Perspective and innovation make all the difference

If you don’t see it in your mind’s eye, does something exist? Perspective, how you see [or don’t see] things is everything. And, perhaps events in business, don’t occur in a linear straight forward fashion.

What can we learn about ‘adding value’ from the honey bee? To stand out from the crowd, a business has to innovate, not simply relying on luck, but more on three steps.

While out on his daily walk, the cubist artist Picasso was accosted by a man upset with how Picasso painted the human form.

“Why do you paint the way you do, breaking up images in such an abstract fashion. It is not a normal way of seeing things. It is not just realistic” said the frustrated traditionalist. Picasso asked the man if he had a picture of his wife?

And, so the man pulled out a little picture of his spouse from his wallet and gave it to the artist. “Your wife is very small” responded Picasso.

In business and management, as in art, perception is everything.

HOW DO THINGS IN BUSINESS HAPPEN? LEARNING FROM HONEY BEE.

Is there a simple linear cause and effect at play in your place of work ? Like balls on a pool table, you hit the red ball at a certain angle and degree of force, and it goes in straight predicable lines.

Is this how management works? Or, is process of making [hopefully good] things happen a touch more unpredictable ? Is there another factor at play ?

Buckminster Fuller the inventor coined the word: precession. When something is in motion working towards a specific objective, what happens at 90 degrees, is usually far more important.

Take the example of the honey bee whose pollination efforts are essential for our biological ecosystem.

Honey bees main aim is to obtain nectar to make honey in the hive, as it flits from flower to flower. But in the process of collecting the nectar, the honey bee plays a far more crucial [precession] function.

At 90 degrees to the direction of the honey bee’s flight, pollen is being dusted on its wings, which is spread to other plants.

As it goes about searching for more nectar it is cross pollinating the rooted botanicals, essential for the survival of our fragile ecosystem.

When the focus is on creating value, either by the corporate manager, or the small business entrepreneur precessional effects will be positive.

It may not be possible to understand it right away, but unexpected positive things happen, when the focus is on adding as much value as possible.

COMPETING AGAINST LUCK – APPLYING PERCEPTIVE INNOVATION

Imagine you and your competitors looked at the marketplace exactly the same way. Seeing customer needs and wants, precisely from the same traditional conventional perspective ?

A dose of innovation is required, relying less on luck, and more on perceptive diagnosis.

Somehow there is a need to see, what the competitor misses. To do this it helps to understand innovation.

Clayton Christensen’s 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma is referred to by the influential The Economist newspaper as one of the seven most influential books on management.

In it he addresses the business puzzle of how small upstarts eventually defeat the giant corporate incumbents.

So that’s good news for the start-ups. You would be hard pressed to find a CEO in Silicon Valley who has not read Christensen’s classic.

So how do you innovate your product or service ? In a study done by McKinsey surveying executives globally they reported that a shocking 94 percent said they were unsatisfied with their company’s innovation performance.

Christensen’s response to those who fail to innovate is that they are simply asking the

wrong question. Instead of asking, “How can I get more people to buy my product?” they need to ask: “What job are my customers hiring this product to do?” In our world of instant search engine answers, the focus has to be on asking the right questions.

“As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement that transformed manufacturing, once said: ‘If you do not know how to ask the right question, you discover nothing.’ ” notes Christensen.

This “jobs to be done” theory states that all products are services that promise a better experience for the person hiring them.

So part of the approach is to ask what is it that the customer really wants when they purchase ? How do they want to feel, where emotions play a big role ?

So in creating an innovative product, or improve an existing product, the focus has to be on more on creativity and skill, rather than on ‘hit and miss’ luck.

Competing Against Luck Christensen’s 2016 book outlines a three part innovation process.

STEP ONE – Understand the job that needs to be done -- Aim to have an intimate appreciation of why existing customers, or a set of target future customers would want to pull your product into their lives.

Don’t just focus on the rational reasons like “satisfying hunger.” Dig deeper. Focus on the emotional and social reasons people have for wanting to purchase.

STEP TWO -- Document the customer journey -- from the moment a customer hires the product for a job, to the moment the job is complete (or the customer gives up).

Be like a documentary filmmaker and find out where, when, and what they are doing at the moment, they have the desire to hire your product, and then create a timeline of the experience that follows.

STEP THREE -- Remove the obstacles -- remedy the frustrations, in using the product, or service. Create a radically better user experience.

The new customer experience must at least be twice as good as their current experience. Most of customers get nervous when ‘hiring’ something new, so your efforts have to be a significant improvement.

When all is said and done, the trick is to be like Picasso, and see things differently.

“New products succeed not because of the features and functionality they offer but because of the experiences they enable,” writes Christensen.