We just came back from an innovation session kindly hosted by W.L. Gore and Associates (best known by consumers for the GORE-TEX fabric). We spent a half day discussing the challenges of pre-funnel product and service innovation, and we were treated to a tour of Gore’s Capabilities Center.
One of the big lessons for me was the importance of organizing for innovation – but not the way you think. Yes, one of the big questions we hear is about organizational structure, but what became clear during our session was that changing the way you look at your world, including your existing products and services and assumed customer needs, is a critical step to being more creative — even more than how you organize your people.
Here are two examples from the day:
1) The Gore Capabilities Center
In addition to being a beautiful space and a showcase of W.L. Gore’s innovative products, the capabilities center is a place Gore engineers go to spark ideas about new products. Why? Because of how they organize their products in the space.
Almost all Gore’s products start with a polymer called polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE. It’s also known as Teflon. The founder Bill Gore discovered a way to make expanded PTFE, or ePTFE, and it turns out to have many useful properties: it’s insulating, has low friction, has low flammability and is biocompatible, among other things. So GORE-TEX fabric takes advantage of the fact that the material is lightweight and allows air out but doesn’t let water in. Gore’s heart patches take advantage of the fact that the material is biocompatible. PTFE coated wires take advantage of the fact that the material is insulating.
Employees tend to think about the products by the way the company is organized (or not organized, as the case may be – Gore is also a fascinating case study in unusual organizational design). So they have medical products, industrial products, fabrics, etc.
But the capabilities center reorganizes and reclassifies the company’s products by what capabilities they take advantage of: physical, biological, electromagnetic, etc. This way an industrial application and space shuttle parachute may be grouped together, because both take advantage of the lightweight nature of ePTFE. This simple change makes unusual links between products, and that sparks creative ideas.
2) Touchpoint mapping versus jobs and outcomes
One of MLC’s most popular cases – about understanding customer needs – is fundamentally about reclassifying as well. It says that instead of starting with customer touchpoints (for example, a running shoe) and collecting customer feedback (“the sole wears down too quickly”), marketers need to understand what job the customer is trying to accomplish (run a marathon) and the outcomes they need (reduced risk of injury). Then instead of creating incremental improvement (a shoe with a thicker sole), you can find truly under-served needs (a training community staffed by physical therapists).
There’s a lot more to it – MLC members, it’s worth a look over or we’re happy to talk you through it – but at the core it means that how you look at customer needs matters – instead of looking through the lens of your existing products or services, you need to understand customer activities and the metrics they use to judge value.
Same customers, same needs exploration, different organizing principle. That’s how you organize for innovation.
MLC members, join us for an upcoming innovation session to learn how to apply these lessons to your organization.
Related posts:
Commenting Guidelines
We hope conversations will be energetic, constructive, and provocative. All posts will be reviewed by our editors and may be edited for clarity, length, and relevance.
We ask that you adhere to the following guidelines.
1. No selling of products or services.
2. No ad hominem attacks. These are conversations in which we debate ideas. Criticize ideas, not the people behind them.