Is innovation about creativity? What are some of the recipes to reclaim the creativity we had as children and we lost because of education and socialization? For those of you who see innovation as creative skills, Tom Kelley and David Kelley from Ideo are sharing their experience on how to reclaim your creative confidence in this article for the Harvard Business Review.

Is innovation about design? Roberto Verganti, founder of PROject Science, describes in his book the strategy of design-driven innovation. The design-driven innovations introduced by Apple, Alessi or Whole Food Markets have not come from the market but have proposed a different and unsolicited meaning and have generated new products, services,and systems, significant and sustainable profit margin, brand value and growth.

Is innovation about process to bring new ideas to the market? Fabernovel has developed a methodology called excubation to bring promising ideas and business opportunities to life. This methodology is based on the belief that large organizations should think and act as startups.

The secret sauce to innovate has not been published yet. There are some necessary ingredients. Creativity, design and process are in the list. You may add your own: change in time of chaos, survival instinct, self re-invention and in the case of startups, recklessness, passion and faith.

But the outcome of innovation is a well published recipe : unique competitive advantage, new markets, market share and profitable growth. It starts with good ideas and get real with very good marketing.

Just wanted to share sound bites from  Advertising Week and the Brand Innovators Summit.  It is good to confirm that the Customer is the center of the universe and that this customer is a human.  Marketing is not agency driven anymore (?), marketers move at the speed of the customer real time.  The CMO challenge is to run from data to information, to insight and finally to action… real time. Technology and science really help. But you still have to fish where the fish are and the new big market is the Boomer. In 5 years, 50% of the US population will be over 50.

Because of the complexity of addressing all types of media and building the right content, marketing organizations are using more and more specialized agencies and one of the top challenges for the CMO is to align execution.

One of the most interesting presentations at the Brand Innovator Summit was Mark Bonchek’s Orbit strategy. Mark talked about how to create gravity for brands. I liked his idea of transitioning from the sales funnel to the customer journey. Content, curation and co-creation are the new drivers for demand generation.

As co-founder and co-chair of Smart CMO, I had the opportunity to join Emily Greene, Chief Creative Officer at Viva Creative in interviewing exceptional Chief Executive Officers about marketing innovation.  One of them is Daniel Lubetzky, CEO of Kind. Daniel is a serial social entrepreneur who embodies how social marketing coupled with audacious innovation can drive brand differentiation and growth.  Daniel talks about being true to the brand, packaging included. He describes the marketing process as moving from creative to skeptical to evangelist. For him, social media is creating a movement of Kind acts. Check out his interview in this video. Enjoy!