Companies with an innovation/NPD process usually have a success rate of 1 in 3 which means that one in three of the ideas that made it to development were very successful (Product Innovation Educators, 2014). Speed to market has been an important element in the success of new product launches and those companies with an NPD process have decreased speed to market by 200% and it has been proven that the best companies drive innovative new product development with a structured process (Product Innovative Educators, 2014). Evernote has turned note taking into a $10 million dollar business by driving innovation in their note taking products. Below we will analyze the Evernote Innovation and new product development process based on press articles, CEO interviews and market analyst’s reports.
Evernote is a free app that lets user’s store and sync information in the cloud. The main product lets you take notes, sync files across your devices, save webpages, capture inspiration, and share your ideas with friends and colleagues (Evernote, 2014). Evernote was founded in 2008 by current CEO Phil Libin and while the Evernote products have been around since early 2008, it wasn’t until this past Tuesday that Evernote hit a milestone by reaching 101 million users with 1,000,000 users being paying customers and using the more advanced features. What is interesting about Evernote is that the innovation and new product development process follows an innovation/NPD process with an overall goal stated by Evernote CEO Libin, “I wanted a clever product. I wanted that product to reach hundreds of millions of people. And I wanted 99% of them to be using it for free (Macsai, 2010).” So the Evernote innovation and new product development process has an overall goal, must be able to diversify into 14 languages, compatible with all major platforms, compliment or make the product better and make the free version as good as the paid version.
The Opportunity Identification was identified by creating a note taking app for busy people. Evernote CEO Libin says, “What we’re trying to do is build for busy people, and there’s about 1 billion of those in the world (Tam, 2014).” The amount was estimated by Libin as the amount of busy people in the world calculating the number of linked in professionals who work primarily with information and adding students since they will enter the workforce (Tam, 2014). The opportunity was identified by creating an application that simplifies the busy people’s lives.
The Concept Generation, Concept Evaluation and Development are based on Evernote’s overall goal of building a clever product that reaches hundreds of millions of people and 99% of them being able to use it for free. The main product has already been established and the new products complement or make the main product better. For example Evernote has teamed up with Post-Its where they will co-brand the products on each other’s packaging and Evernote will be able to incorporate the color recognition of a post it note once a snapshot has been taken to file it digitally in the Evernote platform (Troung, 2013). Another innovation is where the app recognizes text on business cards and pulls all the information from the business card name from LinkedIn and files all the relevant information in a folder (Evernote, 2014). All this is based on building a product for busy people.
The launch stage is guided by time to market. When Evernote decided to accelerate the company growth and expansion into international markets, they enlisted the products and services of an outside vendor ABBYY. Evernote is using ABBYY’s FineReader engine alongside Evernotes technology to extract text from high quality images as Evernotes technology concentrates on poor quality images. Evernote CEO Libin mentions that, “This makes our overall system faster and saves us a lot of development time when writing different foreign languages (ABBYY, 2014).” When launching into the Russian market, Evernote was planning on launching in 6 months and after integrating the ABBYY technology, Evernote was able to cut it’s time to market time frame by 2 months, which can make a tremendous difference in the global competitive business landscape.
Due to the lack of proprietary information of Evernote’s internal innovation/NPD process, I was able to identify the process based on press, CEO interviews and market analyst’s reports. The process falls in line with the innovation/NPD process that was presented in Product Innovation Educators PowerPoint presentation. What was interesting is that Evernote has an overall goal and all innovation/NPD undertaking that must meet the efforts to reach this goal. While there might be some deviation or belief that differs from the innovation/NPD process, the stages are still the same and as noted through Product Innovation Educators (2014), those companies with an NPD process have decreased speed to market by 200% and it has been proven that the best companies drive innovative new product development with a structured process. Evernote clearly has vision, goals and innovation.
References
ABBYY. (2014). Evernote Accelerates Company Growth by Enlisting ABBYY. Retrieved from http://www.abbyy.com/Default.aspx?DN=c39eefe7-a1e6-4515-ab14-e7c90b079abc
Product Innovation Educators. (2014). the Innovation Process. Retrieved from https://csuglobal.blackboard.com/bbcswebdav/pid-1427170-dt-content-rid-6556731_2/courses/KEY_MGT475/courseModule_winter2013b/MGT475_2/mgt475_2.html
Macsai, D. (2010, July 1). Evernote CEO Phil Libin’s 3 steps to “Freemium” success. Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/1659121/evernote-ceo-phil-libins-3-steps-freemium-success
Tam, D. (2014, May 15). How Evernote designs a world without apps (Q&A). Retrieved from http://www.cnet.com/news/how-evernote-designs-a-world-without-apps/
Truong, A. (2013, September 26). Post-it Notes teams up with Evernote to bridge analog and digital. Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/3018523/tech-forecast/post-it-notes-teams-up-with-evernote-to-bridge-analog-and-digital