The Creativity Myth: Why Focus Beats Ideas for Innovation
Maybe you know, it’s hard for many organizations to stand out from the competition and grow.
To differentiate and grow is especially hard for organizations in complex markets because they don’t know which of the target customers’ needs remain unmet by their own offerings and their competitors’ offerings.
If this is your situation, then you have essentially two choices:
1) Guess, and throw something out there to see if people will buy it
2) Identify your target customers’ unmet needs first, and then generate ideas for product/service solutions to address them
The problem with the first approach is that it conflates two experiments: one that tests the customers’ needs and another that tests the efficacy of your product/service solution. That’s not good science. It impedes learning because it makes it hard to determine why your product/service is under-performing. Is it due to misunderstanding the customers’ needs or because something is wrong with the offer?
The best way to tease this out is to talk with target customers. But, if you’re going to talk with customers, why not talk with them upfront to identify their unmet needs so you know exactly where to focus and what to do to create new value? Have you ever noticed how incredibly motivating it is to know exactly what you have to do to achieve an important objective? Yes!
You can waste a lot of time and money iterating if your experiments are conflated.
The key is to shift your focus away from generating ideas to discovering the jobs your target customers are trying to get done, how they measure success, and where they struggle given their current product/service solution. Their unmet jobs and criteria are your opportunities for new value creation. Boom!
That’s what the accounting firm, GBQ Partners, did to find and capitalize on new market opportunities.
That’s what the private jet service, NetJets, did to create a unique business-centric service for C-level leaders who fly frequently for work.
That’s what the online university, Franklin University, did to attract and retain more students.
And hundreds of other successful innovators from very different industries. But you know what they all had in common? They each realized that their customers had unmet needs that could never be identified by sitting around in a boardroom trying to be creative and generating ideas.
Most companies don’t lack creativity or ideas; they lack focus. They lack clarity about where the market under-served, where the unmet needs lie.
It turns out customers can tell us what they want if we ask them what they want to accomplish rather than asking them for product or service specifications.
Discover what your target customers really want so you can focus on what really matters. In truth, focus doesn’t beat creativity and ideas; it dramatically enhances them.
Reveal needs. Ignite innovation. Drive growth.
