If Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Richard Branson were starting out today, do you think they'd be polishing their resumes and waiting for a promotion? No way. Once again, they'd be looking to disrupt entire industries.
There's no reason why you can't profit from a similar disruption. The main question for your career is whether you are going to profit from disruptive change or fall victim to it.
To help tilt the odds in your favor, here are seven ways you might work with others to drive innovation, in the process creating stunning new opportunities for yourself:
1) Eliminate your industry’s persistent customer pain points.
Each industry has practices that drive customers crazy.
Technology providers drive customers crazy with technical support that often requires long waits on hold and hopelessly complex interactions (“Just find the serial number on the back of your device and type that into the space provided along with your IP address and the exact wording of the error message you encountered”).
What practices exist in your industry that drive customers crazy? How do all companies in your industry behave stupidly? Identify these types of practices, and wipe them out.
Think: can we turn our process or perspective around, to look through the customer’s eyes as though they were the company and we were the customers?
2) Dramatically reduce complexity.
For several years now, Simple has been trying to take a machete to the insanely complex and confusing world of consumer banking.
Recognizing that banks do a pretty good job of managing money but a poor job of managing customers, Simple has been designing vastly simpler customer interfaces and tools.
Simple is partnering with, not competing against, established banks. They’ll manage the customers while their banking partners manage the money.
The more complex the processes and practices in your industry, the greater your opportunity to gain competitive advantage by simplifying them. Yes, doing so will be very hard. But that’s the whole point; the first to do so gains tremendous advantages.
3) Cut prices 90 percent (or more).
Incremental change doesn’t disrupt an industry; radical change does. Radical price reductions require radical new processes and business models. Smartphones and tablets create numerous opportunities to identify these. Last summer, I replaced a $500 marine navigation unit with a $20 iPad app that works better.
You don’t cut prices by 90 percent through marginal improvements in existing products. You do it by asking, “What problem are we trying to solve for the customer, and how do these disruptive forces create opportunities for us to solve it in a far more efficient manner?”
4) Make stupid objects smart; add a sensor
The race is on to make everything smart, and the dumber your products were to begin with, the greater the opportunity to make them smart. To do this, just add one or more sensors.
Think of a garbage dumpster that calls central dispatch when it is full, eliminating the need for the customer to do so or your office to send a driver out unnecessarily. That same dumpster could warn the customer when it is overweight, and point out that it would be cheaper to empty it now than to further overfill it. Here are a few dozen examples of what sensors can already do, from Smart Customers, Stupid Companies:
Today, digital sensors can: monitor your tire pressure and avoid dangerous blowouts; analyze the gait of elderly citizens and warn of falls before they occur; follow the gaze of shoppers and identify which products they examine - but don't buy - in a store; monitor which pages readers of a magazine read or skip; float in the air over a factory and independently monitor the plant's emissions; detect impacts in the helmet of an athlete and make it impossible for them to hide potential serious blows to their brains; reveal when a dishwasher, refrigerator, computer, bridge, or dam is about to fail; trigger a different promotion as a new customer walks by a message board; analyze the duration and quality of your sleep; warn drivers that they are about to fall asleep; prevent intoxicated drivers from operating a motor vehicle; warn a person before he or she has a heart attack; detect wasted energy in both homes and commercial buildings; warn a parent or boss when anger is creeping into their voice, to help prevent them from saying or doing things they will later regret; tell waiting customers how far away the pizza delivery guy is from their house; analyze the movements of employees through a factory to detect wasted time and efforts; trigger product demonstrations or interactive manuals when a customer picks up or examines a product; congratulate an athlete when she swings a tennis racquet properly or achieves an efficient stride while running. What can they do tomorrow?
5) Teach your company to talk.
Apple's Siri personal assistant allows you to have a conversation with your phone. It's far from perfect, but the idea of having corporate databases talk directly to customers is here to stay.
Flash-forward a few years from now. What if your company could talk to customers? I don’t mean that your employees talk on behalf on the company. I mean that a digital, computerized persona speaks on behalf of your firm.
It takes orders. It provides support. It answers questions. It upsells. It issues refunds. All of this, and more, in response to verbal requests by customers.
The toughest part of this challenge is not technical; it is knocking down the walls inside companies. It’s deciding whose product gets cross-sold, who gets “credit” for sales, and who “owns” the customer.
No one "owns" the customer, and you either do what’s best for the customer or you will lose him. What happens if your competitors’ companies talk, but yours doesn’t?
6) Be utterly transparent.
Think: no spin.
Social media and pervasive technology will make it increasingly difficult for companies to hide from dissatisfied customers, negative reviews, and faulty products.
What if your company didn’t simply try to stop hiding, but instead radically embraced the truth? How might it impact your culture to decide that your firm will be the most powerful force in your industry making certain that every speck of the truth is obvious to every customer, analyst, and reviewer?
The truth is coming, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But most firms won’t recognize this until it happens. Better to get far out in front while confusion reigns.
7) Make loyalty dramatically easier than disloyalty.
According to Don Clark, writing in his
Wall Street Journal blog, Intel executive Mooly Eden once asked an audience how many had cellphones, and then how many were married.
Then, he asked if any of the married people would be willing to hand over their phone if their spouse lost his or hers. None would. “That is my point,” said Eden. “That is personalization.”
By definition, when companies act smart they are personalizing the way they interact with and serve customers. Once you start delivering personalization, you create immense opportunities to make loyalty more convenient than disloyalty:
- You can store customer preferences, and act on them.
- You can save the customer time, money, or effort--especially by eliminating repetitive tasks.
- You can provide auto-replenishment of needed supplies.
- You can monitor products remotely, and service them before they break instead of afterwards.
Think about every major purchase decision customers face in your industry. How can you make it easier for customers to remain with your firm? Now, think even bigger. Can it be five or ten times easier?
One more career tip: If you are fundamentally a cautious person, you might not be ready to disrupt your own industry. But don't make the mistake of working for a company that is moving so slowly they will be blindsided by the types of strategies outlined here. Don't bet your career on a company that hasn't changed its business model since before cell phones were invented.
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This article was adapted from Smart Customers, Stupid Companies by Michael Hinshaw and Bruce Kasanoff.
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