How to kill innovation, for those aspiring to decline | MSIX video
Instead of the usual 'how to innovate' talk, Inventium founder Dr Amantha Imber decides to look at things from an alternative perspective in this session from November's marketing science conference, MSIX.
Dr Amantha Imber, founder of Inventium, begins the session by asking the audience: “Who’s aspiring to decline in the next few years?”
In order to kill innovation, Imber says, the first thing you need to do is put a call out to your entire company for ‘ideas’.
The innovation team “will discover ideas from staff which say things like ‘let’s put three-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms rather than two-ply toilet paper, or let’s fire my manager'”, she says.
Instead of trying to think of solutions to a problem that doesn’t necessarily exist, brands should instead be asking their customers what really gets them riled up.
“The most important thing that you can be asking customers is not what are they aspiring to do and asking for all these deep insights – ask them, when were they lasted pissed off by your brand, by your product, by your service; or when were they last pissed off by your competitors’ products and services?” Imber advises.
She suggests focussing on frustrations, and being crystal on what you want people to solve.
Another factor that will kill innovation dead in its tracks it attempting to make decisions towards the end of the day.
She asks the audience: “What time do you make your most important decisions at work?”, before telling them that the quickest way to kill innovation is to make your most important decisions after lunch.
Those who randomly make decisions at any time of the day mean they’re leaving their all-important judgements to chance.
Decision fatigue can be used to explain this phenomenon, which posits “the more decisions you make over a day, the worse the quality of those decisions become.”
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