The Hidden Power of Mundane Ideas

HBR:3:12 PM Wednesday April 25, 2012 
by Riley Gibson

Picture this: a nutrition scientist does a study with one person, limiting him to a 1500 calorie diet and having him run for 15 minutes on a treadmill each day. The man loses three pounds in a month. Can we safely assume that this experiment, when repeated with others, will produce the exact same result?


Of course not. So many factors — not the least of which include testing a larger, more diverse sample of people — contribute to the accuracy of any study.


The same holds true for consumer focus groups, innovation contests, and more recently the use of social media sites to solicit feedback from consumers. There's an unfair expectation that at the end of a survey or a campaign, we'll get "the answer" to something big from one magic interaction. Maybe we'll get the winning creative for a multi million-dollar ad campaign in a crowdsourced competition. Or the idea for our next product will hit like a lightning bolt on our Facebook wall, straight from the minds of one of our most loyal fans.

Sometimes we're lucky enough to get an amazing idea from an individual that changes everything, but more often than not, we're getting a collection of kind-of-similar, not-too-flashy ideas that should force us to question what we're doing (and find a way to do it better.) One of our mentors, Professor Laura Kornish from the University of Colorado at Boulder, has studied online consumer interactions with brands, like MyStarbucksIdea (a kind of online suggestion box for coffee fanatics). Her verdict: Sometimes it's far more valuable to find patterns in what people are requesting than to find that one, big "I never thought of that" idea.

Here's a slightly different example of this phenomenon in action. A large consumer electronics manufacturer we recently worked with had launched a new hybrid TV and internet technology focused on teens. They'd certainly done their homework. The company interviewed teens in focus groups before launching the product to find out which features to include in their new internet-enabled TV. The TV included many of the teens' suggestions, but didn't catch on in the mass market. Why not?


Building features based on direct feedback was certainly cool, but assumed a basic level of knowledge about teens that the brand hadn't yet mastered. We worked with a group of teens online with the goal of finding out how (if at all) teens see their TV and internet usage intersect. By far, this was the most popular recurring sentiment of the more than 2,400 submissions:

I often watch TV on my computer, but don't really want to browse the internet on my TV. 


These and a few of the other popular sentiments seemed so obvious, but were being overlooked by the brand in efforts to build the next innovative product. Sometimes, products are far ahead of their time because they assume a level of comfort that isn't yet there in the consumer. That's where the insights of the collective can be used to help us question everything. Maybe we don't need to surf Facebook on TV at all, but need to find a way for the big screen to interact seamlessly with the other four devices kids are using while they watch TV.

The same awareness of repeated customer sentiments applies to nearly any business. Sometimes changes can be obvious (a small restaurant gets 35 comment cards requesting a dessert menu, so they hire a pastry chef).


 Most of the time, we need to force ourselves to ask the right questions and brace ourselves for a thorough analysis of the mundane. 

That's often where the real innovation lies.

RILEY GIBSON

Riley Gibson is the cofounder and CEO of Napkin Labs, a start-up that builds tools to help companies turn their Facebook fans into an army of collaborators for new insights and ideas.

Quote Gems :-- Peter T Mcintyre

"Confidence comes not from always being right
 but from not fearing to be wrong."



-- Peter T Mcintyre

Peter McIntyre OBE (4 July 1910 – 11 September 1995) was a New Zealand painter and author. 
He was New Zealand's official war artist during World War II.

Govt payment above Rs 25,000 to be e-transferred

FC :KR Sudhaman Apr 10 2012 , New Delhi

All government payments of over Rs 25,000 will be directly credited to bank accounts through e-payment gateway from April 1 this year as part of the efforts to improve governance and eliminate corruption.

“Orders have been issued by controller general of accounts (CGA) that, with effect from April 1, all payments above Rs 25,000 to suppliers, contractors, grantee and loanee institutions shall be directly credited to their bank accounts,” a finance ministry statement said on Tuesday.

Finance ministry has amended the relevant rules to enable all departments to pay directly into the bank accounts of the payees, the statement said.

Government servants, however, will continue to have the option to receive their salaries by cash or cheque. They could also opt to receive their salaries by direct credit to their bank accounts.

But all other payments to government servants above Rs 25,000 shall be credited directly to their bank accounts

All pensions and other retirement and terminal benefits to government servants will be directly credited to their bank accounts. 
The government e-payment gateway set-up by the CGA was recently inaugurated by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and this will enhance transparency and accountability in public dealings and usher – in green banking by the government, the statement said.

The new rules on dressing for success

I have a number of super-successful Silicon Valley clients who dress in ripped denim, Vans shoes and t-shirts. They are worth hundreds of millions, even more, but it's a status symbol to dress like you're homeless to attend board meetings.Conversely, I have worked with trash-hauling company executives who dress in suits and ties every day of the week. And this contrast shows the dramatic shift that has occurred in business attire in recent years, as each industry has developed its own rules.  

So how do you learn the rules? Back in the early 1990s, as a young exec, I read Dress for Success by John T. Molloy. It gave me a clear understanding of how to dress to impress. But the "business casual" dress movement has turned all of that book's ideas into quaint nostalgia. But fair or not, dress still has an impact on how you're seen. For sales people, especially, first impressions matter. 

My daughters will confirm that I am not a fashion plate, but I do have some simple rules for successful dressing if you are in sales.

Know your prospect's uniform.

Before you meet with a prospect, you should know that company's dress code. "Business casual" has a lot of meanings. Call the front desk at the company and ask what the company's dress code is and what the men and women wear. Or ask your contact. The point is, part of your responsibility is to understand that company's culture, including its dress code. Ask for examples, especially of the senior most person who will be in your meeting.

Dress one step up. 

If your prospect is in denim, you wear khaki. They wear sport coats without ties; you are in suits without ties. The point is that you always dress one step further up the clothing ladder than your prospect, but not two. One step says that you respect and value them. Two steps can send a loaded message.

It's not just what you wear--but how you wear it.

Polished shoes, pressed shirts and well-fitted pants always.  At this point, some of you are thinking, "Does he really have to say this to people?" while others are saying, "Why do I have to tuck in my shirt?" But when your clothes are pressed, buttoned down and well-fitted, you convey that you are a person who pays attention to the details and are professional  

Grooming trumps style.

Even if you're wearing a great suit, if you've got a terrible haircut, you'll give a bad impression. As crazy as it sounds, everything on the grooming punch lists - fingernails, facial hair, haircuts and oral hygiene--matter.  

Know your company's uniform.

One of my clients makes sure that when his sales reps are making their sales calls, they wear a very specific uniform. (His company's clients accept this because they see it as an extension of the brand; the company sells safety products.) It doesn't matter if the reps are presenting in a board room or on a manufacturing plant floor, they wear the sample simple uniform. Obviously, if you work at this company, you follow this dress code in order to fit in.

Remember, you can dress in a way where your attire is the only message people remember, or you can dress in a way that takes nothing away from the message of value your company brings to them.

• Tom Searcy
  
   Searcy is a nationally recognized author, speaker, and the foremost expert in large account sales.