Many innovators are familiar with the concept of the “ten types” of innovation developed by Doblin. If you aren’t familiar with the model, it describes different potential outcomes for innovation, beyond “product” innovation.
Doblin’s ten types includes innovation outcomes based on channels, business models, services, customer experiences and other factors.
As a fan of the model, I return to it and reference it constantly, because far too many innovators narrow their focus and only create new product innovations, when markets and customers are clearly interested in much broader and more diverse innovations.
But as a fan of the ten types model I can also see some of its shortcomings, and one of those is its lack of “depth”. The ten types model expands the perspective of innovation in terms of breadth – from a single outcome called “product” to a range or spectrum of offering types. But the model lacks definition around “depth” – building a description of a platform or ecosystem of innovation.
There are significant differences between the ecosystems we might consider. Let’s reflect a little here, some recap and explore some further thoughts.
In case you were hibernating or out of range of cell cover or WiFi during the last few days, you know that Amazon has made an offer to acquire Whole Foods.
It had to come to this eventually. The emergence of Blockchain and distributed ledger systems illustrates how innovation is moving from focus on products and services, which are interesting but don’t provide a long-lasting competitive advantage, to a focus on platforms and ecosystems.
Our experiences determine to a large degree, success or failure. When you are reliant on others to collaborate and exchange knowledge, for the better good, you need to make sure there is a consistent validation process.
Jeffrey wrote a recent post “