by Erich Joachimsthaler
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Product Description
Companies must innovate to grow, but they often forget to look beyond their own brands. Take Sony, for example. Its success with consumer innovations like the Walkman blinded it to obvious changes in how, when, and where people wanted their music. Apple capitalized on those changes in demand with the iPod, providing a new way of listening to music and of managing one's entire music library. This book explains how you can spot these opportunities that are hidden in plain sight. It introduces the demand-first innovation and growth model that will show you how to become an unbiased observer of people's consumption and usage behaviors. Refining this skill helps companies generate organic growth through new products, services, solutions, and experiences that truly enhance peoples' lives. Revealing the innovative processes of such organizations as BMW, Proctor and Gamble, GE Healthcare, and Frito-Lay, Hidden in Plain Sight offers you a new approach to identifying and executing your company's growth strategy.
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Average Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Inspired take on the new marketing, 2008-06-19
This is the first book to take the new market research techniques all the way from the basics of consumer needs all the way to managerial strategy. Without necessarily meaning to, in the process it shows how marketing can get back to its original purpose of serving people's true needs, not just artificially created wants.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
How to prosper by fitting your product to your consumers' lives, 2008-02-14
You need look no further than Starbucks or the iPod to understand Erich Joachimsthaler's take on marketing, innovation and corporate growth. He says that identifying customer need is a surefire recipe for being in a blind spot, and not seeing your biggest opportunities for innovation and growth. Instead of focusing on making a tastier cupcake or a faster automobile, he recommends understanding the serial and behavioral episodes that make up people's lives. Then build on that reasoning when you go to the marketplace. Joachimsthaler offers plenty of business stories as evidence to support his assertion that the leaders of thriving, cutting-edge companies try to understand and analyze the structure, pattern and emotional code of consumer behavior in context. Instead of studying needs and wants, market leaders first study behaviors. Progressive organizations understand the ecosystem of products or services, and how they intersect in the context of episodic behavior to help people take care of what matters to them: their daily projects, tasks and activities. Joachimsthaler assembles a compelling case for innovation and growth. He says the consumer paradigm has shifted from pushing for products to longing for peace of mind. getAbstract says that if you think he's right, this book will leave you with plenty to ponder.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 You are not the buyer, they are, 2008-02-10
Marketing and innovation made really simple. Erich Joachimsthaler says if you want to come up with that "wow!" innovation, learn how your customers live. What they do all day, what their problems are. Put aside your product, your company, your own desires for a moment, and see what people out there are looking for. After all, you are not buying your products, they are. And this is not standard market research: they don't even know or care what products you have. They have lives, and problems, and you'd better know what they are so you can be part of the solution. Then go back to what you've got and see how to help people. That's his theory, and he writes a pretty practical book on how to go about doing it. The only drawback is that his native language (I think) is German, so the English is a bit hard to read: lots of too-long words. But make the effort, and you too can start making other people ask, about your ideas, "Why didn't I think of that?"
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
 Good Thesis - where's the action?, 2007-11-19
I've had a chance to review Erich Joachimsthaler's book "Hidden in Plain Sight", which I've found to be an good book.
First, let me start out by saying that this book is not necessarily a book "about" innovation. This is a book about corporate strategy and what I like to call strategic intent. Hidden in Plain Sight addresses a far-too-common problem - the fact that many firms have become comfortable with their understanding and view of customers from the "inside out". In this manner, many firms have segmented the customer base and determined the specific needs and wants of customers - which is traditional marketing best practice. The problem is that too often this segmentation and understanding of needs is based on the company's perspective of the customers' needs and opportunities, rather than from the perspective of the customers themselves. What happens in these cases is learned myopia and artificial comfort from the fact that we "know" our customers and understand them. Eventually what happens in these cases is that an unexpected competitor disrupts the market because they had a better understanding of the opportunities and challenges the customer faces.
So, what Joachimshtaler proscribes is an "outside in" mentality, combined with a "demand first" innovation model. In the book, he describes how Frito-Lay undertook extensive research to understand how and why people used snack foods - going well beyond traditional quantitative research to understand the reasons behind why people ate what they ate and when they ate. Much of the work Joachimshtaler describes sounds like Voice of the Customer research, although he does not describe it that way. He calls this creating the "demand landscape".
According to Joachimshtaler, Frito Lay was concerned that many of its long held beliefs were being proven incorrect. For example, Frito Lay pioneered the point of purchase rack for its snacks and assumed that most decisions for purchase were based right at the cash register. In watching consumers however, it became clear that was no longer the case. Many individuals ignored the point of purchase racks to select a specific snack. Frito management decided "We had to start thinking more about why consumers consume our products and not longer about how they purchased them". This meant that Frito Lay management had to change their thinking about customers from "point of purchase" to "point of consumption or use" - what Joachimshtaler calls "point of purpose". This last concept is why I label the book as a book about corporate intent rather than a book about innovation. In this context, innovation becomes a method or an approach to providing solutions to the new corporate intent.
