The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, "One cannot step into the same river twice." The river flows endlessly. This famous saying of Heraclitus illustrates the truth of the eternal movement of objective things. I remember the CCTV broadcast of Sean Ellis, a British animal expert who studies wolf behavior, who transformed into a member of the wolf family, ate and slept with wolves for more than ten years, and eventually became the leader of the pack and became an expert in interpreting wolf language and behavior. .
But once he left the wolf pack to go to another pasture to deal with the wolf problem and came back, he found something strange in the wolf pack: the wolves had a new leader. Sean immediately made a decision to deal with the problem. The new leader bows his head to the throne, and only in this way can he be re-accepted by the pack of wolves. Sean entered the wolf world as a human and became the alpha wolf. On the day he left, the wolves competed for a new leader. This change made Sean realize that no advantage is eternal, and everything develops by overturning old rules and creating new ones.
This rule applies not only to the animal world, but also to the business world. No business model lasts forever, and no pattern cannot be broken. So how do you find a way to break through in a saturated market? Eiji Yamada's book "Unlocking the Innovation Gene" will give you new inspiration.
"Unlocking the Innovation Gene" points out that with the rapid development of society, it is becoming increasingly difficult for traditional enterprises to operate their business models. How to carve out a way out through innovation in the rapidly changing modern society is a top priority. Innovation is generated and developed in the process of daily work. In the final analysis, it depends on people's way of thinking. Can you notice opportunities for innovation, what phenomena should you pay attention to, and respond appropriately? This helps people discover opportunities to create new value and rebuild their business forms in a rapidly changing environment.
The author Mr. Eiji Yamada is an MBA from Harvard Business School in the United States. In addition to being a professor at the Graduate School of Kanazawa Institute of Technology, he teaches courses related to business innovation. He has also worked for many of the world's top consulting companies and is good at formulating breakthrough strategies and new business models. Provide consulting services related to innovative business planning and development for many companies. Has more than thirty years of career experience.
"Unlocking the Innovation Gene" is divided into two parts. Eiji Mita first combines the classic works of Harvard Business School professors and the world's highest level strategic innovation masters to explain the process and impact of innovation, inspiring readers to break their inherent ideas. , looking for opportunities to create new value from multiple perspectives such as the environment and customers. In the second part, a large number of cases are used to summarize the seven clues of business innovation. Trying to explain the connotation of "business model" from a different perspective than before.
Looking at the whole book, I came to three enlightening points:
1. What is invincible is not the successful model, but the thinking.
The world’s top strategic innovation master, Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School, once pointed out that “disruptive innovations that reshape industry landscapes will not come from those who have excellent managers and From great companies to great employees.” Why? What affects corporate innovation?
"Unlocking the Innovation Gene" combines the works of two Harvard Business School professors, Alfred Chandler Jr., the world's top strategic innovation master, and Clayton Christensen. A classic work that analyzes the following three reasons why companies fall into Xinjiang situation:
1. "Narrow vision makes it difficult to innovate": When the company expands to a certain level, each department and person in the production process is responsible for Business scope will be divided very finely. The larger the company, the smaller the scope of business each person is responsible for. Employees and the entire organization can suffer from "tunnel vision." When thinking about problems, they will unconsciously focus on their own interests or the interests of the organization they belong to, and only see the trees but not the forest. The result of a narrow vision is that in the process of environmental changes, companies are completely unable to fully grasp new customer needs or new production methods, and are unable to achieve innovation.
2 large companies often fall into the following cognitive biases.
This kind of thinking that rejects multi-dimensional perception will cause companies to miss opportunities to discover innovation. For example, Kodak, which monopolized film technology in the 20th century, invested huge amounts of money in the research and development of film technology. Of course, film also contributed huge profits to Kodak. Therefore, when the world's first digital camera was developed by the same Kodak company, deep Knowing that it would have a devastating impact and conflict of interest on the flourishing film technology, they did not actively recommend digital technology, but still found ways to invest in the innovation of film technology. This kind of protective mentality and short-sighted thinking caused them to lose the opportunity to lead in the digital field. The subsequent globalization of the digital market forced Kodak to file for bankruptcy in 2012.
3. Thinking in a localized way, not knowing how to follow the trend, leading to working on the wrong problems in the wrong direction. The environment in which enterprises operate has undergone tremendous changes, and the original business model can no longer adapt to the sudden changes in the environment. However, many companies have not considered how to make changes to adapt to changes in the social background. Instead, we are still working hard to achieve breakthroughs in the original operating methods. Of course, you can't get out of trouble by always staying on an abandoned track. Just like the werewolf Sean discovered that the wolf pack had produced a new wolf king, he cleverly did not have the idea of ????confronting the wolf king to regain his authority. Instead, he changed his mind and immediately expressed his submission to the wolves, so that he could be accepted by the wolves. Only by changing strategies and rearranging the layout in a new situation, finding your own positioning and setting goals, can you have the opportunity to survive and develop.
Two: Find opportunities for innovation from the perspective of the background environment. The environment is the soil for innovation
Eiji Nakata pointed out that the environment is the mold that shapes business. What do you see in the famous "Rubin Vase" below? Most people only see the vase and pay attention to the details of the vase. In fact, they can also interpret it from the background of the vase, so that the picture shows "two people looking at each other."
