영어신문 사설2호 Value innovation and business

 

                                 Value innovation and business (1)

 

Why do people chew a gum? Possibly it’s to eliminate malodorous breath or to have something worthwhile to chew and give their mouth a refreshing savor. But some may have other motive why they chew the so called “gum”. Did you know that it can produce a perfume-like effect? Unbelievable yet true! In Japan, there is the gum tagged “Fuwarinka.” It’s a big hit in Japan since it’s quite startling. After an hour of chewing “Fuwarinka”, you can distinguish a fragrant, rose and lemon like smell from your body. It may seem like magic but the secret is quite easy. After chewing “Fuwarinka,” the body absorbs particles that confide the fragrant substances of gum, and they’ll go out through sweat glands of the body.

 

We live in a dynamic and fast changing world; therefore the market is quickly shifting too. Moreover there are already a lot of the analogous products and competitors in the business field resulting to variable customer demand. If customers dislike something about a certain product, they’ll never hesitate to try other comparative ones. Definitely, business today is like infinite challenge. Companies should immediately formulate strategies in order to adapt with their field’s situational changes and stand out in this dog-eat-dog world!

 

Before, the key to success is relative to adaptation on situational changes, but this isn’t enough now. If company wants to make the success, company is the one which give changes to the market; this is the key of today business. One key to attain a favorable change and update is through innovation. We can consider innovation as the useful and epochal differences from the other existing.

 

The gum, “Fuwarinka” gave the success to its company because it outstand others. Company can beat other competitors through innovation. But unfortunately, innovation cannot be made just for a day or a year; it requires quite long time of serious investigation. If it is so, is there no way to make the success in the business for companies which don’t have enough capital, technology and time? Of course not! There is a way; that is value innovation.

 

The value innovation is the systematic strategy to pioneer the new market which bestows a sustaining power to grow in the business and avoid or surpass competition. In the view value innovation, many companies are already in the market, therefore there are only few things to achieve to make profit and competition between companies is useless. The main strategy of value innovation is reducing or removing unnecessary values to save the prime cost. At the same time, company promotes or creates new values that other companies don’t have. Through this way, company can be differentiated from the others.

 

It is totally different from the Niche Marketing which focuses potential customers from the existing market; if Niche Marketing is getting into the competition, value innovation is getting out of the competition. And value innovation doesn’t need much capital and technology because it aims to maximize the efficiencies of the properties on what company already has.

 

Value innovation shows useful and epochal differences from traditional business strategies. Traditional business strategies aim to beat other competitors through their capital; companies have similar strategies and definitions of their customers and their demands in the market. Thus there are few differences between these companies and high competitions give damages to each other.

 

 However, value innovation makes competition meaningless because it focuses customers, it does not attack competitors and but creates a new business. A new business model has totally different rules so there is nothing to compete. Also, it doesn’t destroy the existing business model but it gradually takes the demands of customers through reducing the sustaining power of profit from the existing business model. Without new business model, there is no possibility to gain new wealth.

 

Nowadays, customers don’t want to be controlled by companies but vice versa. It is quite similar with what Alvin Toffler had expected. According to him, in the future there will be Prosumer Marketing which is combination of producer and consumer. In Prosumer Marketing, customers are the one who ask to company what to produce; this is what value innovation focuses. But it doesn’t mean that value innovation focuses only the demands their existing consumers; they also give emphasis to those who are not their consumers. This is the way how value innovation works. Value innovation will give a brand power and the loyal customers will ignore imitators