STRATEGY CENTRAL

“To reach people no one else is reaching we must do things no one else is doing.”

That line seems like a no-brainer.  Obvious.  And yet, when I heard Craig Groeschel say that at Willow’s Leadership Summit last year I scrambled to write it down and then had trouble thinking about anything else for the rest of the day.

“To reach people no one else is reaching we must do things no one else is doing.”  Got it.  Definitely.  Makes a lot of sense.  If what you’re doing right now is not reaching the people you’re trying to reach…then you’d probably want to try something different.

I want to figure out how to do that, which is why this diagram from Change by Design by Tim Brown leaped off the page when I saw it.

Here’s the gist.  When you’re preoccupied with the needs of your existing customers…you’ll focus your attention on providing incremental improvements.

If you want to do anything beyond the status quo, you’ll need to begin making evolutionary changes (extending beyond existing offerings or adapting to reach new users).

Really, Groeschel was referring to revolutionary innovation.  Maybe we find it difficult to reach people no one is reaching because we’re unwilling to go to the lengths of creating new venues and new methods that are beyond incremental.

Reacting to Craig Groeschel’s line, Andy Stanley said, “You can change the music, the style, dress different and take out the pews, they still aren’t going to be reached.”  If you want to reach people no one else is reaching, you’re going to have to do things no one else is doing.  You’re going to have to create.  Incremental change will never get it done.

I continue to find the idea of meaning a very interesting concept.  One that all of us ought to become familiar with and then begin to spend time thinking about…as it pertains to our business.  In Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean, meanings “reflect psychological and cultural dimensions of human beings (p. 52).”

One key to the idea of meaning is that they can change  over time.  For example, there was a time when watches were thought of as jewels and purchased in jewelry stores.  The introduction of quartz technology allowed cheaper production, mass production, and watches became thought of as a tool and added all kinds of functions that they never had before (calculators, stopwatch, calender, etc.).  The development of the Swatch brand moved the meaning of a watch again…to fashion accessory.  Not necessarily expensive.  Swatch watches often retailed for less than $40.  But fashion.

Follow so far?  Here’s why understanding the idea of meaning is important.  With the introduction of quartz technology, the Swiss share of the low end watch marketed plummeted.  “Almost 1,000 of 1,600 Swiss watch companies closed within ten years (p. 68).”  Jewel to tool as meaning caused that.  The tool to fashion move created an opportunity for Swatch.

How does it affect all of us?  What if the meaning that underlies what we do is due for a change?  What if it is overdue?  Think about the Swiss watch companies closing.  Sound familiar?

For more on the idea of meaning take a look at yesterday’s post.  And come back to follow along.

Had a four hour flight recently that allowed me to dig deep into Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean.  I continue to believe that all of us are in organizations that have limited understanding, often an antiquated understanding of why people really buy what we’re selling.  Why does this happen?  What are the consequences?  It’s serious and it happens to all of us.

A limited understanding of why people buy what we’re selling comes into play and has serious consequences when we continue to offer incremental innovations of a product that attracted a market share based on an outdated meaning.  An example of this might be the transition of music listening from large console pieces of furniture to modular and then modular to portable.  On the other hand, Apple unleashed a new meaning when they launched the iPod and iTunes, allowing consumers to create their own playlists, share their own music.

We can break out of an old mold when we practice design-driven innovation.  In design-driven innovation several questions can be asked to ignite a process (from Design Driven Innovation, page 220):

• What is the deepest reason people will buy our product?
• What meaning could they be looking for?
• How can we gratify them and make them more content by providing products that suggest new meanings?

This is a version of what Clayton Christensen described in his framework based on the “job to be done.”  In a design-driven innovation sense he has “supported the importance of targeting meanings and understanding what people are really trying to achieve when they buy products (p. 28, Design Driven Innovation).”

So, an example from our world?  Many of our organizations are still operating on the notion that people (our customers) buy what we’re selling because they know intuitively that what they need is God and God is found in a church.  Reality?  What if the deeper meaning is that people aren’t looking for God but for contentment or joy?  Does the market share lag have more to do with a tired or inaccurate meaning than anything else?  I suspect it does and encourage you to probe deeply into the deepest reason people will buy your product and what meaning they are really looking for.  That is the way to next.

What is the point of design-driven innovation?  Better, what distinguishes design-driven from simple innovation?  I need to introduce a new way of looking at innovation today.  It’s not as simple as coming up with something more than incremental.  It actually has to do with a radical improvement in performance and a radical change in meaning.

Meaning?  Yeah…meaning.  Like when Xbox and Playstation came out with more powerful processors and high-definition and Nintendo came out with the Wii system that incorporated a physically active experience.

This diagram (lifted from Design-Driven Innovation) does a good job of illustrating the concept.

Let me point out a few things:

• Notice the two axis in the diagram.  Performance is about improving the way an existing solution works.  Meaning has to do with developing solutions for problems that people don’t even know they have.
• Incremental improvement with slight evolution in meaning explains most product development.  It’s more about a new version than a new thing.  This is most often prompted by existing user interest.
• Radical improvement along with completely new meaning is rarely prompted by user interest.  Rather, it is design-driven.  Nintendo’s Wii is an instance of this kind of innovation.  Simple and elegant.

How does this impact all of us?  I’m not entirely sure.  I do know that what many of us provide hasn’t changed in decades (if not centuries or millenia).  What if there was movement not only in the way services were delivered…but what was delivered?

What does the future hold for your organization?  Will it be more of the same?  Pretty much business as usual with a twist of incremental change?  Or will radical new innovations dramatically change both what your organization does…and even what is normal and customary?

Design Driven Innovation: Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating What Things Mean by Roberto Verganti is on every recommended list of innovation titles.  Couldn’t tell you which list persuaded me to pull it out of the stack and start reading it.  What I can tell you is that this is a very interesting read.

Verganti is working on the basic understanding that game-changing innovation is not “pulled by users but is instead proposed by firms (p. 41).”  What he’s getting at is related to Steve Jobs observation that “a lot of times people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

So here’s the question.  Could that be true in your organization?  In your field?  Is it really true that no knew that the iPod was the answer to their dreams until they held it in their hands?  Okay…the evidence is in there.  What about in your field?

This is interesting stuff.  I don’t know if you’re as fascinated by it as I am.  If you’re looking for ways to move things to what’s next…this may be a book you want to pick up.  And you can do that right here.