The Ford's Sales Innovation
This is innovation via marketing and sales systems: "Ford is exploring news ways to sell its vehicles, focusing specifically in online sales. Rather than buying models off a dealership shop floor, Ford plans to have more clients custom-order their vehicles online and pick up their "build-to-order" models at the dealership. By delivering pre-ordered cars, Ford could get rid of hard-to-sell models that "end up collecting dust at dealerships and lead to profit-sapping discounts," trimming costs for both the company and dealers, says The Wall Street Journal."
If this works, it could be as important as what the technical designers are doing. Yes, innovation must not only be technical. Like the Intel Inside campaign, this playbook from Ford could improve gross margin at scale.
