Earlier this month I attended an incredible performance by the music group Spinphony. They describe themselves as a crossover string quartet that fuses classical, rock, and pop music. Many of their high energy songs are mashups between well-known rock melodies and famous classical arrangements.
Some of their mashup tunes are: Don’t Stop Beethoven (Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey), Sonata to Heaven (Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin), Billie Mendelssohn (Billie Jean by Michael Jackson), Clocks Canon (Clocks by Coldplay) and Hotel Mozart (Hotel California by the Eagles).
What is a “mashup”? The term originated in the music world to mean the merging of different musical genres.
Related to our topic, innovation, the term mashup has been adopted in the technology arena to mean a software application that combines data from various sources to create an entirely new application.
What is a Business Mashup?
In the larger world of business, mashups refer to the combination of unrelated functions, from completely separate
Innovation Consulting and Business Planning in Atlanta, Georgia
companies, that are then united to create a completely new product or service. Sometimes, the entities forming a business mashup may actually be competitors.
Business mashups can be an important piece of a company’s approach to innovation.
As an example of this type of innovation, this Summer Kohl’s and Amazon entered a new partnership that allows Amazon customers to return items from its e-commerce site at all 1,150 Kohl’s stores.
To make things even easier for Amazon customers, Kohl’s will be accepting eligible Amazon items, without a box or label, and at no cost.
Kohl’s CEO Michelle Gass said “Amazon and Kohl’s have a shared passion in providing outstanding customer service, and this unique partnership combines Kohl’s strong nationwide store footprint and omnichannel capabilities with Amazon’s reach and customer loyalty,” and the new service “is another example of how Kohl’s is delivering innovation to drive traffic to our stores and bring more relevance to our customers.”
Kohl’s goal for this innovation is to drive foot traffic and new customers to its stores in hopes that when Amazon shoppers make a return at Kohl’s they will pick up a few items while they’re there. Early results show this strategy is working because growth at the initial stores providing this service were outpacing the rest of the U.S. in sales, transactions and new customers.
Customer Experience Improvements Innovations
When people generally think about innovation, various brand-new products or services come to mind. However, there are actually eight additional types of innovation. One of those is Customer Experience Improvements.
The above Amazon/Kohl’s business mashup falls into the area of being a Customer Experience Improvement innovation.
Customer experience improvements are separate from new products and services and they involve coming up with ideas to improve your customers’ overall experience in interacting with you (e.g., giving customer support personnel greater latitude and power to solve customer problems during the first call).
Customer experience improvements involve examining your entire company and its interactions with your customers to determine how you can improve every experience they have with you, to make it the best it can be.
A College and a Retirement Facility Innovation Mashup
Another example of an innovation business mashup is Berry College in Georgia, which is leasing land on its campus to 
a nonprofit organization for the construction of a Senior Citizen retirement complex called The Spires. While other educational institutions have tried to attract senior citizens to their campuses, Berry College has gone all in by providing seed funding for the complex, which will offer independent and assisted living housing, as well as a nursing care facility.
Berry is pursuing this mashup to try to tap into the ballooning senior citizen population in the U.S by offering an innovative housing solution to them.
The foundation for business mashups is that both the parties obtain a WIN. However, the Berry College effort provides a WIN/WIN/WIN result.
The Seniors WIN by obtaining a stimulating place to live, access to College level classes that will enrich their lives, and the benefit of not being isolated from younger people, but instead have the energizing effect of interacting with college level students that should enable them to “think younger”.
Berry College WINS by obtaining additional revenue from the development of the Senior housing facility, funds from Seniors enrolling in classes, and the possibility the Seniors may leave significant amounts to Berry as a result of the gratitude and appreciation from this unique experience being provided to them.
Lastly, the students WIN by the retirement operation providing training and employment opportunities to them, the mentoring that Seniors can provide to people just starting out in life, and the enrichment of their lives by interacting with a segment of society they most likely would have little or no engagement with.
Where to Start
Thinking of and developing innovative business mashups should be more that straightforward strategies like McDonald’s using DoorDash and UberEats to deliver their food.
You want to examine your entire company and look across the spectrum of existing business segments for other companies and functions, including competitors that could provide a business mashup that would generate Customer Experience Improvements.
Once you have identified possible business mashups, then thoroughly analyze how it would benefit and affect your company before you reach out to the other organization regarding forming this new alliance.
If you could use assistance with identifying and developing possible business mashup innovations, please contact us using the information below so we can be a resource to you in this burgeoning area.
Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 17, years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive, and systematic FastTrak Innovation Program™, Innovation Academy™, and Structure of Success™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21st Century enterprise.
Office: (770) 642-4220
www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
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