Monday, September 21, 2009
Understanding the mind
Everyone talks about innovation. Its importance is understood by most and all sorts of leaders. Companies spend money on people and ideas to get to innovation. All of that is fine, but one should not try to innovate just for the sake of innovation, unless it is your hobby horse. The need to understand the user’s mind is the challenge for very successful innovations. Akio Morita (founder of Sony) initiated a market survey to check the demand for walkmans (convenient gadget for hearing music while walking). The results of the market survey showed more people not wanting the walkman and that the product would be unsuccessful. Still, Akio-san went ahead and introduced the walkman based on his gut feel (as people say it) or was it deep rooted understanding that people would want such a gadget and the negativeness simply comes from the inability to visualize such a gadget. For me Akio-san was able to read the minds of people keeping his own thoughts of the walkman as a reference to get to the point of decision that people would need a gadget like the walkman. We know the rip-roaring success walkman enjoyed in the initial years of inception.
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5 comments:
Good point, Pradeep. In fact, P&G has successfully implemented a process of gathering deep customer insights. It is called "immersive research". For more check out: http://cataligninnovation.blogspot.com/2008/12/immersive-research-p-approach-of.html
Similarly, Bill Gates followed a discipline of getting deep technology insights - I call it Full-Body-Immersion (FBI): check out - http://cataligninnovation.blogspot.com/2009/08/discipline-of-full-body-immersion.html
Playing Devil's advocate: What if Walkman was not such a great success indeed, there are examples available of great products which never took off...what would you call Morito then?
In retrospect, the point looks valid though.
And what worked then will work always is the biggest mistake innovation practitioners make. Like the old chinese saying, you never step into the same river twice, no two innovation journeys are the same and hence each person / organization need to write their own journey.
Well, let's see what a mature innovation process says (P&G): Optimal batting average should be within a band (say 40%-60%). It means when you try to hit sixers (like walkman) *expect* the failure rate to be 50%. If your success rate of products launched in the market is too high, then you are playing it too safe. So how do you ensure success? By managing a portfolio of such potential sixers. Here is another gem from AG Lafley - he says - do the last experiment first. For more check out:
http://cataligninnovation.blogspot.com/2009/08/lower-your-batting-average-to-increase.html
in 1972,when I went to a Makassar ( city no 4 in Indonesia) I recalled that Toyota, a new car maker at the time, just introduced 1300 and 1600 cc a very small cc machine Corolla and Corona model,for the 1st time.It was against of the GM standard of the big cc machines for decades..
What I wondered ,that the front seat style were for 2 single seat with a sporty stick transmission instead of hand transmission, an American Standard.
And later the Corolla becoming the car of the year in Europe.
Toyota just introducing the future car design... And up to now, the world just copy the Toyota Way...
Toyota captured the young market segment rather than the old established car customers.The market segment having the bigger share although less income.The innovation on "sporty style", small cc machine, and particular market segmentation was a real time of the "gut innovation"
September 28,2009
The case of Akio about walkman is very appropriate and good observation by Dr Desai. A researcher too will have to use his/her intuition and gut feeling to some extent while drawing inference and arriving at a conclusion.
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