My father sent me an interesting article from the LA Times that was reprinted from the Financial Times that reported on a new book that essentially says “do your homework.” As a parent who is constantly haranguing my beloved children to do their homework, the irony is not lost on me that my father continues to remind me to do the same. Clearly none of us can stop learning and the rewards of studying consumer behavior are evident in Erich Joachimsthaler’s new book, Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Find and Execute Your Company’s Next Big Growth Strategy.
The book according to the article tracks past and present case studies including Apple’s iPod, BMW, Mastercard and Tesco’s unfolding approach to bringing new grocery store concepts to the US:
The author, in considering “how to find and execute your company’s next big growth strategy,” has set out some basic principles for what he calls the Demand-First Innovation and Growth model (with the convenient acronym DIG). The book might well have been subtitled “innovation in the age of customer-centricity” because its theory is that the secret to success is to look at things from the perspective of how customers behave. Rather than focusing on the product and how to improve it — or focusing on what the competition is doing — ask instead what you can do to get a larger share of the 1,440 minutes that make up every customer’s day.
Since I haven’t read the book yet, I can’t tell you whether it is really worth reading or not (you may recall I vastly prefer historical fiction and rarely finish my non-fiction books!) What I can tell you is that enhancing products/services by finding and fulfilling unmet customer needs is a fundamental tenet of Marketing for Good. Some times these product enhancements make someone’s life a little bit better (like Direct TV in JetBlue seats for parents with kids on long flights) or a whole lot better (like Jet Blue’s incredibly easy online reservation system) or help to save the planet (IBM’s Big Green Project). Regardless of the scale, the result is usually the same–gaining competitive advantage by delivering a demonstrably superior product/service. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it usually takes a lot of hard work to find the insight that leads to the idea. Sorry kids.