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Disrupting From Within: Distinguishing Between Vision, Strategy & Roadmap

QUICK SUMMARY

Marci Ruman, a change agent at Kimberly Clark with 30 years of experience in R&D, shares her approach to innovation by distinguishing between vision (knowing your why), strategy (challenging current thinking), and roadmap (making it possible). She emphasizes the importance of understanding consumers’ ideal experiences rather than just improving existing products, which led her team to develop disruptive innovations like reusable absorbent underwear and menopause solutions. The session highlights how innovation requires both sustaining current business and pursuing disruptive opportunities, even when facing organizational resistance and resource constraints.

KEY QUOTES

  • “People really don’t buy products, right? They buy experiences. Really what they buy is they buy a feeling.”
  • “I am an overachiever, so I like to bring forward the disruptive stuff ’cause I think there’s always something better out there and we can make the consumers happier when it comes to innovation.”
  • “To create the future, it’s pretty simple. To me. It is. Why, how, what, and when. Your vision, your strategy, and your roadmap.”

FULL SESSION SUMMARY

Introduction to Innovation as Change

Marci opens by highlighting the shocking statistic that 52% of Fortune 500 companies have gone bankrupt, been acquired, ceased to exist, or dropped out of the Fortune 500. This underscores the critical need for companies to adapt, evolve, and compete through innovation, or risk becoming obsolete. With over 30 years in R&D at Kimberly Clark, a 150-year-old company with $18 billion in revenue, Marci positions herself as a change agent who has helped launch 25 brand-new products and influenced over 100 renovations.

The Unconventional Mindset

Marci challenges the audience to think unconventionally, comparing the traditional rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner to Jimi Hendrix’s controversial but unforgettable version. She shares her personal mantra for innovation: be curious (know your why), challenge current thinking (there’s always a better way), and make it possible (be a go-getter). This approach aligns with creating the future through vision, strategy, and roadmap.

Vision: Knowing Your Why

Vision is about understanding the fundamental purpose behind innovation. Marci emphasizes being consumer-centric rather than solely focused on financial results. She explains that consumers don’t buy products; they buy experiences and feelings. To uncover these deeper motivations, innovators must practice empathy and look beyond conscious pain points.

By repeatedly asking consumers how they ideally want to feel, Marci’s team discovered that women with bladder leakage didn’t just want better pads—they wanted to feel like they didn’t have the condition at all. This insight opened possibilities for entirely new product categories and adjacencies. She recommends using analogies from related worlds (like comparing a product experience to wearing a cozy cable-knit sweater) to understand unarticulated needs and create sensory-rich experiences.

Strategy: Challenging Current Thinking

Strategy addresses how to achieve the vision. Marci discusses the constant dilemma between making something better (sustaining innovation) versus making something different (disruptive innovation). She notes that unconscious bias often limits thinking, even among innovation professionals.

Effective strategy defines performance elements broadly enough to allow interpretation without being overly prescriptive. Creating prototypes with the best available materials demonstrates possible ways to execute the vision, giving teams something tangible to rally around.

Roadmap: Making It Possible

The roadmap defines what will be done and when. It bridges the gap between current capabilities and the vision through iterative steps. Marci emphasizes the importance of having a winning consumer proposition (through concepts that address problems, benefits, and claims), products with features that deliver on that concept, and the technology that enables performance.

Foresight and Balancing Sustaining vs. Disruptive Innovation

A significant challenge faced is balancing leadership’s commitment to sustaining current product forms versus pursuing disruptive innovations. She references the common quote about consumers only asking for better versions of existing products, but reframes it: “People say they want something faster. It’s their job to tell us how they wanna feel, what experience they wanna have. But it’s our job to say, is it a horse or is it a car?”

Marci shares examples of successful disruptive innovations her team pursued:

  1. Reusable underwear that absorbs bladder leaks
  2. An insertable device that supports the bladder
  3. Solutions for menopause symptoms

She also discusses different dimensions of innovation beyond just products, including process innovations (like Toyota’s just-in-time manufacturing), position innovations (like premium-priced Starbucks coffee), and paradigm shifts (like the evolution from VHS to streaming).

