Business and Trends

*Currently creating a Reaction Paper for Article: Are you ignoring TRENDS that could shake up your business?*

Introduction:

Successful Innovation requires right answer/s to the right problem/s. It is said, “What is to be done” is known, “How To” part merely follows. The biggest challenge however is recognizing the “What” part. Before going further let us remind ourselves of Einstein’s definition of a problem or an opportunity “Problem is the gap between what we want and what we have”. Many times falling prey to prevalent thinking “If ain’t broke don’t fix it” & “All is Well” JJJ we fail to recognize what might be needed. (Opportunities = Un-recognized customer desire /need/ want etc,)

The successful innovation therefore requires answering three questions

1. “What does Customer Wants or Need?”
2. “How do we recognize what he wants”
3. “How we meet that unmet need? (What product/ services we will design & create to meet the unmet need).

Absolutes of Innovation ¹

If we have to have a simple definition of what successful innovation means to most of us then we can say it is something which has all of good things ( Both for customers and business ) and less or none of bad things again for both. Thus if we now have to define what a successful innovation must have; it leads us to state two necessary absolutes

1. Solving a trade-off or compromise
2. Adding a new function or an attribute that no competitor is offering

Recognizing Unmet Needs = F _(Trend)

Innovation requires organizations to go beyond understanding the ‘Voice of The Customers” “Slipping into their shoes” or “knowing their conscious mind” to a newer level -“Seeping into their unconscious mind observing several of their behavioral trends” to comprehend what they will appreciate in future products and services by way of its unique functional features & attributes (tangible and intangible).

TREND ² is all about understanding people, the populations they form part of, and most important of all for a business, understanding what motivates them to spend their money. The basic idea behind recognizing trend is that the most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us. For e.g. need to stay fitter, Yeh DIL MANGE MORE attitude, a smaller car but a bigger house first, few years later both get bigger & bigger, getting attached to one “sect” & creating more diversity of sects are all forming part of trends. “Jain food” is one such trend which does not meant food for “Jains” but food that is devoid of onion or garlic which is even preferred by the rest of the population. While people are eating healthier food than ever, number of chat shops shows an increasing trend as they are frequented by a sizeable population.

I-pod, I-phone are not the result of customer surveys but a deeper understanding of behavioral pattern observed in few individuals which soon was embraced by the rest. The power of extreme individual choices has never been greater and the reasons and patterns for those choices never harder to understand and analyze. Identifying small, intense subgroups and communicating with them about their individual needs and wants has never more critical in marketing than now. Small groups, drawn together by shared needs, habits and preferences are on the rise.

Late Sh.C.K.Prahalada & M. S. Krishnan in their book “The New Age of Innovation” ³ has put forth a concept of N=1, R=G which means product / services that are truly innovative can cater to the individual need (N=1) by leveraging global networks resources (R= G). I-pods are popular not because we can carry music around- we could do that with the walkman, they are popular because it gives us the ability to choose our own songs thus personal technology has become personalized technology. (N=1, R=G)

Thus a trend is a behavioral aspect by an intense identity group that grows a need and influence behavior of a larger population not met by the existing businesses.

TREND and Its Relevance to Business ⁴

Most managers can articulate the major trends of the day. But in the course of conducting field and market research in a number of industries and working directly with the companies, they often fail to recognize the less obvious but profound ways these trends are influencing customer aspirations, attitudes, and behaviors. This is especially true of trends that managers view as peripheral to their core markets. Consequently, they ignore trends in their innovation strategies, include product features that only superficially address a trend’s impact on consumers, or they adopt a wait-and-see approach and let competitors take the lead. At a minimum, such responses result in missed profit opportunities or wasteful investments in R & D. At the extreme, they can jeopardize a company by ceding to rivals the opportunity to transform the industry.

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