Idea and Innovation Blog

The following example is a case study among many highlighting why outside innovations can have such a hard time gaining traction.

When I was a sophomore at college, I had an idea for a portable toothbrush.  The value proposition was to enable consumers to connect a toothpaste tube to the shaft of this new toothbrush, fill it with product and when desired slide the shaft forward thereby pushing the toothpaste through the bristles. With a handy (and presumably sanitary)  cap over the bristles, users could now have the convenience of brushing on-the-go without the hassle. I thought the idea was good, so I approached my Marketing 350 teacher about it – he happened to contemporaneously be in product marketing (for a different brand category) at the Canadian division of J&J® and arranged for me to meet with his boss, the group product manager. So far so good. The latter was intrigued by my idea’s potential and arranged for me to meet with the production manager for Reach Toothbrushes™ in another part of the country – we were making good progress. I  went to the plant and met with the production manager – he was very focused on producing the Reach toothbrushes that were currently coming-off the line; innovative products were “not part of what he did”. The feedback loop broke-down with this individual, no take-up or recovery structure was in place and the idea faded into the sunset. There was no follow-up mechanism to support the process. Two week ago, while in New York city, I came across product called Colgate Wisp™ – the concept was the same but with a few elegant twists on the execution: the brush was smaller, there was a toothpick at the end of the handle and the toothpaste at the centre of the bristles was a dissolvable gel.

Now through the right input, my original idea had evolved and definitely had been improved – the only problem is that this was done some 20-years later, and worse...BY A DIRECT COMPETITOR (Colgate®). This missed opportunity is not one individual’s fault: there was no Open Innovation structure in place to capitalize on the idea; what we all needed was a mechanism that was agile enough to circumvent the rigid process of product delivery; without interrupting the model that was delivering current value. Had this Open Innovation environment been available and the collaboration and workflow components flexible enough to align with opportunity, J&J could have capitalized on the particular opportunity long ago and potentially become category leader. In the absence of this, the outcome was a lot of money and brand equity left on the table. And a customer that never returned to submit another idea.

Now the question is: in this day and age, how often does your organization still fall prey to the same circumstance?

*The brands mentioned are trademarked to their respective owners.