A common question from customers is, “How do we become more innovative?”
In response, Teradata’s Bill Franks and Emdeon’s Kyle Cheek simplified the innovation process on Tuesday at SAS Global Forum by breaking it down into three steps:
- Break out of the box.
- Ride the ripple effects.
- Align all eyes on the target.
Those steps can still sound a little daunting, especially if breaking out of the box is hard for you. So, Bill opened up the “Silly Bandz, Jibbitz and Copernicus” session with a fun example – proving that innovation doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as a fake flower stuck in a kid’s shoe. Ever heard of Jibbitz? Maybe not, unless you’re a parent of a toddler (like me!).
Jibbitz became a reality thanks to the creation of Crocs. A stay-at-home mom working on crafts with her kids noticed that her daughter got a silk flower stuck in one of the holes of the rubbery shoes. It actually looked cute, so she and her daughters stuck other decorative items in the holes for fun. From that random incident, Jibbitz were created in 2005, and then sold to Crocs a year later for $20 million!!
Similarly, Silly Bandz were not created to be a toy. A Japanese design team wanted to introduce a more environmentally-sustainable rubber band due to the number of rubber bands thrown away in offices. Designing them out of silicone made them more sustainable, and creating them in fun shapes made them too appealing to toss. Robert Croak (aka distributor of Livestrong wristbands) found them on a business trip and saw an opportunity to repurpose them as a toy and market them as a kids’ fashion accessory, and a million-dollar idea was born. These are examples of how one innovative idea can have a very lucrative ripple effect.
While not every idea will result in such large monetary gains, we should all challenge ourselves to take chances and be more innovative. Every single employee within a company should have “innovator” on their business card – it’s not a one man job. Copernicus says, “Don’t be a Flea!”
Do you or your colleagues regularly test the box that you’re in? Boxes are built to create structure and consistency. And, while discipline is needed in many situations, sometimes it can impose limitations that are too strict. For example, Bill explained how you can put a bunch of fleas in a jar with no top, and they’ll jump out. When you put them back in the jar with a lid on top, they’ll quickly realize they can’t jump out, no matter how hard they try. After a while, you can take the lid off, but the fleas have stopped jumping any higher because they refuse to look up and see that there’s no lid. This underscores one of Copernicus’ beliefs that if the assumptions you have about what you’re doing are wrong, you will not make any difference or create any relevant results. You have to push yourself to test the ‘obvious’ and see if there’s really a lid on top of that jar!
Sometimes it can be tough being the innovator if everyone around you is stuck inside their jar, refusing to look up to see if there’s a lid. In order to get everyone aligned to the same goal, it’s important to set a common vision, establish clear priorities and tie the activity to incentives in order to motivate folks to test their limits. Your choice of priorities will change your outcome.
Find the right target, not the easy one!
Bill mentioned a restaurant that was working hard to stay ahead of its local competition. The owner came up with an innovative way to do this – beyond just $2 happy hours during the week. He offered a free birthday party – including complimentary food and drinks – for up to 10 guests. Here’s the catch: the birthday boy had to provide him with 25 new names for his customer database AND link him with 25 new Facebook friends. Not a bad deal for a free birthday party! The ripple effect? In a fairly short amount of time, not only did the owner significantly increase customer loyalty, but his customer database grew exponentially!
We all know change is hard, but it’s necessary.
Fun stuff. But how does this apply to data innovation?
Emdeon’s Kyle Cheek related to many in the room when he talked about how difficult it can be to innovate if you’re not in the Jibbitz business but rather, in an industry like his: healthcare. For Kyle – and most of the audience – being innovative is difficult when you’re dealing with something more obscure, like massive amounts of data, instead of something more marketable or catchy with a mainstream consumer audience.
Data has unique challenges. Recently, the challenge with data is that it’s now less about data quality and more about data volume. We’ve seen data increase more in the last 3 years than in the previous 40,000 years combined! We are at a place now where we’re talking about zettabytes (1 billion terabytes) – and in 1999 we thought it was preposterous that we’d even get to terabytes, much less exabytes and now zettabytes!
Kyle pointed out that we have more access to more data than ever before; yet, we’re more susceptible than ever to lapses in medical coverage or health insurance fraud. It all boils down to not knowing what to do with all that data. You have to know how to manage it the right way.
Finding innovative ways to handle the data deluge may not be as simple as sticking a silk flower into your shoe, or hosting free birthday parties at the local bar. But, Kyle and Bill did outline a few ways that companies can innovate:
- Data warehousing
- Cloud computing
- Advanced analytics
- In-database analytics
Both Kyle and Bill spent some time highlighting the unique capabilities that in-database analytics can offer companies wanting to be more innovative. In-database analytics help free a company’s capacity so analysts can do something else that will drive greater innovation. By moving analytic processes inside the database, and reducing data movement, data can be processed hundreds of times faster, and more accurately – providing more accurate results. Faster access to more accurate results can mean more innovative ideas for your business.
Remember:
- Break out of the box.
- Ride the ripple effects.
- Align all eyes on the target.
Analytics may not have predicted the sillybandz fashion craze. But, analytics can help you figure out how to market those critters appropriately, and keep up with the demand and changing trends – making you the next overnight millionaire. So, dream big!
For more examples of how SAS is innovating with its partners through in-database analytics, advanced analytics – and now high-performance analytics – be sure to check out the latest news from SAS Global Forum!
