Brand‐driven Innovation – Strategies for Development and Design

Citation

Tuusjärvi, E. and Ryynänen, T. (2012), "Brand‐driven Innovation – Strategies for Development and Design", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 68-70. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610421211203123

How is “safety” manifest in Volvo's cars? How can we innovate and implement innovations so that the innovations support company brands in best possible ways? What roles do branding, innovation, and design play in creating a company's future? How do we connect them together? In his book Brand‐Driven Innovation: Strategies for Development and Design, Erik Roscam Abbing gives insight in many ways to questions such as the above.

The book consists of two sections. The first part presents the central concepts of branding, innovation and design; approaches to them; and their connections to modern corporate context. The second section describes in detail the brand‐driven innovation (BDI) model, divided into four successive processes:

1. 1.

   building a human‐centred brand;

2. 2.

   building an innovation strategy;

3. 3.

   building a design strategy; and

4. 4.

   orchestrating touchpoints.

The model presents the four interconnected processes and illustrates that each of them functions as a connection between the internal and external environments.

Abbing constructs the book like a collage with various types of text in each section; the voice of the writer presenting a theory‐based frame that carries the reader through the topic, including illustrative case‐descriptions, conversations between specialists, assignments and exercises, summaries in the end of each chapter, and finally a checklist for assessing existing brands. The structure makes it possible to focus on the elements in which the reader is most interested, and in coherence with the central idea, gives space to detect new ideas and ways to apply the tools. Although exercises may work primarily for students, and some cases and specialist discussions are stronger and more illustrative than others, together the different types of text function well and provide a significant up‐to‐date package of knowledge.

The first process, building human‐centred brands, approaches a brand as a relationship. Although it might have been of interest to include a brief notion of other possibilities such as the projective, identity‐based approach to brand management (see Louro and Cunha, 2001), the choice works extremely well in the book. It is based on the same idea of bridging between external and internal environments as the model and all the other central processes. One particularly interesting topic is that of the brand's usability as a driver for innovation. Abbing points out that there are other possible drivers for innovation besides a brand, such as technological breakthroughs or changes within the company, and he acknowledges that not all brands can function as drivers for innovation. He distinguishes relevant characteristics of a brand that are suitable as drivers for innovation, such as containing a variety of layers and being widely accessible.

The second process, building an innovation strategy, acknowledges innovation as a multifaceted issue – providing not only technological innovations but being also a transmitter of new products, services, and experiences. On the one hand, innovation is seen as necessary for the brand to fulfil its promise and deliver value. On the other hand, a brand is acknowledged as a necessary guide for innovation, providing a vision of the role the company wants to have in the future. The creation and importance of innovations is effectively shown through the Festo case and its Bionic Learning Network research projects. These projects produce inspiring and convincing experiences to customers through studies inspired by “different movements in nature […] the motion of a bird's wing in flight, the motion of the tails of a swimming jellyfish … ” (p. 132). The Future Concepts project has no short‐term commercial objectives, yet it produces multiple important benefits arising from the connection of brand strategy and innovation.

The third process, building design strategy, gives design the role of an integrator between brand and innovation. The book gives design a strong role and with a good reason. It shows vividly and convincingly the growing importance of design in company product development and presents its various functions and roles in developing aesthetics, functionality, and usability. Design specialists are seen as vital for giving the form to the brand touchpoints and providing the customer a consistent and appealing brand experience. A relevant concept discussed at length is design thinking. This term means combining business thinking with creative thinking, and it implies an iterative process between the two: ideating, prototyping, and testing. Yet, design is more than design thinking – it is also a creative method and skills, as well as modelling product and service in concrete ways. The description of design in this book is exceptionally recent and convincing.

The fourth and final process is that of orchestrating touchpoints. In this chapter, Abbing collects ideas and tools for how to get the multiple specialists, each with different backgrounds, to create meaningful and valuable brand experience for the users. Abbing emphasizes that brand‐driven touchpoints need to tell a story – and form together a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. Virgin Airlines' upper‐class experience with designed service, environment, and product provides an effective illustration of what is pursued. The service begins with a limousine pick‐up service, following with exclusive touchpoints such as the experience of efficiency and business‐mindedness at check‐in and experience of relaxation and being cared for at the Clubhouse. The touchpoints create for the user an experience of being a special customer, cared for up to perfection.

Each of the four process descriptions provides concrete and practical tools to carry out the whole process of brand‐driven innovation. While the text is practical and easy to follow, the downside of it is that the detailed, repetitive way of reviewing the steps in each process becomes at times tiresome. Also, the relevance of following the steps as such can be questioned. This is also acknowledged by Abbing as he notes early in the book the limits of applying models as such and the necessity to take account of the case‐wise circumstances.

The book ends in the chapter on creating brand touchpoints. Yet, some final chapter that would synthesize the message of the contents and the findings would have been valuable. It would have been interesting to read what was learned during the process of writing the book. This type of discussion could have brought insight into the real‐life, holistic application of the sub‐processes and how they connect into one big process.

The book is written in a delightfully understandable fashion and provides a straightforward and impactful introduction to using brand strategies more widely in the organization than the often accustomed marketing communications. It does not resort to the jargon that is at times typical of marketing literature. “Design is the music to which branding and innovation perform their magic dance” (p. 66) is only a sporadic excerpt of abstract metaphorism that otherwise does not appear in the book.

To sum up, Abbing's Brand‐Driven Innovation provides a great discussion for the people who work with brands, product development, innovations, and design. The book is easy to read and understand. It provides detailed illustrations for the connections between brand, innovation, and design. It is at the same time highly useful and entertaining, thus, it is easy to recommend it to both practitioners and academics.