Growing Through Innovation: 5 Ways to Drive Faster Uptake of New Solutions
Innovation is necessary for business growth. Maintaining the status quo for too long will eventually allow less risk-averse companies to outcompete yours. Most business owners know this, but adopting a new product or process has downsides: the cost of the product itself, the lost revenue if it doesn’t work as expected, and the time spent training employees on the new technology or service.
In a recent webinar, “Growing Through Innovation: Driving Faster Uptake of New Solutions and Overcoming Obstacles to Adoption,” presented by Growers Edge, speakers Bob Armour, chief marketing officer; Ahraz Husain, VP of product, engineering and data; and Todd Robran, chief commercial officer — all at Growers Edge, discussed five key ways to overcome these legitimate challenges and drive faster market adoption of new innovations.
Growers Edge has partnered with numerous leading ag companies (occupying more than one-million acres of cropland) to help them successfully introduce new technologies. Growers Edge takes some of the risk away from new customers by offering crop plan warranties that guarantee yield for the product or practice, an ag retailer financing platform, a farm mortgage platform, and RangeAg. This farmland intelligence website provides land valuation, comparable sales, soil quality, and more.
“There are early adopters who are really open to trying new things,” Armour says. “But that’s just 15 percent of the market. You also need to jump what’s called ‘the chasm’ and get the early and late majority to move into it, too. That’s the other 85 percent of the market.”
The three speakers recommend:
Start small. Find like-minded people to try your new solution and provide honest feedback. “Build a beachhead of sorts, where you work with a small group of selected customers to identify problems and find out how your product works in the real world,” Robran says. “Once you establish that small base of satisfied customers, they will advocate for the new technology.”
Encourage a “two-way/one-way door” culture. Some decisions are consequential and, simultaneously, irreversible (the one-way door), so once they are made, there’s no point in spending time on them anymore. Most innovation happens in the “two-way” door area, where decisions are consequential and reversible. There aren’t any penalties for trying to do things differently. “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” Robran says. “It’s about getting the innovation out the door to try it and make progress. This is where you should spend your time, which can be critical when introducing a new product.”
Embed strong facts in compelling stories. Armour says having the best mousetrap is not enough. “Of course, you need to have something better, faster, more productive, more profitable, etc. than the old way of doing it,” he says. “But you need to tell the story. Get potential customers to imagine the future with your innovation. Use case studies, pictures, and videos to help them understand how it will help them solve their challenges.”
De-risk crossing the chasm. Offer incentives, protections, rebates, warranties, free trials, and other tools to make it easier for later adopters to jump over the chasm. One example Robran gives is the Crop Plan Warranty Growers Edge offered to customers of Phospholutions. The company introduced a new low-rate fertilizer product, and farmers generally equate low fertilizer rates with less yield. The challenge was to reduce the perceived risk of yield loss. The Crop Plan Warranty allowed Phospholutions to mitigate farmers’ concerns by promising a certain yield above an APH percentage. This enabled successful market penetration and an initial enrollment of 12,238 acres using the new fertilizer.
Celebrate failures as much as successes. Even the most innovative companies experience failures occasionally. Husain says there are many steps to success, and the feedback you receive, even when something doesn’t work, helps to ultimately make the product or practice better. “As we learn to eliminate the negatives, we are better off in the long run. When you gather your small group of initial clients, it’s important not to take any negative feedback personally,” he says. “This is good information, which is getting you closer and closer to the product market fit.”
If you missed the live broadcast of this webinar, “Growing Through Innovation: Driving Faster Uptake of New Solutions and Overcoming Obstacles to Adoption,” you can view the archived version online here or visit CropLife.com/webinars and check it out today.