Assumptions and innovation
by Miki SaxonFollowing up on my previous post about how the assumption that performance was the most critical buying issue in cycling helped flatten an industry, comes yet another example of how assumptions lead astray.
The new generation of game consoles from Sony and Microsoft focused on the brilliant graphics demanded by game enthusiasts, but Nintendo is creaming its competitors by looking past graphics and focusing on fun. “Jesse Sutton, interim president and chief executive officer of Majesco, says Nintendo is targeting its hardware at the fastest growing audience in the games business — “casual” gamers who are more interested in fun, simple games rather than the deeply immersive titles that most hard-core gamers prefer.”
Hmm, sounds similar to the people who want to have fun riding bikes.
The car industry is learning the same thing. First, when Honda’s Element and Toyota’s Scion, designed as inexpensive first cars for teens and 20-somethings, got snapped up by their parents, who wanted inexpensive, fun transpiration, instead of performance and mind- and wallet-numbing electronics.
That challenge is being upped again by India’s Tata Motors, which plans to bring out a $2500 car in 2008. And this isn’t just about lower income, emerging markets. “To automakers’ astonishment, cheap cars are also proving to be just as popular in established markets as they are in the developing world…The new generation of cheap cars will be sturdy and reliable and will appeal to Western consumers who want to spend money on things other than transport… The shift to cut-rate wheels is jarring for an industry that has fixated for at least a decade on premium cars…”
The same awakenings have happened/are happening in consumer products, such as soup and cleaning products.
Other industries are climbing on the bandwagon. Even software companies are recognizing that most of their customers aren’t twenty-something programmers and that they don’t want to “work under the hood,” they just want to do whatever it is that they bought the program to do.
What these stories have in common are the assumptions that guided product development came from industry/product aficionados—hard-core devotees who designed products for people like themselves—and ignored the rest of us.
Finally, companies are figuring out just how large the so-called casual market is, how much money it has to spend, and that it’s a giant market anywhere you look for it.
For managers, the lesson is to avoid assumption-myopia by building a team with different backgrounds, varied experience from different industries, and a solid generational mix.
Do that and you’ll have a lot more innovation outside the box.
