Innovation in our industry has to do with technology and products.

New inventions emerge because someone discovered something cool. But cool technology, in itself, is not enough to create value. The value of a new product or technology depends also on the technology’s utility and cost – and whether it solves a business problem.

I’ve been talking a lot about the term “value innovation”. This term is not new – it comes from an excellent book called Blue Ocean Strategy. Value innovation means driving innovation in ways that create value. The book discusses how one can use value innovation to create new market space, or a blue ocean, thereby making the competition irrelevant.

Creating New Markets

When Omni-ID released its first products a few years ago, we used blue ocean strategy to target the IT asset management market. The IT industry wasn’t using RFID at all, with good reason. At that time, RFID tags basically didn’t work in environments like a data center, which is full of metal. What’s more, IT equipment is covered with switches, indicators, and airflow grids, so there was no room for the large tags commonly used at that time.

Our technology created value for the IT industry. Because our technology creates a strong read range for the size of our tag, we were able to create an RFID tag, the Omni-ID Prox ™, with a small enough footprint, and a low enough profile, to fit on the surface of almost any electronic asset. The Prox has a read range of 8 feet in the US and is only 35mm x 10mm x 4mm, a size/read range combination that was unheard of when it was released. And because the Prox is balanced – meaning it works both on and off metal – it can be used on the complex variety of metal and plastic assets throughout the data center. We were able to offer a solution at a price point that worked for the industry, enabling them to manage thousands of data center assets more efficiently, and at lower cost, than they could without our technology.

Continued Value Innovation

Working closely with our customers, we have continued to create value for the IT industry. When customers needed a way to attach tags to a gridded surface or to cables, we developed the OmniTether attachment option. When they asked us for help with deploying tens of thousands of RFID tags, we developed the OnDemand ™ deployment solution, becoming the only on-metal RFID tag vendor with a solution for commissioning RFID tags at the customer site.

Eventually, RFID tags will be embedded in IT assets during the manufacturing process, and commissioning will take place in the supply chain. Omni-ID is already talking with IT manufacturers about this value innovation.

In the last year, competitors have joined us in the IT asset management market, and the IT industry can choose from several RFID tag vendors. A competitive playing field adds even more value for that industry, as it drives down costs.

For Omni-ID, however, it’s a signal for more value innovation. Through value innovation, we will continue to serve our existing markets, and also enter new markets, creating new blue oceans.

In a future blog post, our CTO, Andre Cote, will share with you a new form factor for a new market – our latest value innovation.