Every business in every walk of life is experiencing change. And the pace of that change is increasing. Innovation is vital for survival. Let's look first then, at product and market innovation. All of your products and services have a lifecycle. So where are they on the lifecycle.

If they're too bunched together in the maturity stage, then they're all going to be facing decline. At some point in the near future. You need a good mix of products and services that are at different stages in the product lifecycle, so that those that are at maturity can be funding new implementations, new innovations, and those that are in decline can be replaced by those coming into maturity. I'm sure you're aware of the Boston matrix shown in the grid here, where we present the relative market share of a product or service and its market growth rate products and services with relatively high market share, and relatively high growth rate of call stars, products and services with a relatively high market share. But with a low growth rate of the cash cows of your organization. Those with a low market share, but high growth rate a question marks we don't know whether they'll turn into stars, or whether they'll turn into something else.

And those with a low market share and a low growth rate are called dogs. Now, every organization needs a balance of these products and services. So we need a balance between the stars, the cash cows, and perhaps a question mark or two for the future, because it may turn into a star and perhaps even a few dogs to keep a presence in markets that we want to develop in the future. So it's useful to look at the products and services that your organization provides, and to map them onto a grid like this. So that you can see which are the stars which are the cash cows which are the question marks which are the dogs Also to see where they are on the growth cycle the life cycle and see how clustered together they are. If they're clustered together, then you need to start thinking about developing new products and services.

Because as I said, you need a range. What can we do then, to innovate in terms of our products and markets? Well, there are a number of things that we can do. And they all fall under the banner market segmentation. So for example, we can segment our market to identify specific buyers, and then offer special terms for each key customer, or member of a specific group. I'm sure that your professional institution, for example, provides links to organizations that offer special deals.

If you're a student, for example, you get student offers, if you're members of different associations, you get offers through those Association. So targeting specific groups or specific customers with a particular value propositions is a very useful thing. Secondly, we can innovate by offering different packages different service and price propositions, depending on the time of purchase, separating, for example, the urgent customers from the whenever cheapest customers. And this is very common in rail travel and air travel. If you want to travel at peak times of the day, the fares are much more expensive than if you travel off peak. Thirdly, we might innovate in terms of the purchase quantity or the contract length, offering special terms for large orders for regular deliveries or for longer term agreements.

And amazon prime might be a good example of that. But many other organizations also offer you know term contracts and arrangements to keep you engaged with them. Fourthly, purchase location might be an opportunity for you to offer different packages in different ways. There might be opportunities for regional or national pricing, depending on the product and service that you offer. Next very common practice is to bundle products and services into a package. This means that we're adding margin at relatively little extra cost.

And it also disguises the price of the main product or service so that clients are less able to do effective price comparison. Next, tie ins and metering are becoming very common. And this is where you provide an ongoing servicing or supply contract on favorable terms to the purchaser, so that you build an ongoing relationship with them. Photo copiers and printers for business organizations are very commonly sold like that. And even Aero Engines nowadays are provided on a lease and maintenance basis. Next, we can innovate in terms of product design.

So we offer different design specifications, different design packages, to different markets to appeal to them. For example, nowadays there's a plethora of designs available for motor cars. aimed at the younger market, some aimed at the more senior market like myself. Essentially what I'm saying here is that you should look at your products and services and identify how you can segment your markets more effectively offering different packages different designs, different specifications or service arrangements to different groups of customers, in order to appeal to them differently, add better value for the customer, and improve profitability and margins for your organization.