There’s been a lot of buzz around 4G and what it means for innovation. Maddock Douglas recently interviewed Jeannie Weaver, Regional General Manager at Clearwire, the first 4G network already up and running, to talk about the future of mobility.

Innovation is defined as the synchronized intersection of an unmet need or insight, the idea (business model, product, or service) that meets that need and the communication that connects the two. Let's uncover the innovation behind Clearwire and what it means for the future of mobility.

What was the unmet need or insight that Clearwire is responding to?

Consumers want and need to be able to access data at broadband speeds on the go—and we don’t think that experience should be painful.

What was the idea that inspired Clearwire - how are you filling the unmet need?

The current 3G network is provided by voice-centric cell phone companies who are accommodating the data needs of consumers. Clearwire is just the opposite—we are a data centric network. The reason AT&T is having trouble bringing quality data service to market right now can be attributed to building a network based on voice and having to retrofit for mass data use thanks to the iPhone. Clearwire is built for data volume from day one.

And the communication—what has Clearwire been doing to make yourselves known to your target consumer audience?

We want people thinking about CLEAR—we want to intrigue them. We are currently implementing multiple layers that include grassroots salespeople, partnering with local businesses and street teams. We are talking to people the way they want to be communicated to.

With 400 million people already using 3G (HSDPA/WCDMA) technologies today, what is Clearwire’s plan to increase mobile usership?

We ideally want to take marketshare and entice those customers on an inferior network to utilize our faster 4G network.

Clearwire has been extraordinarily helpful in industries with location challenges, construction for example, where people are working in remote areas—CLEAR is plug and play and the pricepoint is very attractive for small and medium sized businesses.

What roles do you see big investors, Sprint, Google and Intel playing in Clearwire’s future?

Sprint holds 51% of Clearwire and they have provided the funding that is allowing us to build out our network. Intel is creating laptops and other hardware with built in WiMAX capabilities, and Google will continue to assist Clearwire strategically. Comcast is currently reselling our service under their brand, and advantage to Clearwire because we benefit when network usage increases.

What does the future of mobility look like and how do you see Clearwire affecting that future?

I think we already are. Having the capability to accomplish things on the go, but have an experience like a home broadband connection is amazing. Clearwire will effectively support and drive a better mobile experience while helping to feed the cloud.

Also, imagine if the 4G network were implemented in, for instance, Chicago’s parking meter system—there’s a huge lag time when a customer uses a card to pay, resulting in a long wait. The ability to speed things up can make so many day-to-day things easier—and safer. For public safety purposes, the ability to live stream video could bring surveillance to a higher level of efficiency. Devices with built in WiMAX capabilities will become more common as manufacturers rush to provide consumers with the ability to lifestream rich content to their personal and social networks on the go.

How do you see the future playing out between LTE (Long Term Evolution) and Clearwire 4G?

Both technologies are sound and in the future, 4G will seem like a commodity. Yet, we have the advantage of speed to market. We'll see how the rest plays out in 8-12 months as LTE goes online in major metropolitan areas.

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What happens when an already concrete, long-standing industry perceived as the opposite of user-driven tries its hand at innovation? What happens when the financial services industry makes the leap onto the user-driven Web and into mobility? Well, here’s one of our picks for a company that really got financial innovation right:

Mint.com

Mint.com is home to a free, ultra-customizable money management and budgeting system. Sure, there are a lot of companies producing software and websites to help people better track and manage money, but Mint is the first to offer an elegant, highly customizable solution for a very custom need. So what’s elegant about it? Well, according to some of the over 1 million people already using Mint:

It fulfills an unmet need.

Mint isn’t just design oriented—that is, while it’s full of relevant, detailed features; Mint isn’t all about the aesthetic.

And, as of now, Mint has a user base of over 1 million people and is tracking 175 billion in transactions, 47 billion in assets and has identified more than 300 million in potential savings for its users. But how did this financial services web-based start up that has only been in operation for two years manage to gain recognition as the web’s foremost way to manage money?

It all started with insight.

For Aaron Patzer, CEO and founder of Mint, Quicken was cumbersome. It just didn’t have the ease of use and the range of customizable solutions that is required by individual-specific financial situations. In short, it was an umbrella system. However, by assessing the finite points of personal finance and asking the simple, but powerful question: What would I want out of this? Patzer got it right.

