Cost focused innovation

The idea is striking. How about reducing the features of a product or service to the core of what is important to one specific customer group to allow both high-quality and low-price solutions? "Cost-Focused Innovations" (CFI), as e.g. offered by budget airlines and IKEA, try to manage this balance through a thorough assessment of and response to the needs of their key customer groups. The study presented in this paper has investigated several CFI cases for identifying the common characteristics of different solutions and developing potential approaches for their design. It included interviews with experts involved in CFI and has resulted in a collection of CFI case studies. The results of the study offer a new understanding of what R&D and innovation processes can be: a strict reduction to what is needed instead of a steady increase of functionalities.