Uncovering The Art of Disruption Requires New Lenses and New Tools

The reason why every executive is feeling intense pressure from competitors or disruptive start-ups is likely becasue of the fact that the models or dominant logic behind theie business strategies are constraining the companies' ability to innovate. Have you wonder why it is so hard it is to move beyond the "adjacent" opportunities to open up new revenue streams?  Naturally you turn to your customer intelligence people, next you are overwhelmed by those terabytes of analytical data, not that these are not useful, perhaps the models you are using are not up to the challenge of making sense in this information-rich, hyper-networked and customer-in-control world.

It is easy to say that innovation is the answer to all this. But the real question is "how". I’ve been talking to many senior executives last few weeks about how to help them to set up innovation capabilities and most of all how to put them to use for current projects so they get immediate "Return-on-Innovation." I showed them different approaches and what works better in what environment. The key message was that they need to start looking at different mental models that shape their businesses thinking and start challenging them.

In any area of your life or business where there's an urgent need to change and transform oneself to stay relevance, mental models play a central role. Yet we often have little awareness of what our models are and how they shape what we can see and do (unless you have direct access to your inner world through the use of medications). Mental models can appear simple, and are often invisible, yet they are always there and have a significant impact on our decision making process. Changing the way we compete or changing the way we create customer value begins with changing the way we think and imagine.

The world we live in is not out there on YouTube or codified on a HBS business case study. It is in our own minds that those circles and arrows (like Power Point) telling us the "what" and "why". It is those little unwritten and unarticulated ideas that drive our intuition and logic. Until we recognize this, we will always be running away from ghosts. In our business (and sometimes even personal lives), we often fail to see the true threats and true opportunities because of the limits of the way we make sense of the world. I see that happening with my clients and some very intelligent member of my strategy team. To see the true opportunities requires one to go back deep inside to do a little tuning.

I personally don’t like the word "user" or "consumer". I do use the word "consumer" because of habbit. Industries that refer to their customers as users: software and gadgets. Industries that refer to their customer as consumers: consumer packaged goods and general retail. I often try to avoid it. Here’s an example, look around us today, “user-generated content” is turning into the central connective system that holds together customer communities, product and net services. These people all have different "purposes" and "jobs" to get done. But we use the word "user" referring to all those who produce, share and distribute content. This is a wrong term. This reduces the human being on the other side to someone who mechanically perform one thing with one common reason. Why can’t we try to understand why these people are doing what they are doing and what motivates them. If nothing else it would probably help marketers keep stay focus on what these people are doing in mind. Thing about this:

Flickr – Photographers Created Pictures

YouTube – Audiences Created Video
Stock Brokerage - Investors Created Advice

Hobbies – Prosumer Created Knowledge
Education - Students Created Thought Pieces

Vacationer – Traveller Created Journeys

Discussions – Participant Created View-points

Community – Members Created Stories

Parents – Parents Created Content

Well, what should we do? And can you give me an example. One of the ideas I bring to client is stop looking at your customers as "consumer". Usually they'd say "what do you mean?" Since our undergrad days, many of us studied Consumer Behavior as part of Marketing, assuming that the job of marketing is to sell things to people who consume them. This is true but not the whole truth. There's more to that. The job of consumer is "not" just to consume, there are many motivations that drive the consumer to behave in many ways, if we use this over simplistic view we are missing many of the unmet needs of these people. So I show them some of the alternative mental models (this is now part of the proprietary tool kit of Idea Couture's Customer Engagament Innovation ). The first one is using the lens from one of the following customer archetypes:

- Consumer as User

- Consumer as Creators

- Consumer as Explorers

- Consumer as Taste-makers

- Consumer as Storytellers

- Consumer as Activists

As John Seely Brown put it “In the old world, managers make products. In the new world, managers make sense of things.” Here is a good way to make sense of things. This is an example of an idea may seem quite simple and but powerful enough to allow us to see the world under different lens, and come up with powerful innovative ideas. This transformation of thinking is where all the transformations of our business and personal lives begin. Good luck with your journey. (Illustrations by John Wall for Idea Couture Inc.)

Comments

[Flavio Azevedo]

Why does someone fall in love with someone else?

