In the last Learning Curve (Issue 4 | 2012) about innovation in our industry, we made the claim that ‘innovation is not an art better left only to artists’. On the contrary, it is a capability based on tools and processes that can be learned.” We suggested that exhibition companies of all sizes, even those organising one or two shows a year, can and should take a disciplined view of their business with the aid of a simple but powerful ‘Run, Evolve, Innovate’ tool. But as anyone who has been tasked with trying to bring about innovations at an existing trade show will confirm, those responsible for running it were not very excited, to put it mildly. The new ideas brought forward, and the major changes they necessitated, were not something everyone applauded and just got on with.
If your responsibility, or more likely in today’s fiercely competitive environment, one of your many responsibilities, is to drive innovation in an event, you will know that – using an aviation analogy – you must innovate while ‘in-flight’. There is no possibility to land the plane, repair a few minor things in the engine, replace the old wings with newly designed ones, and then take off again.
Innovation can be done in gradual steps over a few show cycles. Or it can take the form of an outright re-launch. But regardless of the approach taken, it must be done while existing revenue models are sustained.
Most of the resources of an exhibition business are tasked with making the next show – and maybe the one after that – a success. Furthermore, these resources are rewarded on goals (KPI’s) within this limited time horizon. As an innovator of shows, you will therefore have to overcome internal resistance and disturb reluctant organisational structures which have been put in place.
They are there by design. It is no coincidence innovators within established businesses are sometimes called ‘troublemakers’.
In their defence, it is the innovator’s job to challenge the status quo, to ask uncomfortable questions, to uncover threats that at first seem too distant and almost nonsensical to the dominant understanding of the show’s current position in the market.
There are two things that are essential to ensuring inevitable internal conflicts translate to constructive and measurable innovation-oriented actions. Two factors that perhaps separate a ‘flat’ exhibition – what others might call a ‘spent bullet’ – from a successful one that is able, over many years or decades, to consistently organise trade fairs that are towering over their markets, events that at times help to redefine the boundaries of the markets they cover. Those two things shouldn’t be new to anybody reading this article. Firstly an ability to maintain a culture of risk taking and failure, and secondly an accepted framework, a set of agreed processes and metrics that enable difficult discussions to be had, and trade-off decisions to be made.
More on the topic of culture perhaps in a future installment of Learning Curve, but for now let’s turn our sights to the topic of innovation framework; a subject all too often neglected. The purpose of such a framework would be to establish a set of processes and metrics that can bring structure to innovation. Pause for a moment and try to imagine the way in which you and your organisation go about innovating today. Were you able to quickly and easily articulate how innovation happens?
And if you answered that question with a clear yes, how about your peers from sales, human resources, finance and marketing, operations. How likely is it they would be able to rise to this challenge? And finally, if key members from these business functions were asked to attend an ‘innovation workshop’, would everyone agree that firstly ‘this is how we do innovation here at our company’, and secondly that ‘it works well’?
Often the determination and sense of urgency to innovate is there, but what is missing is nothing more than a set of common concepts; a shared understanding of how to go about it needs to be agreed upon and captured. As previously explained, for a business with a successful track record, innovation will bring about internal conflicts by design. It is therefore all the more crucial that a common set of terms, a shared vocabulary if you will, is understood by everyone. This way a higher portion of the conflicts to surface during the normal course of work will be rooted in truly diverse points of view, rather than be a result of avoidable misunderstandings.
One of the key benefits of introducing an innovation methodology such as the New Event Introduction (NEI) framework (see above) is exactly that. Initially, at the very least it provides everyone involved with a framework to unambiguously define how we go about innovation. It delivers a set of simple terms that can make dialogue much more efficient.
It can be seen without too much difficulty how this model will work to create a pipeline of new exhibitions from the ground up. But with minor variations it can also serve as an overall innovation engine. With a few modifications it can support a review process in pre-defined life cycle phases of an existing event or as part of an entire portfolio of exhibitions.