The background part is the environmental area that enterprises should pay attention to. "Opening the Innovation Gene" lists many corporate business model theories, almost all of which simply focus on the vase and believe that they should be based on their own competitiveness. Configure your own business model based on your goals. However, the existing business model form is formed after the enterprise and the surrounding environment run into each other. Instead of tracing out the shapes you like on a white canvas. The author Eiji Yamada pointed out that we must pay attention to the rapidly changing environmental conditions around us at all times and establish corresponding business models.
Pinduoduo, an e-commerce dark horse that has emerged in my country in recent years, has successfully occupied a place in a market where giants have already established its presence in just three years. The ability to sprout and grow in a market that cannot be penetrated by a needle depends on its founder Huang Zheng’s discovery of the surrounding dark markets.
The dark market is an area that is not illuminated by the spotlight, just like people's vision on a stage often focuses on the protagonist in the spotlight, while the area outside the light always exists silently but is not noticed. If Tmall, JD.com and Taobao are the bright spots that everyone is familiar with, the farmers’ market in Jiaokara around the town is the dark market that is not noticed by everyone.
This dark market is the backdrop for a Rubin vase. When everyone was looking at the vase in the middle, Huang Zheng found Pinduoduo’s survival genes from the background of the vase, and based on this, he established the most basic group shopping method for third- and fourth-tier people. Pinduoduo’s new e-commerce platform.
There are many factors responsible for Pinduoduo’s success. How did Huang Zheng discover this most down-to-earth dark market group? Switch the perspective, we often say that you have to squat down when talking to children, and you will find out how children see the world. When you switch to the bottom-level perspective, you can discover a big market that we pass by all day long but never pay attention to. This also reflects what Eiji Yamada said in the third of the seven innovation clues summarized in the book: "Discovering new realities, behind 'accidental success' are unnoticed facts."
Three: From the customer’s perspective, pay attention to the value of customer experience.
The so-called customer experience value is the real purpose and desire behind consumer purchasing behavior. Many people wonder why old people like to buy health care products. I know clearly that these health products have no effect, but I still buy them willingly. Excluding cultural factors, the deeper reason is the care and concern behind buying products. This is a deception method designed by health care product companies to seize the pain point of "loneliness" among the elderly and focus on the customer experience value.
Xiao Deng, a salesperson who sells health care products, once talked about his relationship with his customer, Mrs. Wang. Mrs. Wang liked to listen to him introduce and sell products. Even when communicating on the phone, she never showed any sign of impatience. Refuse. Xiao Deng was very surprised why the old lady talked to him for so long every time, and she never put down the phone until he ran out of words. Until the last time, the old lady said, "Say a few more words, your voice is exactly the same as my son's." The salesperson caters to their preferences through one-to-one contact and communication, allowing the elderly to conclude transactions in a pleasant state. This is also a negative teaching material that has been successfully used in the past two years to target the customer experience value used by the elderly.
Starbucks, with its core concept of focusing on customer experience value, also takes the customer's perspective as the starting point, giving people a master-like mood, thereby satisfying customers' wishes to the greatest extent. And found a successful business model of its own. Therefore, Yamada Eiji pointed out in "Unlocking the Innovation Gene" that we should start from the customer's perspective and discover new innovation opportunities. In addition to the product itself, companies also need to pay attention to other elements that can meet consumers' potential needs and improve the overall experience value including goods and services.
Three: From a future perspective, the innovation opportunities brought by technological innovation cannot be ignored.
Once upon a time, a well-known media invited 2,000 Dajias from around the world to answer a question: What is the greatest invention in the past two thousand years? The answers ranged from one urban planning and architecture expert to a flush toilet.
This indispensable standard feature for all homes was invented by the British aristocrat John Harrington. He never imagined that the emergence of flush toilets would later lead to the development of our modern cities. Not to mention the huge impact that the development of the IT industry has on modern industries. As we all know, Jack Ma used a forward-looking vision to predict the development trend of the Internet when e-commerce was just starting out. He seized the opportunity to create an online shopping platform, which led to the related development of multiple industrial chains, creating the unshakable Alibaba today. empire.
Innovations in new technologies have brought about innovation opportunities in all aspects, including the related development of new products and services. visible. Behind every technological innovation lies huge innovation opportunities. The perspective of the future is to discover the direction of development from the clues of technological innovation.
It is better to teach a man to fish than to teach him to fish. Mr. Eiji Nakata used a large number of cases in "Unlocking the Innovation Gene" to summarize seven clues to business innovation, hoping to inspire people not to just focus on the business model itself. Instead, we “overlook” the business through multiple perspectives, and quickly adjust and re-plan new business development plans from changes in the environment.
"Unlocking the Innovation Gene" conveys not only the generation of business models, but also focuses on the process of innovation and the perspective changes in the way of thinking. Innovation is multi-dimensional perception, seeing what ordinary people can't, and knowing the subtleties. This kind of perpetual thinking will keep us sharp, perceiving the future impact from the closely related social background, technological innovation, and customer experience, and exploring opportunities for innovation.