Where Are You?

“Caruthers, it’s a winner!  Your product development team has outdone itself.  Consolidated Widgetronics will leapfrog to the top of consumers’ shopping lists everywhere.  Good work!”

 “But it’s an empty box, sir.”

 “Exactly!  That’s the stuff, Caruthers!”

 One of the more pertinent points of Breakthrough: A Seven Step System for Developing Unexpected and Profitable Ideas by Paul Kurnit, a marketing expect and professor, and Steve Lance, an award-winning copywriter and creative director (AMACOM; amacombooks.org), comes well into this guidebook that lays out, step-by-step, how to bring an innovation to market.  In fact, in the context of what precedes and follows, it may be the single most important thing in the book for someone in product development who is thinking about innovation needs to take into account.

The fundamental premise of the book that that you have to come up with a Big Idea, a breakthrough idea, something that will garner new audiences, new customers, and new sales: “It can be a brand-new product or service, a line extension, a related product—in fact, it can be just about anything.”  This is something that is sufficiently different from what has come before to make a difference, a profitable difference.  As Kurnit and Lance appropriately put it, “Offer what everyone expects and the business opportunity will be just that: expected—and likely, small and unimpressive.”

Consider the situation that General Motors has been facing.  Here was a company that with few exceptions (e.g., the Corvette) was pretty much putting out cars and trucks that were pretty much like they had always been and which were pretty much what was on offer by all of the other full-line vehicle manufacturers.  Then everything went to hell in a hand basket, and they went to Federal Bankruptcy Court.

So what did GM management need to do?  Simply take advantage of the relief of their debt obligations, loan guarantees, and renegotiated contracts and continue to churn out vehicles like they had been doing?  That would have been one approach.

Instead, they have made it very clear to anyone who will listen and to even those who don’t that GM is the company that is offering the Chevrolet Volt, the world’s first extended-range electric vehicle.  Who cares if Volt production will be a comparatively meager 25,000 units in 2011 (e.g., that’s about on par with the number of Buick Lucernes that were sold in 2010, and it’s not like there are all that many people who even know that car exists)?

The point is that GM has a Big Idea, something that isn’t expected from a company that has long gone without making the sorts of innovations that were part and parcel of making it a successful and innovative company back in the first half of the 20^th century.  They have something sufficiently different and noteworthy, something that sets GM apart from other companies.

And arguably, there will be a halo effect that will cause those who think about a car to actually think about GM (“If those guys are smart enough to come up with something like the Volt, that Cruze/Malibu/Regal/CTS/Whatever is probably pretty darn good, too.”).  In other words, they are making the rest of their lineup—vastly improved though it may be—more desirable because they are willing to do something unexpected.

Part of GM’s change and its drive to put innovation on the front burner did include replacing most of its top management, but that’s a story for another day.  But it is germane to the point here.

The passage in question comes a little more than halfway through the book.  At this point, you have convinced management that it would be a good idea to set up a process to generate Big Ideas.  Great, right?

But here’s the first shoe dropping: “Just because you’ve sold them on the idea of a Big Idea process doesn’t’ mean they’re willing to risk much.”

And here’s not the second shoe dropping but a good kick in the rear: “[Y]ou know, realistically, whether you work for a company that would approve an idea like iTunes (a complete leap outside the traditional parameters for a computer company), or would be happy if you came up with a king-size box.”

 If you’re set on creating the next iTunes-like whatever and you’re working for a company that has management that is perfectly happy with the “likely, small and unimpressive,” then no matter how resounding the rhetoric about their belief in the importance of innovative product development may be, you’re still going to be back with the boxes.

Know where you are.  You may be surprised.