“To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before. We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots — religion, nation, community, family, or profession — are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust. It is no longer resources that limit decisions, it is the decision that makes the resources.”
— Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (a book on the future of societies and individuals).
Today’s consumer is continuously evolving at a rapid pace and it has become a must for organisations to keep up. With the ever increasing possibilities and choices of curated services, it has become easy for the consumers to swiftly switch to the brand that meets or exceeds their expectations. In this reality, how does a business retain it’s customer base and build brand loyalty by offering products that are relevant to the consumer?
Human-centred approach is key for building an innovation mindset that helps in identifying business directions that are desired by the end-consumer. There are many global companies that have adopted this approach however, a typical dilemma that they face while incorporating the consumer insights into the business context is whether to undertake disruptive innovation or incremental. It is generally assumed that to be perceived as an innovative company, the path of disruptive innovation has to be chosen. However, innovation is about creating new possibilities of solutions that are relevant for the given context and the end-consumer and that may be in the form of incremental changes in the existing product offerings or communication.
We recommend three innovation lenses that a business could undertake to address the contextual, consumer needs and offer relevant solutions. These lenses elucidate the spectrum of incorporating the human-centred insights, ranging from smaller changes to the current business offerings to large scale organisational change, depending on the kind of business and the leap that a business is ready.
1. Product Lens | Re-imagine the product feature
To build an innovative company, one does not require to disrupt the market through radical solutions or technology. Innovation can also be about taking strategic actions at a small scale such as reimagining the product or service to cater to the user’s underlying needs, behaviours and future aspirations. This seemingly minor change shows effects in the long run when users build a strong connection with the product and the company by becoming relevant to their lifestyle.
Google has predicted that the next billion users coming online for the first time would be from emerging markets with India being one of the important countries. Google has designed its first India-centric product — ‘Tez’ (digital payment app for India). It’s features are designed based on insights about the Indian user context, behaviour and socio-cultural nuances to provide a contextual user experience. ‘Tez’ incorporates local language support within the app after gaining insights from the end-user. This is a feature which has never been introduced in digital payment applications in the past. This outcome is based not only on the increasing digital literacy in the country but also an important correlation, identified by the company, of the user’s trust & comfort with the mode of communication specifically for financial transactions.
2. Service Lens | Think of new service & communication channels
It’s not always about innovating new products & features. Companies also need to focus on how the product reaches, interacts and communicates with the end-consumer. The consumers don’t buy just the product, but also buy the product stories and the experience. In order to create a memorable consumer experience, it is important to understand the mindset of the consumer throughout their journey across every touchpoint and communication channel. Insights around constraints and delights help in identifying fresh opportunities for contextual service delivery & communication channels.
A great example of adopting new service channels based on the context lies in the retail space. E-commerce giants had a tough time in persuading consumers to adopt digital platforms initially especially in countries with connectivity constraints and low digital literacy. As a result of this, e-commerce businesses evolved their channels from solely online to hyperlocal to omni channels after understanding the local context. According to a report by inc42, almost a billion dollars were invested in 400+ hyperlocal startups from 2011 to 2016 in India. Understanding of the supply chain variables, proximity with the consumers, trust paradigm of consumers around online services, relationships with the local retailer etc. helped the e-commerce companies to take a step forward and connect with the end-consumer more meaningfully.
3. Business Lens | Reimagine the business model
Significant changes taking place in the society; shape the way individuals adopt and perceive products & services around them. At times, these societal paradigm shifts and the resultant consumer mindset changes require businesses to pass the threshold of product and service changes to higher orders of business model changes to create broader impact and tackle competition.
With the increase in well-earning millennials and their aspiration for experiential services; Capital One, an American bank has ‘un-branched’ their bank branches by calling it ‘Capital One Cafe’. The traditional bank branch has been transformed into a cafe that is built in association with local cafes. The idea of transforming the branch experience was to have customers connect with the brand and have finance related conversations in a casual, relaxed atmosphere instead of a serious ‘cold’ environment.
At times, creating a differentiated product that is relevant and stays relevant is about taking a step back to see the context clearly to make sense of it with an unbiased mind and then crafting business solutions that are user-centric. This helps in understanding the needs of the existing consumers, identifying new potential consumer personae, re-imagining the service/product archetype or design a new business offering to cater to the macro level business intent and goals. The initial steps for any business to move towards this future would be-
- Identify and apply the relevant lens of innovation for effective business change
- Understand the end-consumer and other stakeholders within the ecosystem to know their context for targeted product / service goal
- Create an actionable roadmap of how to imbibe the culture of human-centric thinking within the company
At Xeno, we undertake contextual consumer studies based on Human-centred approach for all the above discussed innovation lenses. The consumers studies and findings are further mapped against socio-cultural trends to help businesses plan the future roadmap and also stay ahead of the competition by future-proofing their business strategies.
