Innovating Core Values

Lee Huang, Barnes and Noble's director of product, speaks on innovation at Social Networking Week on February 14, 2011 in New York City.

Image: Michael del Castillo

Although startup entrepreneurs occasionally seem to think they are the only bastion of innovation, legacy companies like Barnes and Noble thrive because of this very capacity, though within well-established core values.

Lee Huang, Barnes and Noble’s director of product, today shared some insider information about how one of the world's leading book vendors remains on the cutting edge of innovation without sacrificing what made it successful. Speaking at the New York hub of the internationally recognized Social Media Week, it may have been the bookstore’s history that inspired Huang’s words, but the lessons he drew were meant for all innovators.

“What we’ve done,” said Huang. “Is we’ve expanded our value proposition and we now want to offer digitally the best e-reading experience possible. It makes us want to read more content, share information back-and-forth, and really embrace reading.”

In other words, according to Huang, innovation leads to increased consumption, sharing of the product with those in the customer’s life, and an integration into one’s daily routine.

To Barnes and Noble increased consumption is a matter of convenience. By analyzing the company’s value propositions and better understanding that much of what the company offers is ease of access it was determined that convenience was a driving force behind increasing consumption. Specifically, Huang cited Barnes and Noble’s new auto-delivery feature.

“You wake up in the morning, take a shower, grab breakfast, hop on the train and all your newspapers for that day are already there,” said Huang. “We’re always thinking about how we can enhance the experience.”

To increasing product sharing Barnes and Noble is making the reading experience increasingly communal with a product called Read and Record. “You are a grandfather, you have a grandchild, you can read the book, record it and then the next time your grandson opens the book they will hear their grandfather’s voice reading.”

This type of sharing is not only useful because where there was once only one customer consuming, there is now two, but because the sharing is cross-generational, bringing a market segment, the elderly, not innately familiar with many tech products, into the new industry.

It's ironic that Barnes and Noble’s Nook is so easy to use that one no longer needs to leave home to do so, and that Barnes and Noble has now created a way to encourage people to leave home with the very same product. But that is exactly what was necessary to get Nook users to fully integrate the product into their lives.

“If you go into a physical store and you have a nook device you can read almost any book for free for an hour,” said Huang. “And there’s exclusive content available only in stores.”

Each of Huang’s points has the potential to keep a legacy company vibrant, but they can also serve as markers around which startups can do a full-scale pivot. Legacy company’s will always be competitors to startups, but what made them so successful, is often universally applicable.