Innovation customer demands

This leads us to the realm of disruptive technologies. Christensen [8] presents the innovator s dilemma, where the large company focused on meeting current customer demand on a large scale ignores the disruptive opportunity because it looks like too small a market to make a difference on the balance sheet. Further, the opportunity is ignored because it does not fit in the current business model or address the needs of the current customer base. 

Meeting these customer demands means that both the innovation and the go-to-market cycles shrink (Fig. 4.6). So, to stay a step ahead of customers needs (or at least keep up with them), Merck and its affiliated companies in Asia always develop LC mixtures in dose cooperation with them. Moreover, Merck invested early on in in-house display development first so that we could evaluate the properties of our LC materials for display applications, but also in order to obtain a better understanding of the final LCD products so that we could remain the technology leader and adapt our various product and applications portfolios to market requirements. In addition, needless to say, it is vital always to have adequate time and production capatity for all orders. 

Needless to say, if you have a new innovation—product, service, or business model—it pays for you to configure a work cell design before launching into full production or delivery. In doing so, you ll optimize your processes and reduce the time it takes to meet customer demand. 

Customer demand can be represented in any increment that makes sense for your innovative offering. How many products do you sell in a day, a week, or a month How many customers do you serve in a minute, an hour, or a day ... 

The service value network integrates the sup-ply-side alliance partners and their associated peripheral partners into a highly competitive cohesive unit, striving to deliver operational and service innovation, cost savings, and value-adding solutions to its diverse customer-demanded business encounters, while the balanced scorecard delivers a set of strategic management control functions. 

Discovery-driven planning will be particularly useful in avoiding mismatches between customer demand and supply chain design. For any one company, a new product or delivery process can fundamentally alter the economics of present supply chains. It might have the effect of rendering them useless for the innovation. It would be an error to assume a new product should ride to market on the back of a legacy supply chain that will not work. Discovery-driven planning is a way to avoid the trap. 

One example is given by Kotabe, Helsen (1998, pp. 228-9). Procter and Gamble developed a substitute for phosphate to match the German customer demand concerned with the pollution of rivers and they developed a surfactant to remove grease effectively in tepid water that the Japanese use to wash their clothes. Despite the local responsiveness origin of these innovations, Procter and Gamble was able to market these innovations worldwide. 

Competition is the most effective driving force for innovation. In competitionintensive, quality-differentiated, saturated and demand-dominated markets the most important impulses for hazardous substance substitution should originate from the customers, both from the end customers and from industrial or commercial chemicals users ... 

The technical functionality of chemical prodncts is the crucial product quality in B2B markets. Here especially trouble-free operating cycles and the minimisation of warranty risks play a decisive role. Enviromnental and health-related product qualities can only become significant for the market in places where the technical functionality is ensured and also sensitised customers or employees are available or where companies take action to secnre against scandals and create an image. The additional qualities become relevant especially on demand-dominated, dynamic markets with short product cycles and differentiated quality production. However, on stable mass markets with Fordist structures even minimum price increases or quality changes may prevent innovations or at least delay them for a long time. 

Customer orientation and initial solution-free formulation of customers wishes, as an orientation for product development, appear to be promising approaches for innovations with regard to the application safety of chemicals-based products. However, the initiative for this is not mainly due to substance manufacturers, but rather to the chemicals users being close to the consumers. To what extent the commercial/industrial chemicals end-users (users of production auxiliary materials that are not included in the product) also transform the latent desire for application-safe products into effective demand behaviour, depends on other constellations of motives than those of private end-consumers. The employers liabihty insurance, chambers of commerce and industry, branch associations, trade unions and management boards of large-scale companies play a key role in making quality and competition effective as drivers for innovation here too. 

The attractiveness of specific product categories, as discussed in the previous section, by and large defines the attractiveness of target markets as well. Besides its absolute size, the pharmaceuticals market comes first, because of its inherent elevated added value, the relatively high innovation rate, which leads to a steady demand for new products and for a manageable number of customers. The attributes for the agro fine chemicals market are similar, albeit less pronounced, specialty chemicals, in contrast, are needed by almost all industries and, therefore, virtually cannot be approached proactively. Also, the innovation rate in terms of new chemical entities is generally rather low, except in the electronic industry. 

Advances in polymer and fibre science and in the manufacturing technologies of fibres, yarns and fabrics have been the driving force behind the development of smart textiles and innovative products that fulfil customer expectations. In contrast with the situation that existed 20years ago, these products now find applications primarily in sectors outside the textile field. Therefore, fibre, yam and clothing producers are in constant pursuit of developing new materials in order to meet the demands for both traditional and technical textiles to be used for applications outside the textile industry. 

The food industry is like any other manufacturing industry Commercial practice is competitive, and the manufacturer who is best able to make the most acceptable product most often, from the most appropriate raw materials and at the right cost will be successful. The ability to innovate products, processes and interchange raw materials is necessary for financial survival, and so the science of food materials is necessary to deliver consistent quality and novelty of product to very demanding customers. 

Innovate and design new products for emerging markets so that we can respond to increasing demands of the global customer base... 

The dimensions of this integration include understanding the implications of global demographic change on product demands and customer requirements. It also underscores the fact that diverse and inclusive teams often outperform homogeneous teams in terms of productivity and innovation (see Hayles, Chapter 2, this volume). 

Zara is a multibiUion dollar Spanish company with stores all over the world. Zara owns large sections of the apparel supply chain and manages the entire chain to speed up innovation and product availability. One secret to Zara s success is the constant flow of customer requests and information from stores to the design studios. In turn, Zara generates a constant flow of product from plants to stores, even at the expense of retiring products for which there is demand. 

The expression "plastic age" which is frequently used to describe the present era, has a connotation of continuous and wasteful acquisition of new objects. There is a popular belief that manufacturers are consciously building obsolescence into their products, and deliberately promoting customer dissatisfaction with existing products by introducing needless innovations [27, 30]. The issue of life extension is receiving increased attention. But can the demand for new products and the quantity of discarded products be decreased by extending the lifespan of a product ITKe "built-in" durability provided by the manufacturer is not a guarantee for a certain calculated life products can be retired from service for several other reasons than normal wear and tear, such as [31, 32] ... 

As the networks within the supply chain coalesce, demand, supply, and innovation networks begin to overlap. Companies learn that a customer is not just a customer and that a supplier is not just a supplier. A customer may also be a supplier and a supplier may also be a strong contributor of ideas through open innovation networks. A supplier and/or a customer may also be a provider of logistics services. 

---