Overcoming Innovation Hurdles

Marci identifies several common hurdles to innovation:

  • Lack of alignment (leaders wanting proof before endorsement)
  • Cultural issues (fear of failure affecting performance ratings)
  • Market inertia (failing to respond to market changes)
  • Resource constraints (budget, time, resources)
  • Incorrect vision or strategy (being too specific about solutions)

Practical Approaches to Driving Change

To overcome these challenges, Marci recommends:

  1. Practicing empathy by truly listening to consumers without predetermined questions
  2. Responding to resistance with “Why not?” to shift the burden of proof
  3. Breaking down seemingly difficult tasks into manageable first steps
  4. Taking initiative to drive change regardless of organizational level

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  1. Distinguish between vision, strategy, and roadmap: Vision defines why (the purpose), strategy defines how (the approach), and roadmap defines what and when (the execution plan).
  2. Seek deeper consumer insights: Look beyond conscious pain points to understand how consumers ideally want to feel, which can reveal opportunities for disruptive innovation.
  3. Balance sustaining and disruptive innovation: While improving existing products is important, pursuing disruptive innovations that might make current products obsolete is essential for long-term survival.
  4. Use prototypes to make ideas tangible: Creating physical prototypes helps teams rally around possibilities and demonstrates the path from current capabilities to the vision.
  5. Challenge unconscious bias: Question assumptions and conventional thinking, both in yourself and your organization, to discover truly innovative solutions.
  6. Consider multiple dimensions of innovation: Look beyond product innovation to process, position, and paradigm innovations for comprehensive growth opportunities.
  7. Overcome organizational resistance: Use strategies like asking “Why not?” and breaking down big changes into manageable first steps to overcome resistance to innovation.

DELIVERY ON EVENT FOCUS

The session directly addresses the event’s focus on aligning innovation with business strategy by demonstrating how to:

  • Create a consumer-centric vision that supports business objectives
  • Develop strategies that balance sustaining current business with pursuing disruptive opportunities
  • Build roadmaps that connect vision to execution through practical steps
  • Navigate organizational challenges that can misalign innovation efforts with business needs
  • Use consumer insights to identify innovation opportunities that deliver business value

DELIVERY ON EVENT THEME

The session supports the event theme of “harvesting innovation and sowing seeds of future growth” by:

  • Showing how to harvest insights from consumers to fuel innovation
  • Demonstrating how to balance short-term results (harvesting) with long-term disruptive innovation (sowing)
  • Providing examples of successful innovations that grew from understanding deeper consumer needs
  • Offering approaches to overcome organizational barriers that prevent future growth
  • Emphasizing the importance of foresight in planting seeds for future success

ACTION STEPS FOR INNOVATION EXPERTS AND CORPORATE CHANGEMAKERS

  1. Adopt a structured approach to innovation by clearly separating vision (why), strategy (how), and roadmap (what/when) in your innovation processes.
  2. Implement deeper consumer research techniques that go beyond functional needs to understand emotional desires and ideal experiences.
  3. Create a portfolio approach that allocates resources to both sustaining innovations and potentially disruptive opportunities.
  4. Develop prototypes early to make abstract ideas tangible and build alignment around possibilities rather than specifications.
  5. Challenge your team’s thinking by regularly asking “Why not?” when faced with resistance to new ideas.
  6. Expand your innovation focus beyond products to include process, position, and paradigm innovations.
  7. Build storytelling skills to effectively communicate the consumer experience your innovations will deliver, using sensory cues and analogies.
  8. Practice empathy by truly listening to consumers without predetermined questions or assumptions.
  9. Break down innovation barriers by identifying first steps that make seemingly difficult changes more approachable.
  10. Take initiative to drive change regardless of your organizational level, giving yourself permission to challenge the status quo.