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The Power of Empathy in Driving Innovation

The Power of Empathy in Driving Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Empathy is a powerful skill that allows individuals to understand and share the feelings of others. While it is often associated with personal relationships and emotional intelligence, empathy also plays a crucial role in driving innovation. By putting themselves in the shoes of their customers, innovators can gain valuable insights and create products and services that truly address their needs and desires. This article explores the impact of empathy in driving innovation through two intriguing case studies.

Case Study 1 – The Airbnb Story

In 2008, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky were two struggling entrepreneurs in San Francisco, struggling to pay their rent. They decided to rent out some space in their apartment and provide a homemade breakfast for guests. To better understand the needs and experiences of their potential customers, the duo decided to step into their shoes.

To gain empathy, Gebbia and Chesky traveled to New York City and rented out their own space using their platform. They lived with the guests, capturing their reactions, preferences, and pain points. This experience turned out to be crucial in shaping Airbnb’s future success.

The empathy-driven insights helped them understand that people craved authentic, unique experiences when traveling. As a result, they shifted their focus from just renting out spaces to creating an entire marketplace for unique and local accommodations. They incorporated features like personal profiles, reviews, and detailed listings to build a sense of trust and connection between hosts and guests.

By putting themselves in the shoes of their customers, Gebbia and Chesky were able to create a platform that revolutionized the way people travel. Today, Airbnb boasts over 7 million listings worldwide and has become a global leader in the hospitality industry.

Case Study 2 – The Apple Story

Apple, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, is renowned for its innovative products that have shaped the technology landscape. One of the key factors contributing to Apple’s success is its ability to empathize with customers and anticipate their needs, even before they realize them.

When developing the iPod, for instance, Apple recognized that ordinary people found existing MP3 players too confusing and cumbersome. To better understand the user experience, the team at Apple conducted extensive research, observed customers, and put themselves in their shoes.

The insights gathered from this empathetic approach led to the creation of a simple and intuitive interface that revolutionized the way people interacted with portable music players. The iPod’s success paved the way for future innovations like the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch.

By empathizing with customers and anticipating their desires, Apple has consistently introduced groundbreaking products that transcend consumer expectations, reinvent industries, and propel technological advancements.

Conclusion

These case studies highlight how the power of empathy can drive innovation and shape successful business ventures. By understanding the needs, desires, and pain points of customers through empathy, entrepreneurs can develop products and services that truly resonate with their target audience. Furthermore, empathy encourages a user-centric approach, fueling creativity and unlocking new possibilities for innovation.

In a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and diverse, empathy is not only an essential skill in personal relationships but also a critical catalyst for driving innovation. As businesses strive to stay competitive and relevant, the power of empathy should not be underestimated. It has the potential to transform industries, disrupt markets, and create products and services that truly make a difference in people’s lives.

Image credit: Pexels

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Are You Lying to Your Customers?

Are You Lying to Your Customers?

It seems like every company these days is trying to claim that they are innovative, trying to claim that they are customer-centric, trying to claim that their employees are important to them. But are they?

Can all this be true?

Or, are all of these companies lying to their customers, lying to their employees, and lying to their shareholders?

Many companies say that they are committed to innovation, but employees know the truth. If employees’ experience around the innovation efforts of the company (and its outcomes) isn’t consistent with the innovation messages being communicated, then not only will innovation participation and outcomes be low, but ongoing trust and loyalty will be further eroded in the organization.

Employees can see the Lucky Charms on your face when you say you’re committed to innovation publicly, but behind the scenes your actions demonstrate that you really are not.

And don’t be fooled, customers will start to see the Lucky Charms show up on your face, no matter how hard you try and convince them that the marshmallow goodness is not there.

If you aren’t going to define what innovation means to your company, if you aren’t going to create a common language of innovation, if you aren’t going to teach people new innovation skills and support innovation at all levels by making limited amounts of time and capital available to push their ideas forward, then don’t say you’re committed to innovation. You’ll tear the organization down instead of building it up.

Lying to CustomersIf customers don’t see you increasing your level of value creation, improving your level of value access, and doing a better job at value translation (see Innovation is All About Value), especially when compared to the competition, then they too will become disillusioned, frustrated, and start to look for other alternative solutions that deliver more value then all of your offerings.

Meanwhile, shareholders behave like customers on steroids. If you are being rewarded with an innovation premium by the market, you can’t be “all hat and no cattle” for very long, meaning you have to deliver compelling inventions on a repeated basis with a strong potential to become the innovations that drive the future growth of the company. This is hard to do once, let alone on a repeated basis. We will likely see Apple be the latest victim in the next twelve months.

