What is the role that corporate marketing should play in the innovation process? In short, that role is much bigger than the role most marketers are playing today.
In this Frost & Sullivan article, GE Director of Global Innovation Steve Liguori discusses the much larger role that marketing needs to play in innovation. That innovation needs to go well beyond ideas about how to promote products.
“New business models are not about new technology per se. We call that invention.
“Innovation is how you bring ideas to marketplaces in different ways,” Liguori says. “The app store is the classic modern-day new business model. There’s nothing new about the software. What’s new is the business model.
“When you talk to marketers about digital, they talk about finding a better way to mine social data to get you to buy their flavor of yogurt or their color shoes. That’s only the tip of the iceberg.
“The message I bring to executives is that innovation is going to be disrupting business in every way, shape, and form. This whole idea of digital meeting physical will completely radicalize every aspect of business.
“We’re trying to get marketers to understand that they need to get more involved in how business is run. Innovation is a 360-degree term now.
“Marketing has to go from end-to-end in a company. You’ve got to be involved in the company’s total business strategy, not just its promotional strategy. That’s where a lot of marketers get hung up and put their jobs at risk because they’re taking too narrow a focus.”
For more, read the Frost & Sullivan article on the larger role that marketing can play in a company’s innovation process.