Cut the Airlines Some Slack (For 2 Minutes While You Read This)
For all the (usually well-deserved) abuse the airlines take in the media, I’m going to take a break from all that for the next few minutes. Instead, I’d like to take some time to recognize the innovations this desperate industry has made over the past few weeks in the face of rapidly skyrocketing fuel costs.
Innovations, you say? What’s so innovative about rising ticket prices and baggage fees? Well, not much really. And for the sake of maintaining my loyal readership, I’m not going to write about why I agree that these companies should continue raising ticket prices. Nope – as an alternative, I’m going to spin this into a positive piece on corporate innovation in its various forms.
Usually when people think of innovation, they think of things that are cool, sexy and/or technology-related. A glaringly obvious example would be Apple’s iPod or just about anything Google-related. Bringing it back to airlines, JetBlue’s introduction of the seatback television was a groundbreaking innovation, or on a grander scale, the low-cost carrier segment as a whole.
Referring to Doblin’s Ten Types of Innovation, the ones I just mentioned likely fall into the most common buckets: products and services. In fact, because product and service innovation is the most tangible (not to mention cool and sexy), it probably won’t surprise you to hear that this is where companies spend a disproportionately large percentage of their time. However, what might shock you about Doblin’s findings is that innovations related to business model, process and customer experience add by far the most value – much more so than those related to products and services.
As a celebration of non-product and non-service-related innovation, I present to you the airlines:
Process Innovation
- Cathay Pacific scraped the paint off of its freighters, reducing the weight of their aircraft by up to 440 pounds
- Singapore Airlines is flying slower to increase gas mileage
- Delta is looking to eliminate duplicate flying manuals in the cockpit (which apparently are quite heavy)
Business Model Innovation
- In 2007, American Airlines sold 100 billion AAdvantage miles to other companies as an alternate revenue source to tickets
Brand Innovation
- JetBlue’s new “Jetting” ad campaign, trying to remind people that flying is fun
- Virgin America’s ads touting good food and even better looking people aboard their planes
Will all of these tactics work? Of course not, it’s the airline industry (c’mon, did you really think I was going to let you go without making fun of them at least once?). But more importantly, these companies are trying to find non-obvious ways to protect their bottom lines and grow their top.
Innovation: it isn’t just an iPhone.