Why? Because AAPL is at an all-time high based on the likely high percentage of people that are likely to upgrade from an iPhone 4 or 5s to an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. What about after that? Well, the smartphone industry is about to enter the same place that the PC industry hit a few years ago, when replacement cycles began to lengthen, reducing revenues, and forcing prices (and margins) lower. Simultaneously carriers will seek to extract more of the margin from the overall equation, and if Google/Motorola/Lenovo, Nokia and others start to bring $99 smartphones developed for India and other places to the richer economies that will in their next generation likely be “good enough” compared to the high end $699 handsets, more people will choose to wait longer between upgrades, or trade down with their next purchase, much as they did when $400 laptops started to become the rage.

So, what are we to learn from Apple’s pending share price collapse about the middle of next year?

Well, the first thing we will learn is that continuous innovation is hard. Now I’m not saying that Apple is going to go away, HP and Dell haven’t gone away, but Apple’s share price in Q2/Q3 2015 will struggle, they will face employee defections, and it will become more like Dell, HP and Microsoft than Facebook or Google. Not because those companies are any more or less innovative than any of the others, but because the growth paradigms are different and those companies are still in a different place on their growth curves.

We can also learn that continuous innovation requires consistency, commitment, the ability to recognize and prepare for the inevitable peaking of any growth curve, the organizational agility necessary to change as fast as the wants and needs of your customers and your environment, and the ability to understand what your customers will give you permission to do (so you know where to go next when your most profitable growth curve begins to peak).

You should see by now that continuous innovation is about far more than technological innovation, but instead requires not only continuous commitment, but also a continuous willingness and ability to change, and a continuous scanning of your environment using a Global Sensing Network.

Do you have one?

What is yours telling you about your company’s future?

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Apple iPhone 6 Killer App Revealed

Apple iPhone 6 Killer App RevealedWhile most people are focused on what the new Apple iPhone 6 hardware might look like and what new gizmos it might have, the real killer app for Apple’s latest refresh of their flagship mobile device will be an App and a little tiny NFC chipset.

Rumored for the iPhone 5 (rumors which were heightened by Apple’s acquisition and subsequent inclusion of fingerprint sensor technology), mobile payments may finally be a built-in feature of the Apple’s newest handset, the iPhone 6.

Apple has been reportedly out talking to the likes of Visa, American Express, Nordstrom and others, and if that is all true then expect part of Apple’s Tuesday September 9th announcement to be focused on the new mobile payment capabilities of the iPhone 6.

I was one of those who thought that mobile payments might launch as part of the iPhone 5’s capabilities, but obviously the technology, or more likely the relationships and contracts, were not ready for prime time a year ago.

Will mobile payments authenticated by your fingerprint finally appear in the iPhone 6?

If so, soon we will finally be able to stop carrying around wallets and switch to money clips and mobile phones, as such a feature will not only replace credit cards, but loyalty cards, insurance cards, and more.

Yes, Samsung may have done it first with the Galaxy S5, but you know Apple will do it bigger (and better).

I guess we’ll find out next week.

Image credit: Ricardo Del Toro


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Veracity Required for Innovation Success

Veracity Required for Innovation SuccessA recent post by Jeffrey Phillips titled Velocity is the Only Innovation Outcome That Matters sparked respectful disagreement inside me.

I believe that when it comes to innovation, veracity is more important than velocity. Let’s look at the definition of the word veracity from our friends over at Merriam-Webster:

Veracity

1: devotion to the truth : truthfulness
2: power of conveying or perceiving truth

In my opinion it is more valuable to spend time on identifying the right customer insight and the right way to communicate with customers about the solution which you create to serve the insight, than it is to spend the same amount of time inventing faster or launching faster.

In fact your innovation velocity can exceed your innovation veracity as shown in this article.

And many a company has fallen foul of going too fast and thinking an invention will become an innovation when they are ready to launch it, including Microsoft with the Windows Tablet and Apple with the Newton, only to find that customers were not ready to adopt it as an innovation until years later.

Velocity is definitely important, but more isn’t necessarily better. Many times the competitor with a lesser innovation velocity but greater innovation veracity has ended up winning. Look at Apple and the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, etc.

It’s also more important to look for the barriers to adoption than it is to look for the barriers to creation. Innovation is all about value and this is why it is so important to pay just as much attention to value access and value translation, as you do to value creation, because it takes doing all three really well with a solution with real innovation veracity to find innovation success.

Fail to identify a solution with real innovation veracity and you are likely to miss potential elements of optimal value creation, you will likely struggle to make its value accessible, and there is a greater likelihood that you will fail to properly translate the value of the solution for your customers.

