Look everywhere for innovation
Belkin’s leaders are always on the lookout for innovations that can improve the company. Ideas are gathered through conventional means such as focus groups and surveys, but the tried-and-true methods are peppered with a large dose of people-watching to identify emerging trends.
Even Pipkin’s seven children are in on the act.
“My wife and I have six boys at home, as well as a daughter we adopted, and we are not bashful about watching them, about what it is they do,” he says. “We have a lot of their friends over all the time. It’s one of the ways we pick up on trends and the way things are being done.”
The same thing is done at Belkin’s locations around the world. The company does research in workplaces and homes, surveys members of the public, collects data about how people are using technology and uses that data to project future movements in technology usage.
Using research and observations to gaze out over the industry horizon has alerted Belkin’s leaders to a number of changes.
“For example, it became very clear to us a few years ago that the way we use computers was going to rapidly evolve from what we call a 6-inch experience to a 6-foot experience,” he says. “We were going from using computers mostly as a productivity tool to one that we would also be getting a lot of content and entertainment out of.”
Apple’s iPod, for which Belkin manufactures accessories, is among the most popular entertainment-centered computer devices produced in recent years.
“I don’t think we would have necessarily predicted Apple was going to be the organization that would bring a killer MP3 player to market,” he says. “We certainly could not have predicted what the iPod was going to be and what it would look like.”
What market research told Pipkin and his associates, however, was that something big was about to happen on the recorded music scene. Digital technology was on its way in, and the company needed to get on board while products such as iPod were still in the formative stages, he says.
The result is a series of highly successful products —the company picked up five of its seven innovation awards from the Consumer Electronics Association this year for iPod accessories — and a big revenue boost. iPod accessories now account for about 20 percent of Belkin’s total revenue, according to a MarketWatch report.