Innovation #3 - You Can't Innovate Without Breaking the Status Quo
You’ve probably heard the advice that when designing a new product, you should start by talking with expert users. If you want to make a significant change - an innovation or a breakthrough next generation product - that can be bad advice. If things change, they may not be the experts any longer. Ope!
When I worked as an innovation consultant, we knew that there were two groups whose opinions might be suspect, because they could have a vested interest in the status quo.
Entrenched users or stakeholders.
Expert users or industry experts.
“It’s The Way We Do it Here.”
People who had developed the incumbent product that we were redesigning, who were highly successful selling it, or who were just plain comfortable with it often held the opinion that the existing product was the best that there ever could be. It wasn’t that they would actively resist change, but they often felt no need to change.
Their corporate status and reputation was built upon the strength of the status quo. They knew the product inside and out. People would come to them for advice and answers. They prided themselves in being able to know how to make the product work well. Why change when they can always make it work well?
Experts In the Field Can Have a Vested Interest
If you are an expert, then your work and reputation is closely tied to the status quo. After all, the current state of the field or product is what you are expert in! If the status quo changes, you may not be an expert any longer. That often creates a vested interest and bias. To be fair, it is normally not a conscious bias, but it exists.
During new product development research, this bias can emerge as an over-emphasis on the “only and right way” to solve the problem. It can also emerge as downplaying of new ideas or needs from users the expert has never considered. In a changing market, that means that the experts always live in some version of the past - while the goal of innovation is to create a robust future.
A Few Hints For Escaping the Status Quo
Talk to users of all different kinds. Expert, everyday, unhappy, brand new. Not just the old timers or power users. Learning how to make everyone’s experience better should be your goal.
Pay particular attention to unorthodox use cases. They suggest new uses outside the status quo. The number of users for those use cases may be small today - but grow tomorrow.
Pay attention to users who have built home-brewed workarounds. Those workarounds suggest use cases that your product doesn’t currently support - but were needed badly enough that someone made their own solution.
Employ a wide variety of people during your ideation. I can remember one ideation session where the “best” idea came from someone who many thought didn’t even belong in the ideation group because they weren’t an engineer or designer.
Encourage crazy ideas during ideation. I have often given a “prize” for the wildest idea given during a session. The prizes usually go to someone with an idea that is clearly WAY too crazy. But accepting crazy idea gives participants license to speak without self-censoring their ideas.
All of this increases the probability that your design team will learn about novel new use cases and generate great new ideas that step out of the status quo.