Can innovation be bad?

Innovation is seen to be a life-changing role in any business. Innovation is often used to move companies out of the negative and into positive positions. To move a company from one place to another whether that place is figuratively such as creating new products to move into a new niche or innovating the way a business process works to move a business into a new location however innovation in business isn’t always beneficial because innovation often takes a lot of time and effort in just the planning stages without the time and financial investment needed to launch. 

 

Coca-Cola is one of the best-known soft drinks on the market with a huge market share of 31% in the non-alcoholic ready-to-drink sector however in 1985 when they started to lose market share. Blind taste tests suggested that their customers preferred the sweeter taste found in brands such as Pepsi therefore Coke decided to reformulate the taste of the coke recipe that had been in production since the company was founded in 1909. However the ‘New Coke’ flavour was met with significant backlash, the backlash was mainly in Southern states of America who looked on at Coke as if it was part of their regional identity. 

 

Coke had the opportunity to backtrack on its decision to change however often small businesses aren’t in the same position, for small businesses to make decisions to innovate or to test a new product or service they must have a method to measure the success of their test if they aren’t able to measure the test and have no significant metrics to observe then they may be making the best possible changes but will be unaware of the success. 

 

This is often an innovation cycle where you design, prototype, validate and then decide whether to continue or not however it is key that metrics are carefully tracked to identify the positive and negative outcomes of the innovation cycle. This is often left to an individual who has other duties within the business such as the owner who is required to manage teams, manage clients, sort payroll, chase late payments and all the other duties of a business owner. 

 

By sourcing a company like Bailey Dean, we are able to help innovate and track metrics on your behalf providing reports when you feel is required to keep you most in the loop.