My wife handed me a full page ad today of Post cereal’s ad campaign that started I believe last month. The headline: ”Innovation is not your friend.” The tag line: ”We put the ‘no’ in innovation”
Certainly an attention grabber. It certainly caught me off guard on first glance. And I don’t think anyone will be clamoring to steal that tag line from them.
But there is certainly something to the campaign. We live in a world of innovation, innovation is taking place everywhere around us: genetics, new sources of energy, the web, sneakers that blink, sneakers that roll, beer that tastes like it has lime already in it… While innovation is great and the right thing for many companies and products, is that always the case?
Too many times we see companies fall into the trap of innovating to create the next new thing that they lose sight of what got them where they are. Worrying too much about what is next rather than concentrating on their core competency and ensuring that they maintain their competitive advantage simply (or not so simply). Sometimes, remaining the best in your space and at “what you do” needs to be the focus.
I’ll always be a believer in being on the outlook for new markets, new features (that add value), new technology trends and understanding what could disrupt your business. At the same time, focus must remain on the core, this campaign speaks volumes to how companies need to remain focused on the core knitting. Just in the time its taken me to write this post, I like this ad more and more. And it is just a bonus for Post that I don’t believe anyone is going to try to mimic this campaign. How ironic. An innovative ad campaign saying ‘no’ to innovation.
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Posted in: business, innovation, strategy.
Tagged: cereal · innovation · Post Shredded Wheat
In case you are interested, I wrote a guest blog post over at Slice of MIT on the Masdar Institute as a follow-up to my post on the Masdar Initiative taking place in Abu Dhabi. The Masdar Institute is going to serve as the epicenter of learning, innovation and venture creation on green concepts, processes and technologies.
Slice of MIT is a new blog that is out discussing (or should I say “giving a small taste”) of MIT life, happenings and what is going on with MIT and alumni. I’ve been an active reader for the past couple of weeks and it gives a good perspective on the things going on around campus. Enjoy.
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Posted in: Uncorrelated.
Tagged: Masdar Initiative · Massachusetts Institute of Technology · MIT · Slice of MIT
Reading the latest issue of the MIT Technology Review and there is a good article about the Masdar Initiative. I find it hard to not root for success of the project: A $15B investment in aims to create a zero emissions city, a green metropolis as they refer to it. If you haven’t read about the project, I recommend the article as it gives a good outline of how big they are thinking. Common sense says that it is hard to imagine the project achieving success but then curiosity and hope make you root for it. And the ancillary benefit I really am intrigued about this project is that there will be an immense amount of industrial and green environmental learning from not only the results but the planning and construction of such an initiative. Kevin Bullis wrote an editorial covering the project and echos this sentiment:
One of the best things about the project–which I’ll write about more in the coming days–is that it provides a much needed way to test ideas for renewable energy and efficiency at a large scale. The hope is that the technology tested here can be applied throughout the world.
Bullis is concerned about some of the applicability of learning due to the climate conditions of the region. This is true but I tend to believe if you can achieve a degree of success and learning in the harshest of conditions where energy consumption is necessary at high levels, surely one benefits where the challenges are less intense. Nonetheless, I love to see the “big bet” thinking here. I recently wrote about the renewable energy grid that has been discussed, another “big bet” project. This is what it is going to take to make huge strides in innovation, particularly in this market sector. It is great to see Dubai who has placed other big bets in a variety of other projects place such a bet on getting a project off the ground where the world can benefit from what it learns; it could be a big step in the right direction.
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Posted in: clean tech, innovation.
Tagged: Construction · Dubai · Energy · innovation · Masdar Initiative · MIT Technology Review
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