customer for his or her ideas, you will end up like Starbucks which
created mystarbucksidea.com as a vehicle for capturing customer
opinions. To date, they have received over 200,000 suggestions
and implemented less than 300. This means that 199,700 ideas
were essentially ignored. There are many better ways of gathering
insights from customers. This is where the “better box” can be
helpful. Rather than asking for ideas, ask for solutions to wellframed questions.
“You can’t be the best
at everything, so don’t
innovate on everything.
Only innovate where
you differentiate.”
P: You said “expertise is the enemy of innovation.” How
come?
S: The brain is not wired for innovation, it is wired for survival. As
a result, we are designed to perpetuate the past. What we have
done in the past kept us alive; therefore, doing something
different is viewed as risky. When you think about a topic
frequently (e.g., your area of expertise), every solution you
develop will be a derivative of what you have done in the past.
Our past becomes our future.
P: In the hospitality world, best practices are deemed
important in order to be consistent, effective and efficient in
serving guests. Yet, in your book, you said “best practices
are stupid.” Why do you think so?
S: Best practices are sometimes very useful, especially for areas
like consistency and effectiveness. However, they will never help
you differentiate your business. By definition, your differentiator
has to be different than what others are offering. But for nondifferentiators, you can certainly learn from others, as long as you
realize that what works for one company may not work for you.
P: When people hear about companies doing innovative
solutions, many often want to replicate it for their own
business. But you said replication is never a good idea as an
innovation strategy. Why do you say this?
3
Technologies to
Better Innovate
Shapiro turns the spotlight on technologies
and solutions leveraged by companies to
help them innovate.
Internal collaborative technologies: Allow
employees to provide solutions to critical
needs or opportunities. United Services
Automobile Association (USAA) is a company that
does this exceptionally well.
1
2
3
External crowdsourcing: Enables companies
to find solutions to challenges from people
of all walks of life. Procter & Gamble and
General Electric are two of the companies that do
this well.
Community building tools: Kimberly-Clark
used a similar solution when they launched
the Huggies MomsInspired Grant Program.
It provided mothers financial support to develop
products that will help other mothers.
S: If you copy what others are doing, you are always playing a
game of catch-up. By the time you implement a competitor’s best
practice, your competing company is on to the next practice. As
a result, you should avoid best practices for your differentiator.
P: One of the things that could hold back many businesses
from innovating is their fear of risks that often comes with
being an industry trailblazer. What’s your advice to help
business owners manage risks that may come with the
practice of innovating?
S: I am not a big fan of failure. I think it has been over-glorified by
some (e.g., some say, “if we aren’t failing, we aren’t innovating”).
But failure costs us a lot of time, money and, potentially damage
our reputation. Instead, I prefer experimentation. Wellconstructed experiments are designed to test a hypothesis. If you
disprove a hypothesis, it is not failure, it is highly desirable as
you’ve eliminated an innovation that could have cost you time
and money without achieving the desired results. n
October 2016
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