I remember Kellogg Professor Wolcott, while teaching Corporate Innovations and New Ventures, saying, “Innovation now is like marketing in the ‘80s. It [innovation] will be prevalent sooner [rather] than later.” I couldn’t agree with him more. Having spent seven years in marketing-related jobs, I have constantly witnessed the magical power of innovation. The brands I managed always achieved significant growth through meaningful innovation including product inventions and new marketing ideas. I firmly believe that as time goes on, innovation will become more and more important not only for technology companies but also for the traditional consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry.
Many guest speakers for IMC classes have mentioned the importance of innovation. Karen Zahorsky, working for Omnicom’s strategic group, is an example. In Professor John Greening’s Branding and Advertising Decisions class, Ms Zahorsky said, “The first thing clients are demanding now is: ‘Give me something I haven’t already got.’”
Without an innovative mindset, I don’t think it is possible to deliver exceptional results. This is the reason why I joined InNUvation and became the president of Medill InNUvation. My appreciation for the challenges of innovation have really grown since I joined the club.
To promote the spirit of innovation, InNUvation was designed as Northwestern University’s only interdisciplinary student club to provide a platform for cross-school idea exchange. Its different school chapters include Medill, Kellogg, McCormick and Weinberg. The annual InNUvation grand event is Venture Challenge, which offers a top prize of $12,000 for a new business idea.
On May 12, 2008, the final competition of this year’s Venture Challenge took place at the Medill School. Medill Dean John Lavine, in his remarks at the opening of the final competition, stressed the importance and the commitment of Medill to media innovation. I was truly inspired by his ambition in this area. Even though this year’s winner was a breakthrough cancer invention from medical and Kellogg students, media innovation has been on top of the list for the past couple of years. This year two teams from Medill IMC participated in the semi-final round (careerNancy.com: Sunny Yang, Paul Sturm and Min Young Cho; and ProLingual: Fion Huang, Evanne Lee, Gary Liao (Masters of Product Development) and Annabel Yang). After the event, these semi-finalists said it was a phenomenal experience and they would definitely encourage other students to join the competition even if it was just to go through the whole process.
Medill InNUvation has set up an official Web site (thanks to Wendy Chen and Aping Wang) to serve as the first step towards increasing awareness of InNUvation at Medill. We also have a team, led by Kefu Huang and Fion Huang and comprising Jessica Chang, Sindy Wan and Noah Yeh, dedicated to the innovation hub development, which aims to drive mobile marketing and the study of new media. The first test market of the innovation hub intends to bridge the gap between marketing, packaged goods and media companies via mobile applications.
We see great progress in new media development with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Young generations have grown up in an atmosphere of fast media changes. However, many traditional companies are struggling to keep up with the pace of innovation and find new media difficult to apply for marketing purposes. Some have come to Medill IMC for answers and solutions. We believe this media innovation hub is a great opportunity for companies to acquire ideas as well as for students to demonstrate their talent in new media management.
Come and join us at Medill InNUvation. You will learn something that you didn’t even know you could learn.
……….Fion (Chenying) Huang
