Innovate Like Crazy
Turn your business into an innovation machine
Necessity… the mother of inventions
Plato
Can you turn the invention of new products into a procedure? Yes, you can.
In this article, I will show you how you can do it – in the form of a step-by-step guide.
“How the hell do they do it?”
A year ago, I was moving to a new apartment.
People in my home country joke that two moves are as good as a fire.
I had to tackle numerous tedious tasks, such as packing, unpacking, minor repairs, etc. When I began to search online for appropriate tools and packaging materials, I discovered a new world.
People there used simple, cheap, and yet handy devices.
They moved furniture without scratching the flooring.
They hammered the nails without smashing their fingers.
And the holes they drilled in the walls were perfectly accurate and clean.
Compared to them, I felt like a caveman holding a rock.
The first thought that struck me was, “How the hell do they do it? How do they come up with such simple but effective tools? Why on Earth it was not me who invented all these wonderful things?”
Every day, startups and mature companies try to build new products, be it an AI-backed mobile app or a vegetable slicer.
Every day, they ask themselves, “How can we boost our imagination and create something new?”
And a tool called ‘lateral marketing’ can help them – and you.
Problem
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail
Abraham Maslow
Why can’t you just wake up with a great product idea in mind? Because your brain is a pattern-recognition machine.
Patterns helped ancient hunters spot prey and predators, tell poisonous plants from healthy ones – and survive.
You can recognize a cat, a house, or a human being even in an unskilled child’s drawing in milliseconds.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it may be a duck.
But what worked perfectly for the ancient hunters hinders today’s inventors and creators from coming up with fresh ideas.
What do you see when you look at your product? Most likely, you see… your product. You may notice its flaws, but it is hard to discern the opportunities for improvement or radical change.
You don’t see what you want. You see what your brain is set up to see.
Your product has become a pattern for you. But you can break it and start thinking differently.
Solution – Guide
In 2003, Philip Kotler published a book, Lateral Marketing: New Techniques For Finding Breakthrough Ideas, based on the Lateral Thinking concept. Edward de Bono, a scientist from Malta island, coined it in 1967.
Kotler offered to tackle the task of creating a new product or modifying an existing one at three levels:
Market level
Product level
Marketing mix level
Market level
A market is where a product meets customers (though it isn’t that simple – read more here). There are six aspects of markets – Kotler called them ‘dimensions’ – we need to take into consideration:
Need or utility. Why do customers buy this product? What task or problem do they want to solve by using it?
Target consumers. Who are the customers?
Time. When do they usually purchase the product?
A place. Where do they usually do it?
The situation. What occasion prompts them to buy the product?
Experience. What emotions accompany the process of purchasing and using the product?
Imagine that you try to re-invent a hammer. Try to play with these six aspects as shown in the picture:
Need or utility. What else could customers buy hammers for, except hammering nails? Try to find unusual answers. What about swatting mosquitos (I am kidding, but who knows?).
Target audience. Typically, men buy hammers. Could women or children become our regular customers?
Time. Could customers want to buy hammers at night or on a Sunday evening?
A place. Consumers buy hammers in stores or online. Where else could we sell our products? What about railway stations?
The situation. People ordinary purchase hammers when they need to do some work. Can a hammer become a fancy birthday present?
Experience. Try to link your product with a new experience. For instance, you may want to give a hammer to everyone who buys a house.
Some of the abovementioned ideas may seem unrealistic or even weird. But almost all innovations seemed unworkable or impractical in the beginning.
Product level
Choose one aspect or part of your product, and do the following:
Does anybody need a hammer with scissors instead of a handle?
Could you combine your hammer with a drill?
Can a hammer pull nails out of planks?
Imagine a hammer without a handle or head.
Could anybody possibly need a there-meter hammer?
Could we sell hammers that must be held by the heads and nails to be hammered with the handles?
Marketing Mix Level
At this level, you should consider three aspects of the marketing mix – pricing, distribution, and communication.
Try to change each of them by using the six techniques you employed in the previous step:
Substitution
Combination
Inversion
Elimination
Exaggeration
Reordering
Let’s take Pricing, for example.
What can you replace or substitute Pricing with? Can you offer a subscription to the hammers? Can you exchange hammers for social media posts your customers will make?
What can you combine Pricing with? Can you offer hammers on credit? Can you sell ‘hammer and nails’ sets?
Inversion: can you pay customers for using your hammers?
Elimination: Can you give hammers for free?
Exaggeration: Can you charge $3000 for a hammer?
Reordering: Can your customers get hammers for free but pay later for every nail they drive (used-based Pricing?).
Do the same exercise with Distribution and Communication.
Conclusion
No tool can guarantee that you’ll invent a game-changing, successful product. It would sound too good to be true.
But the exercises above will help you unleash your creativity and break the patterns that prevent you from looking at your product from a different angle.
If you need help with developing a new product or improving the existing one, email me, and we’ll discuss the possible cooperation in detail.
Read also: Seven Deadly Sins of Strategy.
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Very interesting post, Svyatoslav.
Trying different things and willingness to fail is important to foster innovation.
Yes, look at things from a different perspective. Focus on what could be rather than what is.