危 wēi  danger

In 2000, Dan Michael, then R&D director for Mars‘ M&Ms brand, and his team had the idea to make customizable M&Ms printed with a word of the customer’s choosing.  The team had experimented and found a way of printing the text but when they took the idea to senior management it was met with some concern, mainly because no marketing plan or consumer feedback existed.  They may have also feared that allowing Michael and his team to pursue the opportunity would distract them from business as usual and the proposed direct sales approach might alienate Mars’ largest retailers.

机 jī opportunity

Unperturbed, Michael’s team of 12 entered the innovation into a recently launched Mars initiative called Pioneer Week.  The concept won and the team received a modest budget with specific targets attached – building a production line within 90 days and marketing the innovation to all of Mars’ 60,000 employees (bypassing many of Mars’ conventional procedures which would have slowed the process at best).  The potential became self-evident – the team received orders for 800 pounds of custom-printed white M&Ms on the first day (the only option offered initially).  The team also solicited feedback as to why purchases had been made and used the trial to experiment with pricing.  The initiative was subsequently rolled out through a small link on the M&Ms public website (with no additional marketing) with continued success (and learning by the team).  In 2006 the trial was formally launched as Mars Direct and it is estimated that shortly thereafter ‘sales surpassed $10m and continued to accelerate’.

How about…

• Allowing teams to initially develop ideas in Skunkworks (a small group of people given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy)?
• Inviting teams to initially market a simple version of new products and services to your own employees or your partners’ employees to assess interest and learn?
• Adopting a ‘discovery-driven’ approach to investigating new business ideas, minimizing investment and maximizing learning?

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Source: BusinessWeek article here