Middle managers simply cannot, and don’t want to cope with the implementation of radical disruptive innovations. They have targets to achieve, and those targets are on the edge, meaning they don’t have brain time to spend on implementing innovations with a high-risk profile. They go for the easy bet: create a feature roadmap, and manage the timely execution of those features within budget. Next to that there’s of course always the political environment: nobody wants to lose his neck by asking for more or challenging the present product/solution portfolio.

So the result is that the existing product/solution only gets tweaked a little by implementing some features that are being captured from our integrated concept. But the concept as such, which only bears the radical benefits when implemented as a whole, is ignored.

Lessons learnt

Even when the CEO is enthousiastic, test-users/customers delighted, and the innovation engineers on the floor ready, there’s a strong buy-in needed from middle-management. This buy-in can only be realized if those people get the necessary space in their yearly objectives for radical innovations, next to the daily routine of continuously improving existing portfolios.  They would need an innovation target, next to their standard “going-concern” yearly targets.

In fact an alternative proposed solution from our side was to launch a parallel, separate product line, to implement the radically new solutions. Within KPN we would have the luxury then to position those solutions in the market through XS4ALL, the most advanced brand within the KPN group, known for it’s early innovator public. If not successful, we would know that we should not launch them with our mainstream brands. If successful, however we could gradually “copy or transplant”  those innovations to our cost-effective mass supply chains.

The end

Nevertheless we did not succeed to influence the organization as such that those organizational changes could become effective. Almost all of our projects, however excitedly received by most people, failed to be implemented. For this reason it has been decided to dismantle the Strategy & Innovation department, effective immediately beginning of the summer, 2013.

image credits: philmckinney-com, c-level verifiedaudit.com, thefreedomchase.com, paperpastries.blogspot.com, constracompa.com

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.