(Increased Value of Innovation cont. 1)

Innovate by Reimagining Activities

It is a change of activity to reinvent tactics used to pursue a strategy; a pressing need to innovate around achieving goals; eliminating aspects of the previous experience which customers dislike and a focus on factors that are important to the customer; use of creative thinking, ie thinking outside the box (for more detail, see elsewhere in the Knowledge Base).

"...Rather than ignoring the current frames of reference of your business......deliberately expanding them so as to encourage lateral thinking......one key technique is to unbundle the customer experience into pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase components in order to identify the elements most enjoyed by customers and other stakeholders, and......those aspects that evoke ambivalence or dislike. This allows the reimagination efforts to be focused on targeted improvements to the customer experience..."
Tom Hunsaker et al, 2021a

This can be used to identify operating costs that are not improving customer experience; by eliminating these costs can free up capital for other investments.

Some examples:

- Capital One (reinvented its car loan business by developing an app that integrated car selection, buying, etc)

- Netflix (transitioning from a DVD-by-mail business to a streaming service)

- Adobe and Microsoft (moving from software sales models to monthly subscription businesses)

- Walmart (evolving from physical to omni-channel retail)

- Amazon (expanding into physical retailing with its Whole Food acquisition and launch of Amazon Go)