Here was an interesting article about innovation and creating disruptive ideas. The cosmetic industry is definitely in need of some disruptive ideas. Unfortunately, the big companies are risk adverse and any idea that is really disruptive likely won’t see the light of day. That is why it is up to the entreprenureial cosmetic chemist to create disruption.

Note – Odds are high that your disruptive idea will fail.

Anyway, if that doesn’t discourage you read on to see how you can develop innovative disruptive ideas for the cosmetic industry.

Disruptive ideas

The Mashable author suggests three steps to creating disruptive ideas.

1. Figure out what you want to disrupt
2. Figure out the industry cliches
3. Come up with a disruptive hypotheses

Let’s look at how this might work in the cosmetic industry.

What do you want to disrupt?

In this step you want to define what you want to disrupt. This should be high level stuff. For example, hair care or skin care. But you can get more specific. Hair products for curly hair or skin products for senior citizens. Then turn it into a sentence.

“I want to disrupt the hair care market.”

Determine the cliches

Figure out what are the things about the cosmetic industry that everyone (insiders) believe or takes for granted. In the hair care example…

1. Shampoo must foam
2. Hair products make hair look beautiful
3. Hair products come in plastic bottles
4. Hair products are advertised using women with beautiful hair.

Do a little research and see what everyone in the industry is doing. Checking out websites of the biggest brands and finding similarities is a great way to make this list.

Create disruptive hypotheses

Now that you have your list of obvious things that everyone does, come up with ideas that disrupt the status quo. It is helpful to begin with the statement “What would happen if…” For example,

“What would happen if shampoo didn’t foam?” – Like Dry Shampoo perhaps?

“What would happen if hair products couldn’t be sold in plastic bottles?” – How would you sell them?

Well, you get the idea. The more scenarios you come up with, the more disruptive ideas you can create. And the more ideas you have, the more likely you are to come up with something that is truly unique.

That is what the cosmetic industry needs and you are the ones who need to do it.

The slower holiday season is an excellent time for cosmetic chemists to brainstorm some new ideas to work on in the upcoming year.  So, try out this week’s innovation question and see what kind of ideas you can come up with.

Scenario 6

Suppose you were not allowed to sell any cosmetics that contained chemicals.  Assuming the need for cosmetic products doesn’t change, how would that change the cosmetic industry?

Example

1.  Cosmetic companies would become become publishers and sell formulas rather than products.
2.  Formulators wouldn’t need cosmetic manufacturers to sell products.
3.  Raw material suppliers would have to sell ingredients directly to consumers.
4.  Formulating would become a service job.
5.  Store shelves at Walmart and Target would be empty or be books.
6.  More people would become experts at creating their own products.
7.  Chemical accidents in the home would increase.
8.  There would be a reduction in plastic waste.
9.  A black market of people who sell products to friends and family would develop.
10. Brands would not mean as much or anything.

Now it’s your turn.  How do you think the cosmetic industry would be different?

It’s been a little while since we’ve done an innovation question but here’s one that might make you think differently about developing your cosmetic product.

When you work at a cosmetic company, the thing that everyone wants you to do is to create a product that you can sell to as many people as possible. But instead of doing that, what would happen if you did the opposite? What if you customized your formulas so they could be sold to a specific group of people?

Scenario 5

How can you change your cosmetic formulas/product to make them customized?

Example

Right now a product like skin lotion is made for the masses. There is some effort to differentiate skus by making them “extra moisturizing” or “intensive healing” but this is not customized enough. Think of how you could change your formula to make it so customized that it is made specifically for one consumer. Come up with as many ideas as you can. For example…

1. Match the color to the person’s skin color
2. Create a formula with a controlled rub-in time
3. Customize odor for person’s favorite
4. Add a signal on the packaging reminds customer to apply lotion when they need it
5. Determine exactly which ingredients work best on customer & make appropriate lotion
6. Create package that perfectly matches bathroom decor
7. Make package a work of art
8. Customize color to match customer’s favorite color
9. Put unique chemical marker in lotion to identify person
10. Customize shine level to customer’s desire

Now it’s your turn. What can you do to your formula to customize it for an individual?

I just finished reading the book Proust was a Neuroscientist.  It really was an excellent book and I encourage anyone who is interested in science and art to pick it up and read it.

The book goes through and describes some of the most interesting artists of our time and how their art was actually explaining parts of neuroscience that were eventually proven via scientific experiment.  He covers a number of artists like Proust, Walt Wittman, Gertrude Stein, Stravinsky, and more.  While I was reading, an idea occurred to me.  What if we applied the principles of some of these forms of art to cosmetics?

Scenario 4

Apply the principles of molecular gastronomy to cosmetic products.  What would a deconstructed personal care product look like?

Example

Product type:  Skin Lotion

Take the ingredients of your skin lotion and lay them out in drop form on a small plate.  To use the product, the consumer would have to mix the ingredients prior to applying to skin.

That was just a quick run through of the exercise.  Now it’s your turn.

For previous exercises see the cosmetic innovation page.

When trying to come up with different ideas for new cosmetic products, you need to consider the “pain points” that people experience when purchasing your product.

