#NoBullshitCX
“Shouldn’t innovations be self-explanatory?”
We all know the allegory of the frog slowly getting boiled because it doesn’t recognize the slowly rising water temperature as threatening. Failure to recognize time to change can get in the way of innovation and adaptation at the right time. Everyone knows the story of how Nokia lost momentum in the mobile market. But today I want to share a story of how we failed to impress the opportunities of innovation on a group of bakers.
We were called in by a national association of bakers who saw a rapidly shifting market, with many different threats–for instance, their business was being eaten by supermarkets, while young people would not want to become bakers because they didn’t see themselves get up at 3AM. We developed a comprehensive set of innovations that would enable them to deal with these and other challenges–always accompanied by successful examples from around the globe. But most of the participating bakers rejected every suggestion “because we have always been doing things this way”. Very few listened.
This project took place almost a decade ago, and we can now say with conviction that we were right. The few that adapted according to our suggestions thrived–but the bakers guild as a whole in this country is still shrinking rapidly.
I do blame myself for this failure as well–we didn’t plan in the time and effort to deep dive on how we could convince the bakers (we also weren’t given the budget…) and without that, the best innovation ideas in the world will not land. We are now taking the lessons from that project into our more recent, AI-related ones, because adoption of innovations is always a challenge.
Are you preparing your convincing approach, your internal value proposition with as much energy as those lovely new ideas?
