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 BY
KURT HANSON
A new book co-written by Harvard professor Clayton M. Christensen,
author of "The Innovator's Dilemma," looks at product
development from the consumer's point of view and suggests that
the best opportunities for
a "disruptive" product like Internet radio may be among
"nonconsumers."
He argues that consumers have a
job they want to get done -- they don't want to buy a
1/4" drill, they want a 1/4" hole -- and that companies
should find ways to help them do those jobs better or more conveniently.
For example, I imagine that there are millions of office workers
who want to make their day more soothing
or more lively and energized
or more interesting. They might
use green tea or espresso to help them accomplish that goal. Or
they might use music, either
from radio or from CDs.
Internet radio may be helping millions of people accomplish
that job by offering a largely-uninterrupted stream of
piano jazz (soothing) or Broadway soundtracks (energizing) or Scottish
rock (interesting). And it's likely, Christensen suggests, that
this opportunity has very little to do
with taking listeners away from FM radio and much more to do with
competing with silence or CDs.
In other words, for those consumers who aren't switching
away from FM, Christensen would call this opportunity "competing
with nonconsumption."
The following quotes
from Christensen & Raynor's book
were excerpted in the October
13th issue of Forbes. Look for more from the book in RAIN
in upcoming weeks.
"How do you create
disruptive products?"
The authors write, "How do you create products that
customers want to buy -- ones that become so successful they 'disrupt'
the market? It's not easy...
"Most...failures are predictable--and avoidable. Why?
Because most managers trying to come up with new products don't
properly consider the circumstances in
which customers find themselves when making purchasing
decisions.
"Much of the art of marketing focuses on identifying groups
or segments of customers that are similar enough that the same product
or service will appeal to all of them.
Managers need to segment their markets to mirror
the way their customers experience life -- and not base
decisions on irrelevant data that focus on customer attributes.
Managers need to realize that customers, in effect, 'hire' products
to do specific 'jobs.'..
"Growth would come by taking
business from products in other categories that customers
sometimes employed, with limited satisfaction, to get their particular
jobs done. And perhaps more important, the products would find new
growth among 'nonconsumers.' Competing
with nonconsumption often offers the biggest source of growth in
a world of one-size-fits-all products...
Consumers buys products
for a specific "job"
"For today's new-technology industries, the challenge
is to enable new customers to do things
they've always been trying to do, but to do them more conveniently
and predictably. Take the BlackBerry, the handheld wireless
e-mailer made by the Canadian company
Research in Motion...
"What's the Blackberry competing with? When not using
a Blackberry, people often pick up a wireless phone. Sometimes they
pick up the Wall Street Journal. Sometimes they make notes
to themselves. Sometimes they stare mindlessly at the CNN Airport
Network or sit with glazed eyes in a boring meeting. From
the customer's point of view, these are the BlackBerry's
most direct competitors.
"So in addition to adding wireless telephony, Blackberry
could add financial news headlines and stock quotes to help compete
more effectively with the Wall Street Journal. And mindless,
single-player games or automatically downloaded Letterman-like top-ten
lists might help the
Blackberry gain share against boredom. Features that do not help
customers do the job that they hire the Blackberry for wouldn't
be viewed as improvements at all...
"The Kodak Funsaver ("single use" camera) was
a product that customers bought for a specific
job: They wanted a camera on vacation but either didn't
own one or had forgotten to bring one along. The Funsaver competed
with nonconsumption: Customers whose alternative was to have no
photos of their two weeks
at the lake were perfectly happy with the quality. The disposable-camera
market is now $2 billion annually."
This article was adapted from The Innovator's Solution:
Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, by Clayton M. Christensen
and Michael E. Raynor (Amazon link here).
Read the entire article in the October 13 issue of Forbes,
or online
here (registration required).
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Regular RAIN readers will
recall that I'm a huge fan of Christensen's previous book,
"The Innovator's Dilemma."
That book explains why large terrestrial
broadcasters will most likely not
end up being significant players in the world of Internet
radio, leaving fantastic opportunities for smaller
broadcast groups and/or entrepreneurs.
(See links to our five-part series, "The Future of Radio,"
in the top-left menu of RAIN, for more on that topic.)
"At a fundamental level,"
the authors write in this book, "the things that people
want to accomplish in their lives don't change quickly. New
products will succeed to the extent they help customers accomplish
more effectively and conveniently what
they're already trying to do."
All right! We can do that! And this book sounds like
it will help point the way how. (By the way, if you like,
you can buy it from Amazon.com here.)
-- KH
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Go Cubs!!
