Five Secrets of Innovation for Aquaculture

The cat is out of the bag! Innovation is no longer guesswork, a hit and miss affair or just down to ’smoke and mirrors’. By taking note of the major secrets of innovation you can significantly improve the probability that your next innovation efforts will be successful.

First, lets define clearly what we are talking about! Innovation is much more than ‘ideas’ or ‘creativity’. The clearest definition aligned with the purposes of this site is one proposed by Catherine Livingstone Managing Director of Cochlear Limited. In the 2000 Warren Centre Innovation Lecture, Catherine defined innovation as “the process whereby new ideas are transformed, through economic activity, into a sustainable value creating outcome”.

So what are the five secrets? Being successful in creating an aquaculture growth business is really about playing the game of probabilities. Your task is to choose the path where your chances of success are maximised.

So much of success or failure in business is determined by decisions taken or assumptions made right at the very front end of the business development process. I recommend that people adopt a balanced approach - a mix between ‘entrepreneurial strategy’ and ‘adaptive execution’. We will talk much more about these concepts as our conversation about innovation evolves. A critical decision involves selecting the ‘right business’ to be in in the first place and this involves considering the following issues:

• do something big
• target a valuable opportunity
• take a problem orientation
• strive for innovation quality
• think like a venture capitalist - experiment lots

Do Something Big

Success in innovation is aligned with projects in big markets and markets that are growing rapidly. Why? It is far easier to grow a business when the tide is rising and all businesses in the market place are benefiting from the growth than if you are have to battle competitors to win away points of market share to sustain your venture. It is also true that if favourable growth conditions exist in the market there is more opportunity to stumble, go down a blind alleyway, and then recover to build a valuable business.

Target a Valuable Opportunity

Most of the time existing businesses are meeting customer needs effectively. It is only when change impacts the scene that the needs of potential customers shift to create worthwhile opportunities. Unfortunately many aspiring business owners create or persue businesses where customers needs are already adequately served. The link between change and the creation of opportunity means that the identification and understanding of changes can be an important pre-cursor to the definition of a valuable opportunity.

Take a Problem Orientation

To create a successful new business you need to introduce a product that satisfies a real customer need in a better way than competitors and at a price that is greater than the cost of creating it. By seeking problems that customers regard as important and not yet adequately addressed by alternative solutions you are maximising the likelihood of developing a product where a customer will be motivated to buy.

Strive for Innovation Quality

A business with a high Innovation Quality Index can generate this standing from a number of attributes. Included amongst these are:

• the ability to develop a ten times advantage over alternative solutions
• the distinctiveness of the intellectual property (which in turn defines the ease of detection of infringement and the scope or broadness of the protection)
• the existence of an intellectual property platform - capable of deployment in many separate applications
• the ability to develop a description that is simple, yet compelling

Think like a Venture Capitalist

This is the adaptive execution part of the process mentioned above. By running a number of small experiments in the marketplace you learn how the market responds (rather than simply guessing) and follow through on the option that works best.

By thinking through your aquaculture projects with these five disciplines in mind, the probability that you will achieve in innovation success is maximised.

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