Market Intelligence for Product Innovation

“We value customer input during the innovation process very highly. It is easy to make some wrong assumptions about what clients will value or not. It is important to gather a comprehensive understanding of our clients’ reactions,” said Tommi Tikka.

Background on Itella Innovations

Plans to open postal operations within the European Union to full competition by 2011 have been both a blessing and a challenge to Itella. Not only will the Finland-based service provider be able to expand its services beyond national borders, it will also have to face new competition. In early 2008, the forward-looking company set up a special unit named Itella Innovations, with the unique role of driving innovation and harnessing the creativity of its 31,700 plus workforce.

Interviewed for this case is Tommi Tikka, who heads the Itella Innovations unit within the corporate strategy function at the services provider.

Tips on using MI for Product Innovation and Process Management

Tommi provided a very useful list of suggestions on how best to use Market Intelligence for Product Innovation:

1. Give your research partner a thorough brief, concerning what is expected and what you plan to do with the findings. As an example, a different understanding of just the term “innovation” can lead to very different results in say, a benchmarking study to evaluate your company’s level of innovation verses your competitors.

2. Always make sure you ask for a definition of the key driving forces for any market you are evaluating.

3. There is no fixed method for innovation process development. You are learning all the time. Having a good research partner helps, because they can help you accelerate your learning process and innovation process evolution.

For this and the full case study, please click here to download the study in PDF format.

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