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10 Types of Innovation: The Art of Discovering a Breakthrough Product

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10 Types of Innovation Infographic

The Art of Discovering Breakthrough Products

As venture capitalist Peter Thiel once put it, “competition is for losers.”

It’s inevitable that every company must be out there battling for market share, but you don’t really want to be in a situation where the competition is so stiff that any potential upside is eroded away in the process—―a scenario known as perfect competition in economics.

To avoid perfect competition, companies must strive to build an economic moat that gives them a sustainable competitive advantage over time. While these protective moats can arise from a number of different sources, in today’s information economy they most often arise from the power of innovation.

But where does innovation come from, and is there a universal framework that can be applied to help consistently make big breakthroughs?

The 10 Types of Innovation

In today’s infographic, we showcase the culmination of years of in-depth research from Doblin, an innovation-focused firm now owned by Deloitte.

After examining over 2,000 business innovations throughout history, Doblin uncovered that most breakthroughs don’t necessarily stem from engineering inventions or rare discoveries.

Instead, they observed that innovations can be categorized within a range of 10 distinct dimensions—and anyone can use the resulting strategic framework to analyze the competition, to stress test for product weaknesses, or to find new opportunities for their products.

Here are the 10 types of innovation:

#Innovation TypeDescription
1.Profit ModelHow you make money
2.NetworkConnections with others to create value
3.StructureAlignment of your talent and assets
4.ProcessSignature of superior methods for doing your work
5.Product PerformanceDistinguishing features and functionality
6.Product SystemComplementary products and services
7.ServiceSupport and enhancements that surround your offerings
8.ChannelHow your offerings are delivered to customers and users
9.BrandRepresentation of your offerings and business
10.Customer EngagementDistinctive interactions you foster

From Theory to Practice

What does innovation look like in practice?

Let’s see how well-known businesses have leveraged each of these 10 types of innovation in the past, while also diving into the tactics that modern businesses can use to consistently make new product breakthroughs:.

Innovation Types #1-4: “Configuration”

According to Doblin, the first four types of innovation center around the configuration of the company, and all the work that happens “behind the scenes”.

Although innovation types in this category are not directly customer-facing, as you can see in the examples below, they can still have an important impact on the customer experience. How your company and products are organized can have a crucial downstream effect, even enabling innovations in other categories.

Configuration innovation types

Two of the most interesting examples here are Google and McDonald’s. Both companies made internal innovations that empowered their people to make important advancements further on downstream.

In the case of McDonald’s, the franchisee insight that led to the introduction of the Egg McMuffin spearheaded the company’s entire breakfast offering, which now accounts for 25% of revenues. Breakfast is also now the company’s most profitable segment.

Innovation Types #5-6: “Offering”

When most people think of innovation, it’s likely the offering category that comes to mind.

Making improvements to product performance is an obvious but difficult type of innovation, and unless it’s accompanied by a deeply ingrained company culture towards technical innovation, such advancements may only create a temporary advantage against the competition.

This is the part of the reason that Doblin recommends that companies focus on combining multiple areas of innovation together—it creates a much more stable economic moat.

Offering innovation types

Apple has a reputation for innovation, but the product ecosystem highlighted above is an underappreciated piece of the company’s strategy. By putting thought into the ecosystem of products—and ensuring they work together flawlessly—additional utility is created, while also making it harder for customers to switch away from Apple products.

Innovation Types #7-10: “Experience”

These types of innovation are the most customer-facing, but this also makes them the most subject to interpretation.

While other innovations tend to occur upstream, innovations in experience all get trialed in the hands of customers. For this reason, intense care is needed in rolling out these ideas.

Experience innovation types

In the early days of the internet, online shipping was precarious at best—but Amazon’s introduction of Amazon Prime and free expedited shipping for all members has been a game-changer for e-commerce.

Executing on such a promise was no small task, but today there are 150 million users of Prime worldwide, including some in metro areas who can get items in as little as two hours.

Making Innovations Happen in Your Organization

How can organizations approach the 10 types of innovation from a more tactical perspective?

One useful resource is Doblin’s free public list of over 100 tactics that correspond with the aforementioned framework.

The one-pager PDF provides a range of typical dimensions for approaching each type of innovation. In essence, these are all different ways you could consider when trying to differentiate your product or service—and at the very least, it provides a useful thought experiment for managers and marketers.

For those interested in learning more on this topic, Doblin also has a highly-rated book as well as other accessories that leverage the above framework.

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The World’s Biggest Cloud Computing Service Providers

Cloud computing service providers generated $270 billion in revenues last year, concentrated among a few giants.

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This tree map shows the biggest cloud computing service providers globally by market share.

The World’s Biggest Cloud Computing Service Providers

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Today, the three largest cloud computing service providers command 66% of the global market.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have generated billions in revenues through their cloud infrastructure that provide the computing power companies need to store data. What’s more, most AI models are run on the cloud, creating a surge in computing demand for cloud providers.

The above graphic shows the largest cloud providers globally, based on data from Synergy Research Group.

Breaking Down the Cloud Market

Here are the world’s top cloud computing service providers based on enterprise revenues as of the fourth quarter of 2023:

ProviderCountryMarket Share Q4 2023
Amazon Web Services🇺🇸 U.S.31%
Microsoft Azure🇺🇸 U.S.24%
Google Cloud🇺🇸 U.S.11%
Alibaba Cloud🇨🇳 China4%
Salesforce🇺🇸 U.S.3%
IBM Cloud🇺🇸 U.S.2%
Oracle🇺🇸 U.S.2%
Tencent Cloud🇨🇳 China2%
Other🌐 Other21%

With 31% of the global market share, Amazon’s cloud division posted $24.2 billion in revenues over the quarter.

AWS is a major cash engine for the company, but growth slowed over 2023 as enterprises and startups cut back on tech spending. Annual sales growth compared to the same quarter last year grew by 13%—far below competitors Microsoft and Google, whose cloud divisions grew by 30% and 26%, respectively.

As we can see, U.S. firms make up the lion’s share of the market, while China’s Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud together comprise 5% of the global share.

The AI Boom and the Cloud

Given that a significant chunk of AI models are run on the cloud, the industry may be positioned to see greater demand as momentum accelerates.

In fact, newer AI systems are as much as 10 to 100 times larger than older models. In line with this, major cloud providers are seeing high demand for cloud services to allow companies across financial to manufacturing sectors to run large language models on their platforms.

Today, 98% of companies globally rely on the cloud for at least one part of their business applications, which may present a market opportunity for the industry as advancements in AI continue to grow.

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