Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs

Chapter 10

Channel

How You Deliver Your Offerings to Customers and Users

Channel innovations encompass all the ways that you connect your company’s offerings with your customers and users. While e-commerce has emerged as a dominant force in recent years, traditional channels such as physical stores are still important—particularly when it comes to creating immersive experiences. Skilled innovators in this type often find multiple but complementary ways to bring their products and services to customers. Their goal is to ensure that users can buy what they want, when and how they want it, with minimal friction and cost and maximum delight.

Channel innovations are particularly sensitive to industry context and customer habits. Flagship stores can be an extremely valuable Channel innovation, creating signature venues that showcase a firm’s brand and offerings, while pop-up stores may be useful for a short, sharp splash at the holidays. In contrast, selling directly through e-channels or other means can reduce overhead costs, maximizing margins and cost advantage. Or you might pursue indirect distribution or multi-level marketing, either of which recruits others to shoulder the burden of promoting and/or delivering an offering to the end customer.

You may see an overlap between Channel and Network innovations. This type is about how you deliver the offering and the touchpoint of the exchange, not about whom you work with to get an offering to market.

How to spot potential Channel innovations: ...