Research
Slowing Down To Be Faster : Why Initial Research Is Important In Innovation And Creative Development
By Enock Wandera
Over the past several decades , the digital revolution has impacted all areas of human activity , including business innovation and creative development processes .
We have seen unprecedented digitization of existing tools for design and collaboration , and the introduction of entirely new digital tools , bringing more substantive change of innovation processes than previous generations of tools enabled .
This has profoundly changed businesses and people ’ s expectations and perceptions of time . Everything now has to be fast , immediate , instantaneous , even anticipated .
Because of technological advances , our work culture has drastically changed . Many of us now multi-task at the office , online meetings , and instant messaging . Even email is now seen as not being fast enough .
The innovation and creative development processes have undergone a similar transformation . Not only has the quality of the output and speed of its generation been affected , but also the innovation work itself , work content , collaboration patterns , decision authority , organizational set‐ups , and governance structures .
The rise of insurgent brands , start-up companies , who can bring new products and services in markets in just a couple of months , has pushed larger companies to accelerate their innovation cycles . This is also true for communications where more and more creative advertising content is produced across more touchpoints .
Traditional advertisers are pushed to speed up by more agile digital minded agencies and are pushed to tap into crowdsourcing to develop multiple pieces of content in record timing . This impacts research too - instead of testing before launch , clients prefer to launch and learn in market , removing the products or content which do not stick .
In the rush for things to be fast , immediate , and instantaneous , marketing , Research and Development ( R & D ), and creative agencies are putting all their efforts on time efficiencies . They are looking at making processes faster and more efficient because it cuts costs , it ’ s short-term , it ’ s rational , it ’ s targeting , and it is low risk .
There ’ s a belief in some quarters that if you
The right research , at the right moment , done by the right people , can be a catalyst to creative and innovation excellence if it brings the right knowledge as early as possible . deliver a new idea quickly , you ’ ll deliver innovation . Many companies always want to churn out innovation fast , claim the market position , and work out the kinks later - that ’ s what minimum viable products are all about , right ?
But going too fast , and what seems on the surface to be groundbreaking may very quickly turn out to be a bit of a lemon , and a costly assumption for the business .
We should take the time and make the effort to develop innovation and creativity effectively . Recent research by Ipsos provides critical insights that demonstrates the effectiveness of slowing down to be faster .
Ipsos has established that communication campaigns which benefited from earlystage exploration show an above average performance in terms of potential shortterm sales lift , much higher than those which didn ’ t use any early-stage research .
Likewise , innovations with early concept exploration had a higher trial index than concepts that skipped or didn ’ t undergo exploration at the initial stage .
Looking into the drivers of stronger creative and innovations which benefited from early-stage research , innovations on average show a 6 % increase on differentiation and 9 % increase in relevance . Meanwhile , creative on average shows a 32 % increase in stirring emotions , 36 % in terms of uniqueness . In short , early exploration helps build an ideas relevance and differentiation .
Ipsos research also shows that clients and agencies who take the time to use our front end , early-stage solutions to explore
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