Innocent Entrepreneurial Business Innovation

Innocent Entrepreneurial Business Innovation

Innocent Entrepreneurial Business Innovation

Introduction

Innocent Drinks is a UK based company founded in 1999 whose primary business is producing smoothies and flavored spring water, sold in coffee shops, supermarkets and many other outlets nationally as well as in Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark . Innocent has a share of 71% of the £169M UK smoothie market and the company sells two million smoothies per week. Innocent was founded by three Cambridge graduates - Adam Balon, Richard Reed and Jon Wright; at the time they were working in consulting and advertising. They were friends at St John's College, Cambridge. In 1998, after spending six months working on smoothie recipes and £500 on fruit, they sold their drinks from a stall at a music festival in London. People were asked to put their empty bottles in a bin of 'yes' or 'no' depending on whether they thought the three should quit their business to make smoothies. At the end of the day the 'YES' bin was full, with only three cups in the 'NO' bin, so they went to their work the next day and resigned. After quitting their jobs, the three were lucky to find a wealthy man Maurice Pinto, who decided to invest the amount of £250,000 in their business. (McKay 2001, 148-165)

The innocent was established with the main idea of every product must have 100 percent fresh fruit ingredients and no artificial preservatives. Due to that idea the company calls its products innocent as published on their website: “We call them innocent because our drinks are always completely pure, fresh and unadulterated. Anything you ever find in an innocent bottle will always be 100% natural and delicious -and if it isn't, getting on the banana phone and make us beg for forgiveness.”

But being simple has a complete established strategy of the business which is described by Richard, 'That with a non-corporate approach, a sincere dedication to the creative thinking and cause, it is not impossible to establish create a growing company that works responsibly.' Following are some areas in which the creativity of the company is highlighted:

Managing resource constraints:

At its beginning, with minimum resources Innocent didn't have enough money to hire external agencies to design and develop the company's outlook; therefore, they employed one of their friends Dan Germain, as a Creative Head. He tested the product on people which were familiar of the founders and to whom they would email with their packaging designs. After associating with the friends who were also comprised of their target market of young and urban professionals - the apple with halo logo was chosen as the one most cleared core values of the company.

Customer involvement:

The company's success is been driven as an outcome of their partnerships with the customers. Innocent has been pleasing its consumers from the very star with its simple approach to the business that is down to earth communication technique that has truth in its ...