Every product has some kind of issue that consumers would rather not have to face. For example, suppose a consumer needs gas for their car. Some of the possible pain points include…

1. Price
2. Inconvienent travel to the gas station
3. Odor
4. Pumping gas in bad weather
5. Getting hands dirty

New product ideas can be found when you consider the problems associated with your product and then think about ways to solves those problems.  Note that not every problem will be applicable to all your consumers.  However, as long as some of your consumers are affected by the problem, you can include it.

Scenario 3

Make a list of 10 “pain points” related to buying or using your cosmetic product. Then come up with 10 ways you could change your product to solve that problem.

Example

Product type:  Shampoo

Pain points

1. Have to get hair wet
2. Makes hands feel dried out
3. Causes split ends
4. Bottles clash with bathroom decor
5. Unsure about how much to use
6. Allergic to harsh chemicals
7. Mold/mildew grow around the bottles
8. Too many different products to wash hair and body
9. Too hard to rinse out
10. Leaves hair feeling dry

That was just a quick run through of the exercise.  Now it’s your turn.

For previous exercises see the cosmetic innovation page.

To be a good cosmetic chemist, you’ll want to generate a lot of creative ideas. Unfortunately, it’s pretty tough to come up with new ideas. With thousands of new cosmetic products being launched each year, it can start to seem like all the ideas have been generated. But if you ask the right questions, you can generate ideas that you never even thought about. In this series of cosmetic innovation posts, we’ll pose scenarios or questions that you can use to generate new product or innovative ideas.

Scenario 2

Imagine water has just become the most expensive cosmetic raw material available. Name at least 10 ways in which this will change your current and future cosmetic formulations.

For previous exercises see the cosmetic innovation page.

To be a good cosmetic chemist, you’ll want to generate a lot of creative ideas. Unfortunately, it’s pretty tough to come up with new ideas. With thousands of new cosmetic products being launched each year, it can start to seem like all the ideas have been generated. But if you ask the right questions, you can generate ideas that you never even thought about. In this series of cosmetic innovation posts, we’ll pose scenarios or questions that you can use to generate new product or innovative ideas.

Scenario 1

Imagine none of your customers can see color or smell fragrance. How would you make your cosmetic formulations stand out?

For previous exercises see the cosmetic innovation page.

I can’t tell if this is hype (probably) or if there is something to this new technology that is supposed to work like botox without needles. The basic story is that researchers took the active ingredient in Botox and put it into a topical treatment gel that supposedly removed crow’s feet wrinkles.

This could be an incredible advance in cosmetics, although it would be more likely an OTC since it is currently going through FDA drug trials.

The treatment is applied to the crow’s feet area, left on for half an hour, then wiped off. According to researchers, 90% of people who had the treatment showed clinically meaningful reduction in wrinkles. In a placebo group 28% saw an improvement. This is interesting itself. 28% of people saw a clinically meaningful improvement with a placebo? I wonder why that would be.

No matter what the results, this product would be a drug so it wouldn’t be directly competing with cosmetics in the US market anyway. But it does make you wonder. With drugs like this, would cosmetics have any chance to compete?

We’ve previously talked about the beauty with-in trend in the cosmetic industry but this idea has inspired me to talk about it some more.

While most beauty from with-in ideas are all about ingesting something to stimulate cells in hair or skin cells to improve some characteristics, this idea from artist Lucy Macrae takes the idea to a new level.

Her Swallowable Parfum is a cosmetic capsule that is supposed to enable people to emit a genetically unique scent. According to the website, the technology involves fragrance molecules that are excreted through the skin surface when people sweat. This leaves odiferous droplets that emanate a unique scent.

Clever idea

I have to say, while I doubt that this would actually work, it certainly is a clever idea.

The artist says that the product was developed with a synthetic biologist named Sheref Mansy so there is some scientist behind it.

But color me skeptical. I know ingredients like Garlic are supposed to be able to go through your skin and produce an odor & certainly people’s diets can affect the way they smell. However, I doubt you can actually control it to any great extent.

I would love to be proven wrong however. If anyone can get me a sample, I’d be happy to test it out.

Incidentally, this product was produced in the EU but it would require very little testing to be sold here in the US. Our food supplement industry is woefully weak on regulations and you can pretty much sell whatever you want as long as it can’t be proven to kill someone. This is a huge hole in the US FDA system.

Here’s a short video worth watching. Phil McKinny explains why “best practices” is not a great way to do innovations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdhotZXVbMI

A quote that I love

“If everyone is special than no one is special.”

In the world of innovation you have to stand out and be different. Doing what everyone else is doing will not lead to new, innovative products. You have to be different. If you are formulating just like everyone else, you are not going to create products that are different.

Formulate differently

One of my favorite formulators told me a story about how she was searching through old formulating books and re-discovering formulating techniques that have long since been abandoned. There may have been good reasons why modern formulators are not using these techniques anymore, but she wanted to learn for herself. If you want to be innovative, you should too.

This strategy of doing something that no one else is doing certainly has the best potential for creating truly innovative cosmetic formulations.

Remember, do something different.