According to a recent Kalypso white paper on “Best Practices in Collaborative Innovation: How Manufacturers and Retailers Can Profit from Collaborative Innovation”, there is an urgency for collaborative innovation as 95% of companies surveyed felt that collaborative innovation was very important to achieving their business objectives. One respondent even went so far as to say:
If you’re not collaborating, you won’t be around in 20 years. You’ll be gone.
With the global economic crisis driving a changing consumer focus on value, the need to streamline supply chains, and the need for consumer safety, companies are under increasing pressure to simultaneously deliver cost reductions and innovation at a faster pace. However, this is getting harder and harder to do in a vacuum. Hence the need for collaborative innovation.
This is a good thing. When successfulm collaborative innovation between manufacturers and retailers comes with a number of benefits which include:
- differentiation, which makes them more indispensable to the retailer,
- improved focus on consumers across departments and categories, and
- brilliant retail execution
for manufacturers;
- provision of a differentiated shopping experience,
- more “shoppable” stores,
- total shopper solutions,
- improved focus on destination categories, and
- new opportunities for product and brand differentiation
for retailers; and
- shared sales and profit growth,
- better ideas and improved decision making from shared shopper and consumer insights,
- more innovative offerings, and
- reduced rework, improved speed to market, and improved execution
for both parties.
But how do you get there? As Mike Oswalt of Fluor, a global leader in international sourcing and procurement, has astutely noted in the past, collaboration is hard to define. No one can quite put their finger on what it is, or how you get there. Outside of a recent Industry Week article I covered when we discussed the requirements for collaborative innovation, there aren’t many roadmaps. That’s why it was nice to see this white paper discuss four best practices of collaborative innovation which included a planning framework to help you get there.
The best practices of collaborative innovation addressed were:
- Develop a Strategy
The strategy should be focussed on a win-win approach based on categories or brands that are best suited for collaborative planning and that represent the best opportunities. - Collaborative Business Planning
The goal of joint business planning is to align the goals and objectives of both parties around the brands and categories identified as the best opportunities. The iterative process consists of the following steps:- Define the Landscape
- Develop a Growth & Innovation Strategy
- Co-Develop the Joint Business Plan
- Jointly Execute with Brilliance
- Measure, Improve, & Renew
- Get Your House in Order
Internal obstacles — such as management challenges, organizational challenges, and business process challenges — are often the largest roadblocks to executing upon collaborative innovation. Company leadership of both parties must provide support, incentives, and resources and the focus has to be communicated throughout both organizations. - Build a Trusted Relationship
This type of relationship can create a “barrier to entry” for competition as well as provide a competitive advantage as trusted relationships result in greater information sharing, which is a cornerstone of innovation.
Not a bad set of recommendations at all. The report also concludes with some questions to ask in a self-assessment to help you determine if you’re ready for collaborative innovation. You might want to check them out.