But let’s start with realistic and modest ambitions. At a very basic level, the NEI framework calls for a regular and structured review of an idea (Phase 1 and 2). Visions and interesting ideas float about in all organisations. They get ‘kicked around’ in all sorts of settings and situations. The NEI framework places filters and gateways on ideas allowing the organisation to more formally endorse and rally around those concepts that make it through the funnel. Decisions (commitments) are taken to execute these concepts (Phase 3) and bring them into fruition as marketable events. Phases 4 and 5 are about launching the events and managing them for growth.
Much more than just enabling effective dialogues, adopting such a framework will make the results of innovation efforts more predictable. An organiser looking at innovation through the prism of such a model will be in a position to assign targets to the overall process. This is where the CFOs and their team should be pleased; these target figures can be translated into budget estimates. In other words, projected spend and expectations from innovation activities can be determined. An important risk factor associated with innovation; cash outlay, becomes more quantifiable as it is put through the kind of rigour that is appropriate for the amount involved.
Let’s take an example of a firm organising 20 to 30 shows a year. How many ideas will it need to review and assess in Phase 1? Innovation leaders of a firm of this size might want to look at as many as 40 or 50 ideas in the span of a year. Of those, how many make it to Phase 2 and 3 might depend on the company’s level of calculated risk-taking and budgets allocated for the purposes of introducing new or adjacent shows. Speed counts for a lot in Phase 3. If we assume that three to five shows are committed, how long did it take to bring the maiden event to its gates? Having measures for this phase is a great way to rally resources and improve the innovation cycle. Some organisations will take years to move from committing to a concept, to launching the event. Others will take less than 12 months. It has been said before: In business you get what you measure.
Finally, Phase 5 is what the event is all about. Perhaps of the three to five shows launched, one or two will make the transition to become sustainable for the long run. The product and innovation teams are now clear on what they must deliver.
Again, let’s take our case study company with 30 shows a year. A typical high level innovation target could establish that 10 per cent of revenue should be generated from exhibitions, or clearly defined parts of exhibitions, launched in the previous five years. Then at least three shows (10 per cent of 30 shows) that were launched within the last five years need to generate revenue equivalent to, or higher, than the average-size show in today’s portfolio. Do not let anyone tell you innovation is not measurable.
Innovation is an evolutionary process. It must not be radical all the time. The ideas that make it through the NEI funnel are not always disruptive breakthroughs. While those might be the sexy type of innovations, they are not necessarily right at any given time. Take Anuga for example, a leading show in the food industry. After consecutive editions boasting more than 6,000 exhibitors, visitor satisfaction was beginning to decline. A major contributing factor was the sheer size of the show and the challenges this posed on many dimensions.
Probing further, visitors were not happy about the vast distances they had to walk to reach the stands they were interested in. As the event grew over the years, floor layout became cumbersome from the point of view of an efficient visitor experience. Innovation came in the form of splitting the exhibition into 10 co-located events. Each section continued to carry the brand Anuga, but moving forward there is now Anuga Diary, Anuga Meat, Anuga TEC and so on.
The first edition of the show in its new format saw 95 per cent of exhibitors located in different spots. A much higher portion of visitors were now able to focus on areas of interest without walking eight kilometres a day. For the organiser, this innovative approach laid the foundations for Anuga to continue to grow. It is now better prepared to carve out sections of the show into outright separate events should the show become wall-bound in the future.
Turning a ship of this size is a risky undertaking. Of course not everyone (internally as well as the exhibitors) was immediately on board. But risks associated with this innovation are quantifiable and simple frameworks can be leveraged to increase the likelihood of success. While startups and free, creative minds can surely do it well, established players with well-defined methods of innovating are able to sustain a competitive edge. Organisers that take this capability seriously understand not innovating well might be the biggest risk of all.
This was first published in the Issue 1/2013 of EW. Any comments? Email exhibitionworld@mashmedia.net
