When it comes to innovation, start-ups are becoming the haunt of major corporations: how can they move as fast as start-ups, without taking the same risks? Because while start-ups have (almost) nothing to lose - apart from their business angels' money - the same cannot be said of age-old multinationals.
However, because of their inability to innovate - or to keep up with consumer expectations - some giants have closed (or almost closed) their doors, from Kodak and Nokia to BlackBerry and Moulinex.
However, let's not forget that while the resources put in place by start-ups sometimes lead to real success, in France almost one start-up in 2 (44%) closes its doors before celebrating its 3rd anniversary.th birthday.
The companies "Traditional will then develop various strategies, the 1era which consists of creating its own incubators to enable innovative start-ups to emerge in its fold, with the potential to effectively disrupt their markets. Moonshot Internet within the Société Générale Group.
The second approach is to copy start-ups by adopting aggressive techniques such as growth hacking, the problem being that only highly responsive SMEs really succeed in applying these techniques... with all the inherent risks.
Another approach is hybridization, which involves not just transposing start-up methods, but adapting some of the lessons they teach, as in the case of lean start-up. lean = lean - theorised about ten years ago by Eric Ries in The lean startup: how today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.
In one of the latest issues of Research worldmagazine, theEsomardedicated to "radical innovation, Selin CetinelliUnilever Consumer and Market Insight Director, explains why and, above all, how the multinational is taking inspiration from the recipes that have made start-ups so successful.
We discover that lean startup combines, in a rather strange way, rules that have contributed to the success of start-ups : " Encourage a curious, experimental culture " and others, more specific to the giants of yesterday: "Choose the right KPIs/ benchmarks in order to evaluate your success"..
Above all, and this is the key difference, the approach is based on consumer insights: "The Build phase starts with an idea - there needs to be a problem worth solving. Problems can be functional, emotional or social " - whereas start-ups usually start with a solution, usually a technological one ... without too often asking the question of its usefulness for the end consumer!
The 1era reason for the failure of start-ups, as we are reminded by Selin Cetinellicomes from the fact that they offer "something nobody wants and in another article, Patricia Dominguez d'Inciterecalls the unfortunate example of "Google Glasses technological performance is not enough!
Whatever the approach, an innovation that isn't based on relevant Insight will never work - unless it's a breakthrough innovation, but that's probably the exception that proves the rule ... and even then!