The first two sections of the book do a great job laying out Joachimshtaler's concepts about customer advantage and demand-first innovation. In these two steps, the author depicts a major shift in how most firms understand and react to their prospects and customers. In his estimation, most firms are operating under an "inside out" view of customers that is tainted by internal perspectives of customers wants and needs, and by a product centric rather than customer centric approach. Additionally, years of segmentation and other marketing efforts have eliminated a number of potential customers and markets that could be viable. Once the firm decides to understand its customers in a new light, it can begin to shift its product and service development models to understand the customer demand, then create ideas for new products and services based on this new understanding. Again, this advocates using innovation and the tools and techniques for innovation (including ideation, brainstorming, consumer contradictions or seeming irreducible tradeoffs) as an outcome to generate ideas after the company has adopted a new strategic intent. I don't argue with that approach, but this switch to become much more consumer focused will require a dramatic investment in time and energy to refocus the corporate culture and the "old habits". The question the management team must answer at this juncture is: What is causing our lack of growth and differentiation? A poorly defined strategic intent, which means we can innovate but often miss the mark due to an "inside out" approach, or is our strategy ok but we simply don't innovate very well? Joachimshtaler has a very clear approach in the first case.
There is a lot to like in this book - several examples used in the book could be cribbed from customers I've worked with recently. As I've pointed out to many of my clients, innovation needs to be tightly aligned with strategy and strategic intent, or it will not be successful other than as a product extension strategy. Joachimshtaler takes this concept and reverses it, demonstrating that a new strategic intent - customer advantage - will ultimately drive new innovation approaches.
In the last section of his book, Strategies for Realizing Customer Advantage, Joachimshtaler turns his attention to marketing strategy, brand strategy and portfolio management and an examination of how to connect and engage with customers. Using examples from BMW, VW and MasterCard, he demonstrates how the consideration of marketing strategy and brand helped reposition these firms in the minds of their prospective customers, and the customers they already had. Much of the first two chapters in this section is interesting, but really targeted to a chief marketing officer who has the capability to rethink branding and customer experience.
Joachimshtaler saves his best chapter for last - Internalizing the Innovation and Growth Agenda. In this chapter he examines the steps Jeffrey Immelt took to change the way GE thought about itself as an innovator. Immelt entered a well-oiled machine that was excellent at execution and wanted to create a firm that excelled at sustained innovation. To that end, he created a number of initiatives. First, the concept of Imagination Breakthroughs. Each business unit leader had to submit ideas for their business unit that could become a new product or service worth at least $100M in organic revenue. This shook up the culture because traditionally, innovation had been the responsibility of the product management team - now more people and a broader perspective were involved, and the stakes are much higher. Second, he tied senior management compensation to the ability to generate and follow up on these Imagination Breakthroughs. Finally, they created the idea of "One GE" - that is, one united face to a customer, regardless of the opportunity or challenge. Then, using the demain-first innovation concept, they worked to get much closer to the customer - using "dreaming" sessions where executives and customers looked at product and service opportunities. Can you imagine Jack Welch in a "dreaming" session?
As I stated earlier, Hidden in Plain Sight is a great book about strategy that uses innovation as an outcome to help a firm differentiate itself through much more detailed understanding of its customers. Hidden in Plain Sight advocates a complete reversal in the way most firms generate ideas and create new products and services - changing the perspective from a highly segmented, quantitative examination of customers and products to a much more deeply understood customer experience which informs marketing and innovation to create products and services that are relevant to customers' expectations and aspirations.
If you are interested in the nuts and bolts of innovation and how it works, this probably isn't the book for you. If you are interested in the work involved to change your product and service development strategy and gain real insights into your customers and what they really want, then this is the book for you. It combines the rationale for making the change, examples of firms that have taken a very different approach to customer experience, and ideas about how to use that new perspective to drive innovation of new products and services.
Reposted from my original review on the Innovate on Purpose blog
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
A growth strategy from the outside in, 2007-10-15
Erich Joachimsthaler's book Hidden in Plain Sight challenges conventional wisdom on marketing and marketing strategy. There are a number of books advocating this 'outside in' view on strategy and growth.
Joachimsthaler's approach of DIG for Demand-first Integration and Growth Model provides a comprehensive set of tools and methods for defining growth opportunities based on an understanding of the external environment rather than trying to change the world to fit your products and services.
Joachimsthaler provides a full description of the processes and tools including a number of case studies that describe companies that have grown through innovation and an outside in view. These are the strengths of the book.
These strengths are also the books weakness. By talking extensively about companies like BMW, GE, PepsiCo, etc, the book's main messages get bogged down in the text. Many of these cases have not used Joachimsthaler's DIG methodology, so there is little to connect the case to the argument he is advancing. This makes the book drag in some places and confuses Joachimsthaler's argument.
Overall the book is recommended as the combination of tools and methodology provides a valuable resource for companies looking to change their marketing approach and results. Other resources to consider include Chris Zook's "Unstoppable" and Davenport and Harris's "Competing on Analytics."
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