So right in fact, that Intuit, the maker of Quicken, QuickBooks and TurboTax and the inspiration for Mint itself, recently acquired Patzer’s company for about 170 million in September of 2009.

According to Patzer, “we tried to ground ourselves in what any business should be doing: solve a real problem for people. Make something that is faster, more efficient, cheaper and innovate on technology or business models to make a healthy revenue stream doing it.”

By responding to insight, fulfilling an unmet need and by making clear communication, not aesthetic design, a primary concern, Mint.com is innovating how many manage their money—and how they see the financial services industry.

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In fact, failure is more than O.K. It's required.

By G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón

Columbus insisted the world was round and then promptly missed America on his first attempt. The Wright Brothers claimed flying was possible and nearly killed themselves trying to make it happen. Steve Jobs launched NEXT computers—a hardware failure that most don't remember because they now think of him as the guru behind such ground-breaking devices as the iPod and iPhone. And, of course, Albert Einstein, whose very name we use as a short-hand for describing someone as a genius, was a lousy student. (As were many successful CEOs and entrepreneurs.)

Our point: Failure isn't fatal, in fact, failure is actually required for innovation success.

That is an idea you need to accept, if you are going to do your best work. It is an idea that you definitely have to get across to your team—and indeed your entire company—in order to free it from the innovation-limiting shackles of perfection.

The phrase "Be patient. God isn't finished with me yet" is a healthy mantra for most of us—and most of our innovation projects.

Soft Launches

One reason that's true is that in order to make a product or service everything it can be it needs to be repeatedly soft-launched with both internal stakeholders and external customers. This means literally sending the idea—be it a product or a service—into a limited part of the marketplace with the full understanding that it will be modified (perhaps extensively) based on how customers and consumers react.

For successful launches to happen, a team must be O.K. with the premise that they are starting with what some may consider a half-baked idea, one that very well may fail as constituted. You need to make this O.K. You need to tell your team that the real failure is fear of launching an idea until it is perfect.

To buttress your case, make the following points:

1. We're only right when the market tells us so. Right now, we presume to be right, and our thinking is based on as-good-as-we-can-get research, history, and gut feel. The market will help us see and hear what we can do to be more right (and also help us eliminate all the things our customers—and potential customers—don't like or don't want.)

2. We can make any changes quickly. We can simulate years of research data in the span of months once we are out in the marketplace. It is the fastest way to learn.

3. It has never been cheaper to test ideas; The Internet allows for instant feedback; empty strip malls allow for in-and-out shopping experiences with risk-free short-term leases; technology has made prototyping doable in days instead of weeks.

4. It is going to be fun. We're doing this to learn and improve, not to beat up an idea. (So there is no reason for anyone to get defensive.)

5. We will be making our "mistake" on a small scale, i.e. you are not launching the Iridium Phone or Segway only to find no one understands it or only 1,000 people want it. If we find out our idea is completely off-base, we're about to save the company millions of dollars and perhaps our jobs.

One more point: Be careful of the language that you use when describing your testing process. We often find that words like "prototype" and "beta" come with too much baggage to overcome. When they hear those terms, many people think it means that certain elements of the product (or service) that you are about to test are locked in place. That's not the message you want to send. Just about everything should be up for grabs. For our people "soft launch" sends the message we expect lots of things about the idea to change. But consider creating your own language that stresses the results you are trying to achieve, e.g., iteration phase 3 or "project optimize".

If your team still resists the idea of iterative soft launches, just remind them that if this approach was good enough for Columbus, Steve Jobs, and the Wright brothers, it is probably good enough for them.

This article originally published in BusinessWeek

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Ten Reasons Your Next Launch Will Fail

To introduce your new products successfully, meet a need, aim for a broad audience, and research, research, research

By G. Michael Maddock and Raphael Louis Vitón

Introducing new products and services successfully requires: a) sufficient expertise and resources, b) a defined process (BusinessWeek.com, 5/8/08), and c) leadership resolve (BusinessWeek.com, 5/20/08).

But talking about expertise, process, and resolve is boring to everyone except engineers (and people who introduce new products successfully). So, with apologies to David Letterman, here's our list of the top 10 reasons your next new launch will fail.