So, taken another way, the search for innovation success is a search for truth. You must therefore unlock the inner truths of your intended customers (think unmet needs or jobs-to-be-done), you must search in areas that your intended customers will feel are true for your brand, and areas that feel true to employees given the company’s mission and values. When your pursuit of innovation centers around truth and when you commit to a focused effort to increase your innovation capability – and to pursue Innovation Excellence – then and only then do you have your best chance at innovation success.

What innovation truths are you searching for?

How much innovation veracity can you create?


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Premature Innovation

Premature InnovationPrevailing business culture these days is obsessed with speed. People are obsessed with fast prototyping, failing fast, and getting to market fast. But too often people don’t stop to think whether their innovation efforts are going too fast. It’s almost as if the word premature is fast becoming as taboo in the boardroom as it is in the bedroom.

So what is premature innovation?

Well, premature innovation is what happens when you create a cool idea or a fabulous piece of technology, but then commercialize it before you can actually turn it into a complete solution that unlocks enough customer value that potential customers are willing to abandon their existing solutions (including the dreaded ‘do nothing’ solution).

What are some premature innovation examples?

Example One:

Continue reading this article on the American Express OPEN Forum

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – May 24, 2012


“We have a moral obligation to invent new technologies. What if Mozart had been born before the violin and harpsichord?”

– Kevin Kelly


“For whatever reason it may be easier for humans to ascribe innovation to one person (Steve Jobs, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Bill Gates, etc.), but it is not necessarily helpful to the success of innovation in organizations to popularize this myth. Instead when it comes to creating more innovation in organizations, we must DESTROY it.”

– Braden Kelley


“Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.”

– Steve Jobs


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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Dumping Facebook Ads the Obvious Choice for GM

Dumping Facebook Ads the Obvious Choice for GMThe twittersphere erupted with news of GM’s announcement that it was refusing to pay for 2013 Super Bowl advertisements and $10 Million worth of advertising on Facebook.

Much of the popular press and self-proclaimed social media experts are jumping on the bandwagon and calling GM “idiots” for ending their advertising of Facebook and talking about how GM “doesn’t get” social media. If you listen to the amount of noise out there you would think that there was consensus that GM was wrong in making these moves.

I disagree. GM is making the right move.

Companies need to re-think how they spend money on marketing and advertising to make money in the showroom. Traditional advertising is becoming more expensive all the time and as the saying goes “I know I’m wasting half of the money I spend on advertising, only I don’t know which half.” The key here is that with advertising you pay to blast everyone that sees it with a single message – including people who just bought what you sell and those who will never buy what you sell just to hit the people who are considering a purchase of what you sell. As a result it is expensive and nearly impossible to place the right message with the right people at the time (and only those people). So I am not surprised at all that GM is re-evaluating its advertising spend, possibly investing more (not less) in the future in social media. Done well, you can be more impactful with pull marketing and social media than you can with push marketing and advertising.

So, personally it seems odd to me that so-called social media experts are in favor of a company spending money advertising on social networks. Wouldn’t it be smarter for them to advocate that GM spend money on build an interactive, engagement-driving social media campaign instead of spending money on advertising?

Something like the Chevy Game Time App?

Wait a minute, did the same company that doesn’t “get social media” launch an app built by hometown company – Detroit Labs – before Super Bowl 2012 that rocketed into the Top 10 free apps for the iPhone on Apple’s App Store (a top 10 that included Facebook and Instagram)?

“For all intents and purposes, all of the expectations that we had and that GM had were far exceeded… in a positive way!”

– Henry Balanon, Detroit Labs Co-Founder

Hmmmm…

First let’s be clear. Social networks and social media are two separate things, but people talk about them as is if they were one thing.

A social network is a place where people connect online and interact, whereas social media is content that is created to be shared. But, many so-called social media experts confuse the two, and confuse advertising with social media too. Advertising on a social network is not a social media strategy – it’s still advertising. Identifying the content that you should place on your Facebook page or other digital destination and creating a reason for people to tell others that they should come to that digital destination, well that’s a social media strategy.

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Now, I must disclose that I specialize in helping companies creating pull marketing strategies to drive an increase in inbound sales leads by researching the customer purchasing journey online and then helping them attract and engage customers, partners, or employees by placing the right content in the right places at the right time. Part of this is achieved by using my proprietary single content input, multiple content output methodology and yes, that sometimes includes using social media. But social media is a tool not a religion, and it needs to be used only when appropriate.

