Forget about trends, focus on culture at the front end of innovation
ZzzQuil Night Pain by Vicks is a perfect example of how to break away from the habit of focusing only on the tangible and product-centric aspects of innovation. This holistic solution to sleep quality and support is marketed as a non-habit forming sleep aid that also helps relieve minor aches and pains that can disrupt sleep. While it might seem logical to associate pain relief with better sleep, there is more to this product than meets the eye. It doesn't just solve a logical and rational need for the consumer, but also serves a unique cultural context that consumers place sleep and sleep aids into. But more on this later.
As innovation professionals, we're constantly bombarded with so-called "trends" that are supposedly relevant to our work. But the hard truth is that these trends can serve as a constant source of distraction, leading us away from the bigger picture. A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology (R. Garcia, J. Stasson, and J. M. J. Ward) found that people are more likely to make decisions based on tangible information, even when that information is less relevant or less reliable than abstract information. This cognitive bias is hard-wired into our brains and can make us overvalue something when it is tangible and undervalue something when it is more conceptual.
This bias is fine for making purchasing or investment decisions as consumers, but at the front end of innovation, it can stifle ideas and even careers. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued that people tend to prioritize their immediate desires over long-term goals, which can lead to a lack of purpose and direction in life. This thought-provoking observation applies to organizations as well as individuals. When companies prioritize short-term thinking by looking at trends, they risk losing sight of their own purpose and sense of direction.
The key to creating something innovative lies in understanding the cultural contexts into which trends are placed. Consumers naturally organize trends into various contexts, and identifying and understanding these contexts can push us away from being product-centric in our thinking to being truly human-centric.
For example, let's consider sleep support and sleep quality. Sleep isn't just about sleep; it's also about nutrition, healthy aging, skin health, pain management, mental health, and more. Each of these cultural contexts provides unique opportunities for innovation, but they are not all equal in terms of their maturity. Understanding these contexts and quantifying their relative maturity allows us to identify the real problems we need to solve and the real people who might seek solutions for them.
For instance, one could envision creating a line of sleep support products that specifically target healthy aging, such as a pillow designed to reduce wrinkles, a sleep mask infused with anti-aging properties, or even specific smart monitoring devices. The point of discussing these examples is to illustrate that the cultural context gives the underlying problem of "sleep" a purpose and provides us with a clear sandbox in which to play.
Most of us don't always have the pleasure of working with a clean slate. We often have to deal with situations that require invigorating existing products or fixing new launches that are underperforming. When working on new launches or invigorating existing products, starting with the question "what cultural contexts is our product or solution placed into" can be transformational to the process, yielding both short and long-term opportunities for the business.
The front-end of innovation is supposed to be challenging, which is why it requires an intricate knowledge and understanding of consumer culture and how human beings give meaning to the world around them. It's important for us to embrace this challenge and rely on cultural contexts, rather than trends, which can prevent us from being able to do so.
[In the next article I'll discuss how we can dive deeper into consumer needs once we've identified a relevant cultural context.]
By starting with cultural contexts, we can prevent ourselves from taking shortcuts. This forces us to shift our focus from solutions to problems and start creating products that make a real difference in people's lives. Understanding the cultural contexts in which trends emerge gives much-needed richness to our work, allowing us to envision something that could truly be disruptive. And let's face it, it also makes our work more fun.