10. Science Run Amok.

Companies use their research and development capabilities to come up with unique products, instead of making customer needs their starting point. They begin with what they are good at, as opposed to what customers want. New products aren't bloodhounds that go find markets. They must address an unmet need.

9. The Lemming Effect.

"The competition has just introduced an X, so we need to have an X, too." If all you are offering is a me-too product, you can only gain market share by cutting price, and who wants to go that route? Find an unmet need and go after it.

8. "Team ACME."

See if this sounds familiar. Someone comes up with an idea and it gets implemented by an ad hoc team with money found in a slush fund. It's a daring approach. It's innovative. And it almost never works because it isn't sufficiently thought out.

If you have ever watched a Wile E. Coyote cartoon you understand the problem. The Coyote's ad hoc solutions to the problem of catching the Road Runner always seem on the surface to make sense, but they always contain a fatal flaw that causes them to blow up in the end. If you substitute your company for Wile E. and "a nagging consumer challenge" for the Road Runner, you'll see why there are better ways to go. Meep Meep.

7. It's Scary Out There.

There are thousands of reasons not to be bold. The economy is weak; the market is unsettled. Somebody needs a hug. Fine, go get yourself one. Then buck up and get aggressive.

6. The Market is Too Small.

For a new product to be successful you need sufficient sales. It sounds ridiculously obvious, doesn't it? But you would be amazed at the number of companies that design a product for too small a market. Say your new product is targeted at households with at least $55,000 in annual income. Well, that's only 50% of the 105 million U.S. households. But it's really just for the 18-65 age group—there goes another third of the market that's left.

And this mythical product will only appeal to those with an active lifestyle: one-third of the remaining 35 million homes—some 12 million. Say you get 33% to try it, and of those 4 million households, only 50% said they would buy it again. Your potential market is about 2 million households, and sales at that level won't cover the developmental costs, advertising, etc.

Instead of acknowledging this, we redefine the market as "for everyone 18 and over"—and then wonder why a product designed for a narrow target didn't sell well.

5. Dartboard Product Design.

There is almost never sufficient thought given to what the total product should look like. Let's say there are four key components—price, packaging, size, and usability—that could affect how well it sells. And each one of them has four options. So there are 256 different ways you could manufacture that product.

What's the predominant technique used to choose among them? People sit around a conference table with some pizza and soft drinks and say, about a new paper towel, for example, "Let's go with 500 sheets, super-high absorbency, and middle-of-the-road packaging, and priced 10% above the market leader."

What's the probability they've chosen right? By definition, it is 1 out of 256. Maybe they have some expertise; that boosts the odds to 1:128. Better, but still not great.

4. Death by Consensus.

If everyone has to agree on the key characteristics of a new product, you are going to end up introducing really bland products. The higher the number of people who have to agree, the worse this gets. Create a small task force of new product experts and empower them. Get out of their way. Let them live (or die) by how often they are right. You will get more compelling ideas to market faster.

3. Lack of Alignment.

You have a great idea. But because your process did not identify key stakeholders and influencers, it is your idea, not everyone's. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Pat Lencioni does a great job talking about what happens to teams when trust is not established. Your success criteria should reflect the wants of the stakeholder. Trust builds momentum. Want to see your boss kill an awesome idea? Fail to include him early and often.

2. Leadership Churn.

Great ideas are like kids. They need to be nurtured, protected, pushed, challenged, and loved. Innovators are the proud parents that make sure this happens. So when these parents move from one brand to another, are poached by competition, or simply burn out, the kids suffer. (See? It really is always the parents' fault.)

1. Ready, Fire, Aim.

Tom Peters and Bob Waterman perpetrated one of the biggest crimes ever against Corporate America when they told it to do a little homework, get the product in the marketplace, and make corrections based on market feedback, a concept they called "ready, fire, aim." Speed to market is a killer concept in the negative sense. It kills new products.

You don't want to make your mistakes in public. To launch a product before it is ready with a $40 million campaign is just idiotic. The problem is, it isn't seen as idiotic. It's seen as one of the costs of doing business. That's sad. People who do this should not be seen as bold, they should be seen as bad marketers.

After reading this, feel free to smile knowingly, roll your eyes in frustration, or forward it to unresolved leaders. Better yet, why not take a look at your current innovation initiatives and make sure none of these things is happening on your watch.

This article originally published in BusinessWeek

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