Speaker Preaches Value of Innovation (News)

John Pollack
Telegraph Journal

Business: Ohio-based CEO tells audience you can make money regardless of the industry if you stay ahead of the curve.

FREDERICTON - If you're not unique you better be cheap. This is one of the main messages Doug Hall had for a Fredericton business crowd at a breakfast speech Friday.

The founder and chief executive of Cincinnati-based business consulting firm Eureka! Ranch, was trying to show the audience how they can be innovative to make more money regardless of what industry they are in or what their financial situation is.

"Innovation is meaningful uniqueness, which means customers are willing to pay more for your offer," he said.

If a company doesn't clearly communicate what sets them apart from the competition, the only hope is to be cheaper, he said.

For companies that are neither unique nor cheaper, Hall said, they need to stop whining about falling profits and start innovating.

"Organizations that focus on innovation are twice as likely to have above average profits," he said.

But innovating doesn't mean starting from scratch, because on average it takes six years for a brand new product to take off, he said.

"We need to take current capabilities and adapt to new products and new markets," he said, adding it will create a cycle that will encourage new innovations.

He used the example of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), which took its iTunes music program for its Mac brand computers and applied the software to the iPod, which broadened the market and led to the iPhone, which led to the App store, which allows the company to take a cut of the profits from software other companies develop for the iPhone.

But it's not just large companies like Apple that can do this, Hall said.

"It may not make sense to ship something around the world, but you can invent it and patent it," he said, adding the royalty checks will eventually start rolling in.

But new ideas don't come from just continuing everyday business, Hall said, they come from being exposed to outside influences that will stimulate creative thinking.

Once you have the idea, Hall said, you have to figure out what the possible "death threats," would be to the idea as a business and come up with ways to get around it.

"It doesn't need to be a two-year-long process," said Doug Motty, chief executive of Enterprise Fredericton, the group that brought Hall in for the speech. "It's something that if your senior team and your organization work through, you can very quickly find out if that is a good idea or not."

Ideally, Hall said, addressing the death threats should be done in a day.

Motty heard about Hall in part because Eureka! Ranch recently opened an office in Charlottetown, and thought he had a good message for companies looking to develop new markets and products.

Ryan Veino, a senior consultant with OnX Enterprise Solutions Ltd., a value-added reseller of information technologies, said Hall brought up some good points.

"We're seeing the same thing, people who aren't innovating are failing," he said. "This gave us some ideas, especially the little business card idea where, you need to have something on it that's very clear and simple to your customers what you do different, how you're innovating, how you're changing."