All innovation is initiated because of an external force that causes people to want to change what they are doing for one of four reasons. These reasons are known as innovation triggers. This slide deck explains those triggers.

1. Innovation Triggers
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2. The key to successfully
marketing innovation
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Understand how companies
and people innovate

3. New product failure Rates
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• In the US 30,000 new products are created per year
• 70-90% failure rate
• 47% New mover failure rate

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5. 12% Success rate in venture
capital backed companies
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• 1500 get financing annually
• 350 are sold
• But of those 350 only 26% get a greater than 4 times return
• 50 go public
• That’s a 12% success rate

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Innovation fails mostly
due to the lack of a
market.
There is no market for a
product if there are no
triggers to innovation, if
there are barriers to that
innovation, or if you
aren’t differentiated
enough from the
competition.

7. Your Success
is dependent on overcoming human’s
natural tendency not to innovate.
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8. There must be an External Force
Pushing People to Innovate
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All innovation is initiated
because of an external
force that causes people
to want to change what
they are doing for one of
four reasons.
These reasons are known
as innovation triggers.

9. Regulatory triggers
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Some triggers are created
by regulation. When the
government or a group of
which you are a member
creates a regulation, you
must innovate to follow that
regulation.

10. Strategic or societal triggers
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Some triggers exist because
of what your competition or
society is doing. When the
competition is winning in the
marketplace you have to
innovate to stay with them or
beat them.
Societal pressure also forces
people to innovate
personally.

11. Operational and technological
triggers
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When companies grow they
need to change how they
do things in order to support
that growth. This is an
operational trigger to
innovation.
Changes in the availability of
technology also require
companies and people to
innovate in order to stay
current.

12. Financial
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Finally, if it still has time and
capital available,
companies will invest money
to save money.
This is the last thing they will
do in order of priority
because all other problems
are more important.
The external force here is the
shareholder who wants a
greater return.

13. What you see as a problem,
they might not see as one
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If you’re selling a product,
everyone will ask you what
problem you’re trying to
solve.
Well you might see a
problem but if others don’t
see it that way, you are not
solving a recognized
problem.

14. Someone must own the problem
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So if people recognize there is a
problem, is there someone in the
company who owns the problem?
There are lots of problems that
companies have but the way they
think or strategic priorities may mean
that there is no one responsible for
solving the problem.
If there isn’t someone responsible for
solving the problem then you have no
one to sell to.

15. The problem owner must wake
up everyday trying to solve that
problem
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Even with someone responsible for
solving the problem, they may already
have a good enough solution.
It may not be as good as your solution
but they may think it good enough for
now. That’s why Excel is used in so
many applications instead of
databases.
The person responsible must be waking
up every day trying to solve the
problem if you want to get anywhere.

16. They have to have a budget
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I have come to believe that the most
important thing to identify in creating a
company is finding a customer with a
budget.
If a company doesn’t have a budget
for what you want to sell and will take a
long time getting a budget then you’ll
have a slow start, whether or not you
get VC financing.

17. Without an external trigger
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People will not be looking to innovate
so you will not connect with them.
You will end up with a product in
search of a market

18. Before you build a product, find
out what their triggers are and
how you can use their triggers to
help you change their behavior
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19. In addition to triggers
There are barriers to
innovation and
competitive forces you
must overcome to
succeed.
But more of those issues
in another slide deck.
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20. material minds
We help technology entrepreneurs innovate,
communicate and execute.
We focus on helping improve business processes that
require an in-depth understanding of human behavior
for them to be effective.
We provide Business Advisory Services, Workshops and
speak at events.
Charles Plant
cplant (at) materialminds.com
@cplant
416.458.4850
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