A new year, a new business?
Commercialisation strategies for the green market
There is an ever growing focus on green business due to increasing consumer demand. Events like the recent Climate Conference in Copenhagen create an even greater world wide awareness.
Large American enterprises like Wal-Mart and DELL have recognised that green business is the future and are joining projects to help consumers identify “green” electronics (source: http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/19627). Scott O’Connell, environmental strategist at Dell recently said: “Customers tell us they want to purchase electronics that have a minimal impact on our planet. This is an effort to help them do that using a common methodology that manufacturers across the industry participate in”.
SME’s (small and medium sized enterprises) have an advantage in this race, being more agile and hence able to change strategy and processes within a shorter time span. This being said, it is not an easy process to re-structure your whole business concept. But since major retailers are re-structuring, why shouldn’t you?
On Friday, February 12th you have the opportunity to participate in a workshop, that can dress you for climbing the ladder towards the green market.
These are some of the questions that will be brought up by the people behind the workshop: consultant company in sustainable business, futurestrategy, the “green” PR agency sieben&siebzig and agency for consumer sociology, OC EO CONSULT.
Throughout the one-day workshop core themes of the process of succesfull commercialisation of green products and services will be presented and discussed.
- Trade innovation
- Concierge Retailing & Pop Up Retailing
- Bottom-up-approach – best practices
- Open Source & Bazaar Marketing
- Public Relations for Green Lifestyle
- The Foundation of Sustainable Communication (PR)
- Guerilla-Marketing
The workshop participants will gain insight in green business and be provided with the proper tools for entering the green market. Learn how to create new business concepts, approach a new target group and develop commercialisation strategies.
Find more information and sign up for the event here.
This week the magazine New Business brought an article about future strategy
See the article about the new initiative future strategy that support companies to develop green business concepts and which framework identity is part of.
5 questions about fi
Following a discussion of how easy or hard it is to understand what goes on at fi and what our focus is, I decided to take on the role as an outsider and interview managing director Pia Betton for a few quick answers:
First of all: what’s the difference between innovation and creativity?
Creativity is an ability to change the usual perspectives on a situation or a challenge and through doing so, coming up with new ideas.
Innovation is a good idea that works. If it doesn’t work, it is an idea or an invention. In order for innovation to deserve the title, it needs to be viable (technology, processes, logistics), profitable and attractive. In this case attractive is defined as covering a need, solving a problem, saving time, opening up for new possibilities etc.
What methods do you most often apply in innovation sessions?
At framework identity we work with very different tools and methods, dependent on the challenge we have. Very often we use visualisation as a great way of creating clarity. A lot of the challenges we get from our customers are about creating clarity and overview. For this, an illustration is much stronger than words. We also use reduction as a very important tool. In today’s very complex world, reducing complexity and finding simple answers create overview. If you have overview, you can work on answers. If a group of people try to find a solution for a challenge that they don’t have a shared understanding of, the chance of finding a common solution is very small.
Managers have very little time. They come unprepared to meetings, because they don’t have the time to create overview. By interviewing people and by analysing the answers we can create an overview that can enable them to make the right decisions within very little time.
So… in other words, the goal is…?
To gain overview, clarity, shared perspectives and enable people to make the right choises
In general, what barriers do you find most important to deal with, when helping a company be more innovative?
To think out of the box, to collect the necessary information both quantity- and quality-wise
Not to work on assumptions
To ask open questions
To ask more questions
To see different solutions, dependent on the choises made
How do you/fi document your innovation-workshop findings?
We document our work very thoroughly. That is important for the next steps in the process. We also filter out all the most important decisions and key challenges and focus on them when analysing the results. We give clear recommendations for the next steps