Your Pedal to the Metal
There’s a saying, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." If you're not satisfied with what you've always gotten, then something's got to change.
In 1958 Dick Flynn made a change. Dick was a race car driver and was looking for the perfect fuel. One day he discovered that by injecting nitrous oxide into his fuel mix he could produce a huge surge of power.
No one knew how he was suddenly winning so many races. But he did. He had found just the right catalyst to super-charge his engine. He kept the nitrous tank hidden under his dash, activating it just when he needed the boost.
There’s a saying, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." If you're not satisfied with what you've always gotten, then something's got to change.
Brand consultants are accelerants. They can help you get places faster. Sure, you can continue in your lane, picking up an odd tactic or strategy here and there. You can slap a patch on your website or marketing materials and hope it gets you to the next mile marker.
But your dreams of success and freedom will be out of reach without a well-tuned brand. Let’s discover your perfect fuel.
photo credit: CC license @pxhere.com
The Road To Innovation Is Short
The pace of business today is brutally fast. To compete, it is critical that companies embrace innovation as a core competency.
Faster Pussycat
The pace of business today is brutally fast. To compete, it is critical that companies embrace innovation as a core competency. They must engage in it constantly - iterative design, research and development flowing through a never-ending pipeline.
12 Degrees of Separation
In the pre-Industrial Age, the distance between the maker and the product was very short - maybe literally an arms length away. The maker also had a direct line to the person who was going to use it. In fact, they probably lived in the same town.
But since then, with larger companies, the concept and the final product can be more than a dozen functional divisions removed from each other, all in the same company. Strategy, finance, consumer insights, trend, product development, merchandising, marketing, sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, retail, the list goes on.
Game of Telephone
For companies, innovation and product development can be like the game of telephone. There are so many people and phases in the process that the original idea gets lost in the chain of communication by the final stage.
Small = Agile
So, how do large companies win in innovation? By mimicking what small companies do. Small equals agile. Smaller companies have shorter chains of command, short decision making matrices. They have shorter timelines. They have limited resources, so they are highly motivated to be efficient. Stakeholders have greater autonomy, so if they want to do something, they just can go ahead and do it. They don’t have to get 15 stakeholders, 5 divisions, and 3 VPs to agree first.
Distance is Death
The problem is distance. Distance leads to crumby innovation. This pertains to physical distance as well as lengths of time. They both lead to the dumbing down of ideas by degrees.
The traditional innovation approach is to gestate an idea in an R&D group, then hand it off to a Product Development team, who in turns hands off to Sourcing and then a Manufacturing group, etc.
As an innovative concept creeps down the road from one functional department to the next, little by little, the purity of an idea is chipped away. Sacrifices are made for materials, cost, factory efficiency, shipping, retail realities. At times the “innovation” that reaches market has little resemblance to the original concept - if it makes it there at all.
To preserve an innovative concept, the distance between the idea and the final manifestation of it has to be as short as possible.
New innovation approaches call for cross-functional teams to be present throughout the entire process. Multiple stages of review and approval can be condensed and happen simultaneously. This constant representation of disciplines in the pipeline insures that the concept remains pristine and that any divergence is immediately apparent to all stakeholders. This increased transparency has been proven to drastically reduce innovation mortality rates.
Idea Sex
Cross-functional teams can also be great for innovation concept generation. An example of this happened at 3M. Cross-functional teams were reorganized to share physical offices and departments. One day, the adhesive product development team, let’s call them “the glue guys”, was looking to develop a stronger glue. In the formulation process they mistakenly developed a glue that was weaker than the original and could be removed very easily.
It just so happened that the glue guys where working in the same room as the “notepad guys”. The notepad guys were looking for new ways to pin up notes on a board. And the glue guys had this new glue that was removeable. But it was just sticky enough to put a note up on the wall. It was because these two groups were shacked up with each other that the Post-it Note was born.
Fittingly, the Post-It Note has since become the go-to tool for innovation brainstorming sessions around the globe.
Start With Why, Not How
Historically, innovation started with what the factory can do. Some new technological invention would happen in machining. Then you would figure out what products you could make with it. It would start with: “we can make this” – “now, what can we do with it”. Pringles came from tennis ball cylinder packaging in just this way.
New theories and processes for innovation are more “needs driven”. They start with a problem that needs a solution and then precipitate the development of machining or technology to bring it into existence. You start with the problem and end with how-to-make it.
Gantt vs. Slinky
There are different ways to get to a given result. Some are linear, some not. Let’s say you are mapping out an innovation project. Start by imagining the project as a Gantt chart. Imagine a linear progression of a project from start to finish encompassing all the sequential stages. The steps are laid out in overlapping progress bars in two-dimensional space.
