Brent Scrimshaw, President & CEO, Atlantic Lottery Corp. & Jean Marc Landry, Director of Customer Innovation, ALC, discussed how the lottery is evolving its approach to product development.
While ALC has a long list of hugely successful product launches, it has not had the same results from products launched in more recent years.
“We are a monopoly in name only. We are competing with several thousands of online games. We are offering million dollar raffles in the smallest of places. At the end of the day there is nothing more important than innovation of products and delivery,” Scrimshaw said. “Innovation is by no means easy. We have to abandon our paradigms. We have to step out of the machine we have built. And we have to take risks. We have to start championing our risk takers to take smart, educated risks without worry that it will impact their careers.”
“This is an industry where one company will create a product and get amazing results. (Other lotteries) launch the same product thinking we will have the same results but we forgot to talk to consumers to see what their thoughts and opinions were,” Landry said. “We need to change and bring the customer at the center.”
ALC’s innovation strategy has three programs. The first program is about generating ideas and concepts by going out and engaging customers and building experiments. Overall this is broken further into four steps: discover, design, deliver and deploy.
“We took this process and created a catalyst innovation program. We are going to train employees on the principles and approaches of design thinking,” he said.
The last program ALC does is outreach innovation. “It’s essentially about defining programs that you don’t mind sharing with companies outside your industry and getting them to help you create solutions,” said Landry.
