the core tool

8/12/2019 The CORE Tool

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Creativity, Innovation and Change

The CORE Tool

By

Enrique Florido

“...if creativity is making the complicated simple…then strategy is making creativity value for

stakeholders”

Enrique Florido

That is exactly the bottom line, and where all has to come down, value for

stakeholders. And we are not only talking about shareholders; we are talking about

all people and/or entities that, one way or another, are part of the supply chain.

That includes, of course customers, but also employees, suppliers, contractors,

community, distributors, retailers, and so on.

However, turning creativity into value is not as simple as it may sound, and here is

where strategy plays its role. Strategy provides the framework in which creativity

turns into innovation, and then into value. Now, change is a little harder to come,

since it generally involves the organization´s culture, which we have seen takes

time.

"Marketing and innovation are the two chief functions of business; everything else is a cost centre."

Peter Drucker

In all these years, I have seen how the lack of a proper strategy in place, inhibits

the creation process. Without a strategy, the creative process turns into a mere

brain storming, where all ideas seem to work well. At this point, management gets

wiry, and tend to abort any intent to create new venues. Even when companies

have done strategic work, it is rarely deployed down to specific actions plans.



The business theory has adopted two types of strategy as the lay ground for

structuring the strategic planning of companies. At one end, Corporative Strategy

(Level 1) defines the industry and the market in which the company will play; and at

the other end, Competitive Strategy (Level 2) defines the competition bases for the

company.

Corporative Strategy is generally outlined in terms of the Mission, Vision and

Corporate Values that the company will adopt; in another words, defines what the

company will do, its raison d'être, and what it will be in the future. Competitive

Strategy deepens on the competences, strengths and weaknesses of the

company, as they relate to the characteristics of the market, and the matching

competences, strengths and weaknesses of its competitors.

However, in order to bring the full benefits of strategic planning, a Strategic

Marketing Plan, is of utmost importance. In my experience, the Strategic Marketing

Plan is generally designed by the Marketing Department’s team, but as an isolatedelement, and in such way that does not assure a cohesive link between

brands/products, market and company. Here is where lots of good creative ideas

get lost, and never become innovation, much less value.

There are many theories about strategy, but it seems to me that all of them share a

purpose; to create value. If we analyze all those strategy theories, we can discover

their underlying creative component. The whole point of planning strategically is to

add value to the organization. In order to make our strategy a winning one, we

have to innovate; so value is created. Let´s see how some of these strategies

basically unfold on the same issues:

In the 80’s, Michael Porter guru of the strategic p lanning, talked about

industry rivalry. What he actually proposed, in his book Competitive

Strategy, is a frontal and open war among industry players, and this is

what the later authors of the Blue Ocean Strategy call Red Ocean.

Later in the 90s Jack Trout, the guru of differentiation, sustains that

what companies must do is, to position their brands and differentiate

them from competitors. And that is the title of his best seller,

Differentiate or Die.

And more recently, Kim & Mauborgne stated what

seems to be a fusion of both of the prior theories.

The Blue Ocean Strategy proposes to identify the industry in which

a company plays (Competitive Strategy), and create a demand and



business opportunities where there are no competitors (Differentiate or Die).

However, The Blue Ocean Strategy seems to revive and old

concept from VI B.C. The book, The Art of War is the most widely

consulted military strategy book, and the most used by the western

corporate world. The book teaches that the truly art of war consists

of making the war completely unnecessary, and talks about

defeating the enemy without direct confrontation. This is exactly

what Kim & Mauborgne call a Blue Ocean.

We are absolutely convinced that frontal and open wars only leave Red Oceans, or

its equivalent; drained budgets and poor results. The actual competition scheme

works in which way that when a company earns a market share point, some other

is losing it. A Blue Ocean is just a creative idea that has the entire potential to

become an innovation, and by the same means in value. But that can only be

possible because it is the result of a strategic process. That is the reason we

sustain, that in absence of strategy lots of creative ideas will never become

innovation.

In order to guide companies in search of innovation (value), and to ensure that the

creative process is maintained within the strategic framework, we can find tools

and methodologies that walk people thru that creative process. However, in order

to truly contribute with ideas, first one has to understand the business that the

company is in. To do that, it is necessary to spend some time inside the company

with employees and management alike. This way one develops an understanding

of the markets in which they play a role.

After reviewing some of the available tools and methodologies, that profess to take

us on the creative journey, I realized that certain degree of discipline was due. By

this I mean, that if one is to be efficient, and bring tangible results to the table, at

the end of the day, whoever guides the creative process has to have a filter type of

process in place. In another words, ideas will have to go through two main filters;

one, the market/consumer filter, and the other one, the company´s capabilities

(strengths vs. weaknesses).

The methodology I propose is fundamentally based on the profound knowledge of

the clients, and the industry in which the clients plays a role. Such knowledge is

attained by a cooperative teamwork, and an unbiased analysis of the competitive

environment. Once the analytical work has been accomplished, the CORE tool is

put in place.



This tool emphasizes on the creative part of the creative process, as opposed to

the way most strategic planning is done, in which predominates the analytical part

of the whole. The CORE tools is just a refinement of the original creative ideas

through a process that starts out with Creativity, goes through real Opportunities

that exist, then goes through a Rationale for operation viability, and finally their

implementation in a strategic (Estrategia) plan. Once the final strategy is written,

the tactics, tasks responsibilities and metrics are stated.

The CORE tool should be able to help managers to be highly efficient while

enduring a creative process. The tool should allow them to visualize practical ideas

that can definitely count as value, and not just mere brain storming. The

implementation of the CORE (Creativity, Opportunity, Rationality & sEstrategy) tool

is very simple:

The team starts with Creativity. Here, unrestricted original ideas come from

everywhere. In other words, each member of the team sets forth his ideasaccording to his/her specific needs and/or experiences, and within the framework

of the solutions we need for the already identified problems.

The second step of the CORE tool is, Opportunity. Here, the team analyses, if

there is a market potential for each of the original ideas. The ideas are analysed

from the perspective of their market potential and affinity to potential consumers.

There is nothing new here. As a consumer/market oriented companies, we depend

on consumers’ acceptance of our ideas/products/services. By this, I do not actually

mean research, but prototyping; real world, practical live interaction with the

product/service.

“Carefully watch how people live, get an intuitive sense as to what they might want and then go with

it. Don’t do market research.”

Akio Morita

“People don't know what they want until you show it to them.”

Steve Jobs

Once we are certain of the market/consumer acceptance, we enter into the

Rationale. At this point, the team has to go through the analysis of the operations

viability of the selected ideas. The analysis here involves the feasibility in design &

development, manufacturing, logistics, resources (typically financial), etc., of the

ideas turned into products (services).



The final step of the CORE tool is a eStrategy. In the same way that we entered

the creative process, with a strategy in place, in the same manner we have to

design and implement a marketing strategy for the launching, and support of the

newly created product/service. As with any strategic plan, the team has to deploy it

down to tactics, tasks, activities, responsible and metrics.

For managers who want to see tangible and practical results, the CORE tool is

very valuable. Furthermore, when there are limited resources (namely financial), it

is good to know that the creative team is centered on optimizing the creative

process, without limiting the potential ideas that may come out of it. In a sense, the

CORE tool pretends to eliminate, to some extent, the Intelligent Fast Failure (IFF)

factor. However, not in a way of eliminating the learning part of the IFF, but the

financial cost that may be involved in the learning curve.

Enrique Florido

the core tool

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