Now visualize the innovation project as a Slinky. Imagine a project’s progression seen on its side as a curly-que, more circular in structure, continuously overlapping itself. Does it veer up or down? In three-dimensional space, the “end” result may not be in the linear direction out to the right it - might in fact be above or below. Or even behind.
Insight + Context = Innovation
The principles of Design Thinking are also being brought to bear on innovation. Design Thinking employs empathy for the context of the problem. It leverages creativity in the development of insights and concepts, analyzing various solutions and then applies them to the problem.
By using observational techniques, Design Thinking can uncover problems and issues as well as opportunities that are not immediately apparent. This kind of approach to innovation encourages us to believe in possibility and to think in the abstract. It succeeds with a less linear and more iterative approach.
The New Thing
The market is constantly being saturated with re-makes, re-hashes and sequels to established products and services. In order to break through the noise, truly innovative solutions are necessary. Adopting a new approach to how you shepherd your ideas through the product development pipeline will help retain the integrity of your concepts. It will insure that you hit the market with true disruptive force.
Remember, we put a man on the moon before we put wheels on luggage. Innovation is not always linear. But the road to it is short.
Image credit: Christian Heilmann @ flickr.com
Reclaiming Americas Soul: Our Social/Industrial rEvolution
I was listening to a TEDx talk by a trend consultant friend recently and she mentioned how she thought that our consumption model is broken and that America is missing its soul. I think she’s right. But, how did that happen? Where are we headed now and what does it mean for the brand landscape?
America came into its own during the Industrial Revolution. Our factories, workers, products and standard of living was the envy of much of the world. Other countries wanted to be us once. Whether they really want to admit that now or not.
We lived the Industrial Model.
But, over time our desire to own more and more things in order to attain our ever-inflating image of prosperity, drove us to need products to be less expensive. Less expensive because Americans middle-class wages have stagnated for the last 30 years, as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich pointed out in his eye-opening video “The Truth About the Economy”. Sadly, our wages have not kept pace with our appetite to own more things.
So, we out-sourced our production overseas. But the price we paid was dear. Entire industries in the US crumbled. Furniture making, textiles, steel production, automobiles, electronics, the list goes on and on. Physically and culturally it decimated our heartland. Look no farther than Detroit, but we all know the list is much longer.
We began to discover that not making things hollows out your soul.
We’ve become a nation of middle-men and service providers. In fact, 86% of jobs in America are in services and 14% are in goods production and manufacturing. But there are huge numbers of our population who don’t have the skill sets or the desire to become white-collar workers. So the collective pride of the worker begins to die along with their cities.
The white collar workers find their work rooted in technology. Entire industries are living in the digital domain. Employees, initially enthralled by the computer and its magic have become surrounded, ruled and overwhelmed by the technology they once coveted.
At the same time, big box stores became the norm and Mom & Pop businesses disappeared from Main Street. Every town in America looking like every other town - the same collection of retailers, only with different weather.
But there is a renaissance happening.
People have begun to want to create something they can touch. Something you can’t send in an email. There is a new makers movement, a movement of people wanting to get back in touch with making actual things. Reviving dying trades, artisan skills, mills and factories. There are printers, wood workers, bicycle makers, textile designers and manufacturers, blacksmiths, craft brewers and jewelers.
People driven by a need to create. Their souls are fed by it. To produce and distribute goods bound by an ethos of sustainability, craftsmanship and local trade. Market places, pop-up stores and curated websites (digital, I know) are springing up with a decidedly anti-chain, pro-Mom & Pop, pro-local personality bent. Consumers want a human face and a name to go along with a product. For it to come from a place that they know how to find on a map. And most importantly, todays consumer wants these products. They value a true story.
Witness the Social/Industrial rEvolution being born.
Big brands are desperately trying to find a voice for themselves that is credible in this new model. Trying to use social media and acquisitions to make themselves appear much smaller, with a human face and a genuine narrative. Take Clorox’s purchase of Burt’s Bees for example. But for the most part the consumer public is seeing through the facade. The only way to sound local is to be local. The way to appear small is to be small. The way to be hand-crafted is to get your hands dirty.
This new model is built on quality over quantity, knowing where its materials came from, knowing where it was made, knowing a little about the person who made it. With all the digital connectivity we have at our disposal, what we have come to miss most of all, and want to get back is connection.
Physical and emotional connection is the heart of the Social/Industrial rEvolution.
This rEvolution is about being true. Brands that embrace this evolution and live by its ethos will win a place of honor in consumers lives. Because we want to feel we are once again makers, doers and creators. We want to truly own our success. We want to play a part in reclaiming Americas soul.
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ADDENDUM: On the flip side of this coin we have the "4th Industrial Revolution" which is the digital evolution of our society and economy. Thanks to John Hawthorne, for sharing this article that comes at our societal evolution from a different perspective.
Image Credit: Anna Zoromski/Miles @ flickr.com