Just because an idea is fresh and new doesn’t mean it will succeed.
The tech industry is littered with products and services that fell by the wayside as quickly as New Coke and its nemesis Crystal Pepsi.
Early adopters want the next big thing in tech. They’re willing to shell out big bucks simply to be the first in their friend groups to have the latest and greatest innovations. With intense competition for their spending, a strong product rollout is key to winning over this demographic.
Failure is an important part of winning
All of tech’s biggest players have had their share of flops.
Remember Amazon Destinations? Probably not.
The company’s attempt to break into online hotel booking lasted just six months, from April to October 2016. Then there was the Fire Phone. Early adopters paid $200 for it, but Amazon eventually slashed the price to $0.99 before discontinuing it altogether. In the end, they wrote off $170 million in unsold phones. They couldn’t even give them away.
Even retail giants like Target have learned hard lessons in innovation. In early 2017, the company shut down two major initiatives that strayed too far from its primary focus. One was the ‘Store of the Future,’ which envisioned a robot-assisted, cashier-free checkout experience. The other was, ‘Project Goldfish,’ aimed to open Target’s platform to third-party sellers, similar to Amazon and Walmart.”
In an interview with Fortune, Target CEO Brian Cornell said,
We had to reel things back in. Innovation has to first start with what is our guest expecting from Target, and how does it help our core enterprise?
A partner in innovation
Companies pour millions into product development and marketing, but even the most well-funded, carefully planned launches can still fall flat.
There’s plenty of buzz in retail about stores with no checkout lines or registers, but fully autonomous shopping experiences that aren’t just oversized vending machines are still a long way off. These concepts depend on emerging technologies like computer vision and human-machine interfaces, which are still in their early stages.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t innovate. In fact, it’s never been easier to explore new technologies without massive upfront investment. Trusted third-party providers now offer tools and systems you can test with minimal risk.
Observa helps bring innovation into your in-store operations by tracking marketing, merchandising execution, and retail compliance. It gives you real-time visibility and a better shot at making your product the next big thing.