Did I get married with my wife because she was a READER, WINE-TASTER and MUSIC-FAN?

Apparently, marketers are much more confortable describing people like piles of categories.

In the Era of The Iconic Brands, probably that was enough. Brands were adored, in a silence of respect.

Now, in the Era of The Human Brands, things have changed a lot.

Someone wrote a recent post, a very good one, stating that brands are not the only side investing in a relationship. If respected, the person will also make that decision and invest in a relationship with the brand.

Once again, brands will have to grow up. Evolving from platonic flirts to mature relationships.

Like all sophisticated concepts, relationships are in the details.

[Bart]

"Well, what should we do? And can you give me an example."

I strongly believe in purpose driven innovation and one of the things I tell clients is that they should always innovate based on 'why' and not based on 'what'. I think this results in two things: 1) Companies start to think from the viewpoint of real people: why are they going to use our service/product? What's in it for them? and 2) Companies start to realize what their purpose is, their raison d'etre.

I've asked numerous people working at large companies why they go to work every day and most of them can't think of a single good - purpose driven - reason. I think companies should invest more in their purpose and by doing so ultimately in their people (be it staff or clients!).

[George]

I must ssay Bart hit the nail in the head. Many companies or brands are operating today without a purpsoe. Like zoombies looking for customer as food. No sense of directions and that's why branding is an excellent tool to bring the purpose back into these companies, not only selling more products.

[Flavio Azevedo]

Bart is exactly right.

Companies are not understanding purpose-driven innovation.

And as I said, a fact that can help explain that is that they have been treating people as a technical factor, for decades.
Piles of categories described in a manual.

Purposes come from real life. They must be detected by observation and insight, among other tools.

That´s why big companies like Procter & Gamble recently have created programs that actually send their Brand Managers to live with their customers, for a week or so.

Is it for real?

Well, it should be. There are many purpose-and-insight-driven companies rising above the average and creating real innovation for the human being on the other side.

Apple, Google, Nike, Starbucks, Virgin, Lego... do we need to go on?

[Bart]

"And as I said, a fact that can help explain that is that they have been treating people as a technical factor, for decades."

But: Who's they? Aren't they people themselves? It's interesting to see the process of growth with this somewhat technical viewpoint, as I feel it's quite a paradoxical matter of control.

All companies start small, ambitious and people-driven, yet they have little to no control on the world they're trying to move. So, what to do? How to 'move' people? How to spread their ideals that make the world a better place? This creates an inherent need for ANY company to have some control on the environment (and the internal organization itself!). As these idealistic small companies are driven to change the world, they need to gain more control to do this. As these companies gain influence, they also grow. With this growth comes even more need for control, both internally and externally. (One could argue the initial problem has changed from 'bringing the idea to life' to 'keeping the company together'.) This closed-loop continues. So by the time companies have become multinationals, it's not hard to understand that they've become quite technocratic.

The really, really cool and interesting part is that the whole social revolution2.0 is directly challenging this question of technocratic control. In essence it comes down to this: companies need to lose technocratic control to regain social control.

I think this shows we need to fundamentally change the way we look at developing businesses and/or brands. No wonder senior management is confused...

(anyone interested in giving their view on this: I'm working on an article about the best way to grow innovations (right now, I'm kinda leaning towards 'from closed source to open source' (e.g. iPhone, Facebook, etc) and it would be really interesting to hear alternate viewpoints.)

[André Galhardo]

The consumer is not a buyer.

The word "consume" can be viewed as concept - an antropofagic concept.

We "eat" first.

Then we "transform".

Finally, we "produce".

At my gramp's (organic) farm is the opposite... :)

Off-line for many days, will try to catch that train back again.

[Jacqueline]

Very nice post and view. I agree with you that companies should rethink or better should refeel their way of doing business, communication and marketing. Customers, users and consumers are human beings not human buyings and human beings like to be treated like that. So in my opinion the marketing of the future will be human to human marketing.
I have put all my thougts on that in this presentation on slidehare http://www.slideshare.net/fackeldeyfinds/the-future-of-marketing-is-human-1007 that I would like to share with you and your readers too.