Transfer Technology to Retailing Adjacencies

“Technology transfer” means putting academic research findings to practical use. It’s my main objective with the RIMtailing blog, in the sense of using the results from consumer behavior studies to develop ways for retailers and other suppliers of products and services to improve their profitability.
     But the term “technology transfer” is often used in a somewhat different sense—to refer to discoveries and inventions in the physical sciences being transformed into innovations with commercial potential. Referring to this meaning of technology transfer, Nitin Nohria, as dean of Harvard Business School, wrote in Harvard Business Review, “Ultimately, the creation of jobs and wealth has more to do with harvesting the value of an innovation than with inventing it.”
     To do this, Dean Nohria advocated for attending to what business strategists call “adjacencies.” His major example, though, came not from the physical sciences, not from the realm of CPU chips and DNA mapping, but from an ancient invention: Yoga.
     What single company arguably harvested the largest creation of wealth from this ancient invention? Retailer Lululemon Athletica, purveyor of yoga clothing and accessories. Other adjacency providers of products and services include stores selling yoga DVDs, yoga retreat operators, incense producers, and physical therapists for yoga-related injuries. All these are adjacencies to the core invention of yoga and core commercial application—yoga instruction.
     As a retailer, you can count on upcoming opportunities to use transferred technology to increase sales of your current offerings:

• The sensor that, when embedded in a point-of-sale location, analyzes each shopper’s facial structure, facial expressions, body size, posture, and movement paths. The promise is to determine the demographic breakout of those who show interest in a product and then track the degree of interest and the sequence of shopping steps for different demographic segments.
• The kiosk which uses facial recognition technology to assess the shopper’s age and gender. Next, the consumer is invited to punch in information about planned meal times and swipe her frequent shopper card, which links to data about past food purchases. The kiosk then generates meal ideas. Want a sample of an item it suggests you buy? Poke the screen with a finger.

     Less esoteric and with greater profit potential are the upcoming possibilities you can be spotting for your core product and service offerings which are technology transfer adjacencies. For each electric vehicle, there’s a market for batteries and charging stations.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

Click below for more:
Offer Neatness to Creative Shoppers
Freeze Shoppers to Discern Their Wishes