Innovation implies that an invention has somehow been conceptualized, a competence created, eventually productized and successfully marketed to some distinct advantage to the process owner.

Innovations may owe their success as much to how they implemented as to the nature of the innovation itself. Customer curiosity is not sufficient to win the day; innovation may lie in the communication of the idea as much as its inherent technology.

Research departments often create brilliant technologies but don’t have customer ownership in the necessary market channels to succeed. Industrial companies often have the required customer ownership but fail due to slowness of execution or impossible internal financial rules. Many of the largest and most successful technology companies conduct very little R&D of their own, preferring instead to innovative the research results of universities, start-ups, SMEs and individuals.

IRconsult brings its own innovation to the marketing of innovation, including:

• Setting expectations of the innovator and the adopter
• Winning minds and hearts can be just as valuable as developing technology
• Building on customer ownership
• Managing customers who may acquire the innovation source
• Translating existing technology to new applications
• Combining the best of internal and external ideas in the mind of the technology adopter and / or acquirer

Marketing may be the art of making it easy for the customer to buy. Marketing innovation is the art of facilitating the innovation transfer process to the satisfaction of the source of innovation as to as the sourcing party.