Commercially Scaling Innovation And New Technologies

 What makes innovation and new technologies like artificial intelligence commercially scalable? — the answer is deceptively simple yet diabolically hard: someone has to create the market, educate buyers, establish use cases and reduce adoption friction. Innovation does not automatically create a market. There is a missing middle between building the product and having customers willing and able to buy it. That is precisely where marketing, industry development and senior leadership come in.

 

People oftentimes make the error of placing the innovation engine all by itself - that results in sunk costs with no commercially viable enterprise; this is one of the reasons why startups fail so often. They forget - any product or service has to have an addressable market, and a total market. Not just a market - but an addressable market, one that can interest and desire, has a willingness to pay etc etc. And in innovative or new product lines, often these are missing; and this doesnt mean we shouldnt innovate. It just means some work is remaining - the mint with the hole as a simple metaphor works here -old marketers will understand the reference!

 

Some examples:

Nokia: demonstrate the product to influential early adopters and seed organisational/social proof.

Gillette: reduce the entry barrier for the durable product because the installed base creates recurring consumption.

 

“Product banne ke saath khareedne wala bhi taiyyar chahiye.”

 

“It is demand and supply. ... ALWAYS a function of demand vs supply. Capital follows demonstrated demand; where demand is immature, someone has to invest in market creation. In other words, capital flows toward monetisable demand, whereas foundational innovation often needs demand creation before it can scale.

 

Innovation and market development have to happen together.

·         That can mean putting the product in the hands of influential early adopters.

·         It can mean educating an industry through associations.

·         It can mean demonstrating use cases.

·         It can mean reducing the entry barrier through pricing.

·         It can mean building an ecosystem around the product.

 

What attracts capital? — capital goes where there is visible demand and monetisation potential.

 

What creates economic value? — innovation can expand the economic pie rather than merely redistribute it.

 

Innovation can absolutely expand the economic pie; but building the product does not automatically create the market for it. Someone has to seed demand, demonstrate the use case, reduce adoption anxiety and make the buyer ready. That is where Marketing + Senior Leadership becomes strategic — and it really needs the CMO + CEO/MD + CTO + CFO thinking together.

 

I saw a good example of this with Nokia. Around 17 years ago, I was on the event floor managing an event where Nokia demonstrated the Lumia 925 to industry leaders. One of the things they were doing was putting the product directly into the hands of CXOs — effectively seeding the market through influential early adopters. They were doing similar things with content and music, including bringing the latest tracks onto the Lumia platform in multiple languages.

 

Industry associations are another route. Several large technology companies have deliberately worked through associations to educate an industry, establish use cases and deepen the market. I have attended several such meetings myself.

 

And then there is the classic Gillette example. If I remember correctly, when Mach 3 was introduced in India, the razor was made available at around ₹49. The strategic logic was simple: get the razor into the consumer's hands; once the installed base exists, blades follow.

 

So yes, product banne ke saath khareedne wala bhi taiyyar chahiye.

 

The strategic question is therefore not simply “What should we innovate?” It is also “How do we create the market that will consume the innovation?”

 

What works depends on the category — enterprise selling, CXO seeding, industry education, ecosystem development, pricing, trials, partnerships, etc. Figuring that out is very much the job of Marketing working with senior leadership, not marketing as a downstream communications function. And that is a much bigger discussion.