The difference between “me too”, evolution and innovation.

(Digital) Agencies often push for “innovation” without understanding what it means, and clients don’t like doing things others haven’t done already. 

The Me Too Approach

We’ve probably all been through the following scenario: a client gives you a brief to build or design something, and some Strategist immediately goes out to do a “competitive review” to check out what’s been done in the field.

Then they slap together a bunch of powerpoint slides with screenshots and red arrows to explain some interesting feature or mechanic they “discovered” by browsing the web.

That “research” then gets “synthesized”, post-rationalized with a bit of “audience insight” pulled together from studies of some big 5 consultancy and there it is, a piece of “strategy” using “best practices” — or in real terms, at most a derivative of something someone else has done with a different logo on it.

Truth be told, this works great. Probably 99% of the time. The bulk of an agency’s fees go into execution, strategy has been given a nod, the clients feel safe and everyone’s happy. Tried and tested.

And then it’s not working the way everyone imagined it. But still, works 20% of the time 100% of the time. Not much gained, some lost, but everyone’s saved their own asses. When it doesn’t work, it’s also usually the other one’s fault.

Incremental Change (Evolution)

This is what happens when you set yourself ambitious goals and have gone through the process. It’s a bit more than “Me Too”, but it’s not really “disruptive”:

Audience Research is done first, Anthropology and Human Psychology have been given a nod, Design Principles and Standards have been developed, in short: a whole bunch more of research and strategy to arrive at what I would describe as a minor jump in improving an existing solution to a problem, or creating another derivative based on a better understanding of contemporary user/consumer behaviour.

Usually results in new product features, a different mechanic of consumption or delivery, and most likely something that’s geared towards being more “mobile” and “cloud based”.

That’s the stuff you read about on TechCrunch, Fastcodesign, and the teams working on it throw around words such as “Design Thinking”, “Service Design”, “Collaborative Consumption”, “Co-Creation”, “Gartner Study”, “Cloud” and “Big Data”. Often build in “iterative” “agility”.

Forgive me the slight sarcasm. I think this is where the bulk of interesting work is really to be found, this is what forward-thinking design companies have perfected to deliver in their approach to work.

Clients who work on these type of projects are more willing to take risks, think forward, and push it through their organization. There is appetite for more, but the realities often do not match the ambition. The results however are often solid, and much talked-about. In one word, satisfactory.

The new-ish product generates many different desired outcomes: resetting the benchmark, creating internal and external buzz, and user excitement about something familiar but new.

Transformational Change (Innovation)

This is where few of us agency people really operate, and an opportunity so rare that it’s like hunting a unicorn: transformational change. New business models. Oh, wouldn’t we love to do that? Invent. Make something new, commercially feasible, viable and attractive to the consumer. Then BAM, change entire industries by building something amazing. Nike+, here’s my nod to you.

Citing the ever-entertaining and insightful Dean Crutchfield, there’s 3 surefire ways to lose money:

  • Gambling
  • Divorce
  • Innovation

Burning cash trying to build something innovative is the norm. It’s rare to see a company innovate and suddenly come up with something so new, it’s changed an industry. Except for maybe Apple… again. Getting tired of these guys.

Anyway, this is where “Big Data” becomes the next foundation. In my recent series of posts, I’ve been alluding to a new wave of innovation based on big sets of data. To hammer this point home again, we are facing a situation where mainly one technology company is building a data capture and processing infrastructure that will set off an avalanche of digitally-driven innovation. From IoT, Smart Cities, Simulated Realities, Agriculture, you cannot think of a single Industry (unless we’re talking handmade puppets and shit) that won’t be affected or “disrupted” in some way.

Building true Innovation is also the hardest to do, because it requires in part an immense pool of knowledge and experience to draw from, and a tremendous amount of vision and looking ahead. One consistent rule is that academia is often toying with ideas that have implications or trigger commercial innovation 15-20 years down the line. Why — because academia doesn’t have the commercial pressure of producing ROI.

How it’s done

Ha, I don’t have a surefire recipe. But here’s a non-exhaustive unfinished list of things that (can) farther down the way lead to innovation:

  • Gain an understanding of macro- and micro economics, market dynamics, marketing theory, business modelling and supply & demand mechanics
  • Understand macro- and microtrends and connected emerging behaviour
  • Understand past, current and future market and business models inside and outside of the industry you want to innovate in, and connected consumer behaviour
  • Understand the societies, mentalities, sychology, semiotics, the culture of your markets
  • Develop an expertise in design and visual language, systems design, linguistics, anything that facilitates some form of visual and other forms of communication and exchange of information
  • Get good at quantitative and especially good at qualitative analysis
  • Travel a lot, learn a new language practice sketching
  • Understand technology, history and evolution of technology, computer systems, basics of software architecture, programming

This is generally a good foundation to start from. The ability to synthesize an understanding of the world and technology at large into something tangible — connecting dots that aren’t immediately before your eyes but rely instead on polymath brains and creative renaissance men and women — is given to few, but it’s nothing that can’t be learned or organized and structured.

Wide-reaching foundational knowledge on global economics and sociology, technology, and the ability to accurately predict human behaviour resulting in the perfect synthesis of a commercially viable end result is the essence of Innovation.

And it’s not just simply following a process.