Industrial design was born during the 1929 crisis in the United States. Quite by chance? Absolutely not! Raymond Loewe established the core of the job of an industrial designer in his time, the 1930s. Many industrial design agencies were created during those years of crisis. Companies invest and innovate during this time period, such as with the development of plastics, mass radio, popular cinema, television, penicillin, nylon, radar, and even the ballpoint pen or puzzle.
Studies conducted (including Accenture) on the most successful companies during and after the recession of 1990-1991, show a clear distinction between those that have simply cut costs and those that have strengthened their position. Companies that have focused on reducing costs have certainly experienced a faster return on investment, but those that have focused on strengthening their position have achieved higher growth and experienced much higher levels of return on investment during the following years.
Common Trends
More than 100 million start-ups are launched annually globally, or about three start-ups per second, according to the GEM national report (2019), supporting the notion that there are many fresh business ideas out there. New ideas are literally everywhere in the world in which we live. Therefore, it’s required business people who can “make sense of an abundance of novel opportunities” and who will launch ventures with a strong mission and the potential to last for more generations.
Entrepreneurs should constantly reevaluate their meaning and purpose in order to build a business that can innovate over time. They shouldn’t be in love with their product or service. This long-term perspective should be ingrained in an entrepreneurial mindset because it appears to help business people turn their ideas into successful ventures that last for more generations. Therefore, entrepreneurs should succeed in starting a business that they would like to see, at the very least, their grandchildren see. This is true even if they do not intend to create a family business, as we need new, significant businesses that are responsible members of their communities.
How to Act
Another thing to keep in mind is that the organizations that are first to successfully identify and meet their customers’ shifting requirements will win in a crisis. Begin with an innovation process that delivers the insights needed by organizations to understand how their customers’ requirements have changed.
Follow the Steps to Success
When it comes to understanding consumer demands, adopt an outcome-driven mindset. Define needs as the measures that consumers use to determine success in having their “work” done. Knowing how customers define success will highlight where they are struggling to complete tasks and where they could focus to provide customer value. Apply this approach to your target markets. Virtual client interviews allow businesses to gain extensive customer insights in only a few days. This allows them to prioritize outcome statements over time, indicating where and how much client need remains unmet. More information on the outcome-driven innovation process may be found here. Take action on the insights. With a comprehensive grasp of the customer’s unmet needs, you will be able to act on those insights—to develop and test new, inventive solutions that are certain to address the business’s growth possibilities. To be excellent at innovation, a company must have a great innovation process—one that has been shown to remove the guesswork from the process. There is such a method. Your organization has the potential to look at its markets through a new lens and be the first to find and address emerging opportunities for growth by utilizing the outcome-driven innovation methodology.
