Monetizing Innovation

Chapter 13Learning from the BestSuccessful Innovations Designed around the Price

Throughout the last nine chapters, we've used anecdotes from real companies to illustrate our nine steps for designing new products around a price. They have shown what happens when companies monetize innovation this way—the new revenue they can generate, the higher profits they can earn, the more on-target innovations they can invent, and the customer devotion they can create.

In this chapter, we go beyond anecdotes and present case studies of seven companies that have profited handsomely from the “design the product around the price” approach to monetizing innovation.

The cases are a strong mix, in multiple ways. They represent a mix of Business-to-Business (B2B) vs. Business-to-Consumer (B2C) examples, traditional innovations vs. disruptive innovations, and they span a wide variety of industry verticals including automotive, software, and pharma.

We begin with Porsche, an example you might remember from the beginning of the book. The Porsche case here is a deep dive into two highly successful products that enabled the firm to break out of its sports car niche: the Cayenne sport-utility vehicle and the Panamera sedan.

Following Porsche is the story of LinkedIn. The case study shows how LinkedIn has grown its business social network, including the recruiting-tools side of the marketplace. And grow it did: a 36-fold revenue spurt in that part of the business in just five years.

The third case study ...