Innovation and Creativity

Competition in capitalism is a constant struggle by companies to find more accurate accounts of the needs of their consumers. A good business is one that has understood needs better than its competitors. Therefore, the creativity that really counts – and that companies should attempt to foster – is the one that best helps a business enter the minds of its customers accurately and powerfully.

Only a few companies can afford to send their teams to reflect on business in fancy lodges on the sides of mountains, but we can all get into the mindset such places are ideally meant to promote. We can get into the habit of mentally ‘standing back’ – and wondering whether the future of our business could be a bit different, and richer, than its past.

1. What might your customer secretly be hoping for?

2. Are there neighbouring problems you could fix?

3. Might you take the same Message into a different Medium?

4. What is the Bigger Version of your current activity?

When teasing out the underlying principle of a business, we shouldn’t look at what the business actually does as the move it is making. So the principle of a nut manufacturer isn’t making nuts, it is making healthy snacks. The principle of a phone company isn’t making phones, it is communication. This means that one can imagine the business operating in ways that are utterly faithful to its principles and yet with quite different products and services.

The underlying principle of the paperclip company is temporary order. The paperclip is a beautifully simple micro tool devoted to keeping sheaves of paper in order while allowing them to be easily released. It was an advance on binding (which also orders papers but in a more permanent fashion, at odds with the need to extract particular sheets). 

The larger version of this activity could lie in filing cabinets, shelving, bags and briefcases. Because in each case the same principle is involved. One day, the paperclip company could logically get around to car parks. 

When LinkedIn was launched in 2003, the founders and management understood the company as being in the CV exchange business. Professionals – including potential employers – could view each others resumes and develop online and real life connections. However, recently, the company started to see itself from a far larger, less explored perspective. They realised that the huge underlying business opportunity was to try to match people’s true talents with the commercial needs of the world.

When it was started in 2008, the founders of Airbnb originally conceived of their business as providing extra travel accommodation. The company grew very quickly on a huge scale.

Airbnb has reconsidered the business it is in, as a way of understanding how it can and should expand its operations. It is working on solving problems like:

• Not really knowing where to go or why: Airbnb is focusing on diagnostic help. Instead of asking ‘where do you want to go?’, they want to expand via the question: ‘what are you hoping to get from travel?’
• Troubles of the self: Solving loneliness.

The Green movement often attacks businesses for filling the world with junk. It tells us that we already have more than enough and therefore that the growth-focused agenda of business is evil. But the argument here is that business actually has to grow (and can grow in admirable directions) because companies are still so bad at fulfilling needs.

There are still so many things that customers want and yet which aren’t being provided. These things are not trivial distractions or extravagant indulgences. They are central supports for the good, flourishing lives we rightly aspire to lead.