I think GM made the right call in ceasing to advertise on the Super Bowl and Facebook and here’s why:

  1. Super Bowl advertisements are expensive and for GM much of the cost is allocated against people who will probably NEVER buy a GM car
  2. Facebook advertising is not very prominent or engaging
  3. Their Chevy Game Time App experience should have given GM an idea that next year they can drive huge engagement during the Super Bowl (without advertising)

If GM is so clueless at social media, then why does the Facebook page for Chevrolet look so much better than the Facebook page for Ford or Toyota or Dodge. Honda is the only one I looked at amongst the car companies that had a more social feel at first glance, oh and Honda has the most likes of these companies too – go figure. But the engagement of people on Facebook around these brands is tiny in comparison to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Harley-Davidson – both in terms of the numbers of likes and the number of people talking about them.

So, yes GM still has things to learn about engaging on social media (and about building better products too), but then so does every company. Social media and pull marketing are two new tools in the toolbox for every CMO, brand manager, and product marketer, but as long as we all continue to instrument for learning, as marketers we will continue to get better at utilizing these new tools to attract, engage, and retain the people who will love our products and services as much as we do.

Keep innovating!

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – May 10, 2012


“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”

– Steve Jobs


“While an innovation vision determines the kinds of innovation that an organization, and an innovation strategy determines what the organization will focus on when it comes to innovation, it is the innovation goals that break things down into tangible objectives that employees can work against.”

– Braden Kelley


“Innovation is creativity with a job to do.”

– John Emmerling


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?

Can Microsoft win the Android and iPhone Haters?Nobody, including people inside Microsoft, would argue with the fact that Microsoft beat Google and Apple to the Mobile OS marketplace, but lags them both in terms of market share.

According to Wikipedia, the IBM Simon was the world’s first smartphone and was released to the world nearly twenty years ago. This means that the smartphone market is yet another example of a market where mass adoption has lagged behind initial product introduction by 20-30 years. For the inventor audience this is important to note, because it shows that #1 – innovation takes time – and #2 – that being first is no guarantee of being number one in the market when mass adoption arrives.

Well, mass adoption in the smartphone market is now upon us.

The only question is – which operating system maker will dominate the golden years of the smartphone market?

Will it be Apple or Google?

Or do Microsoft and RIM have a change to counterattack and make themselves relevant again?

Invention does not guarantee innovation. Innovation requires that you create value above every existing alternative and that you achieve wide adoption. The reason we often see changes in the leadership of the marketplace of an emerging innovation is that often the market creator does a worse job than new entrants of adapting their solution offering for the evolving desires of the customers. New entrants generally see an opportunity to solve problems that the incumbents don’t, and an create new value that the incumbent solutions don’t deliver.

But can an incumbent react to newer entrants and rebuild momentum in the marketplace?

Motorola’s revitalization in mobile handsets shows that a competitive response focused on leadership instead of reaction can in fact get you back in the game.

So can Microsoft do the same thing and steal share from Apple and Google in the smartphone OS market?

The answer lies in whether Microsoft can do a better job than Apple or Google (or even RIM) of understanding why people hate their current smartphones, while also anticipating:

  1. What the needs of customers will be in 6-12 months
  2. What customers will want in 6-12 months
  3. What emerging technologies will make possible in 6-12 months

Timing is one of the key components to successful innovation. You can invent things at any time, but you can only turn an invention into an innovation when customers and other parts of the value chain can see the value and are ready to accept it. Whether customers and the value chain can see the value is of course dependent on how well you translate for them how a potential innovation will fit into their lives.

Can Microsoft and Nokia come up with the answers that the marketplace will accept in 6-12 months? Are their existing phones the right answer for customers now?

I don’t know. But I can tell you that I hate, absolutely hate, the Google Android operating system on my Samsung Galaxy S. The Samsung device itself seems relatively well-designed but the Google Android OS is always crashing, doesn’t make smart use of the SD Card (the internal memory is always filling up), and leaves me constantly frustrated.

I bought two Samsung Galaxy S phones on T-Mobile over two iPhones on Verizon or AT&T for my wife and I, because they will cost me $1,000 less over the two-year commitment.

I can tell you with certainty that my next smartphone when I’m eligible for an upgrade will NOT be a Google Android phone. At the same time I know people who hate their iPhones and their Blackberries as well, so this represents an opportunity for Microsoft to convert disgruntled iOS, Android and Blackberry customers. Plus, there are a still a lot of people without a smartphone that will buy one in the next 6-12 months.

These two market dynamics represent a huge opportunity for Microsoft to get back in the smartphone OS market. The only question is:

Will they take advantage of this opportunity?


Article first published as ‘An Opening for Microsoft and Nokia?’ on Technorati.

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Innovation Quotes of the Day – April 12, 2012


“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

– Steve Jobs
– Submitted by Lorna Tyrtania


“When you’re playing king of the mountain, you don’t stop playing when you get to the top.”

– Braden Kelley


“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

– Albert Einstein
– Submitted by Carlos Torres


What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future innovation quotes of the day!

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