Driving Eureka!. Doug Hall

of Virgin put it this way in Screw Business as Usual:

      These days I think you’ve got to talk about your value proposition—why are you so proud of your product? And you’ve got to communicate that pride in ways that add up to a young generation that’s very well informed and very idealistic. The young care about where products come from. They care about what the company that makes the product actually does in the world—or not. But you can’t fake it. You have to say, screw business as usual and just do it.

      The Three Dimensions of Meaningfulness

      For innovative ideas to go from idea to reality, it takes energy. The more meaningful they are, the easier it is to gather the energy required to make them happen. There are three dimensions of meaningfulness:

      1. Meaningful to CUSTOMER is a given. The innovation must matter to customers. If the customer doesn’t see the innovation as offering greater benefit value relative to the price charged, then they will demand the benefit of a lower price.

      2. Meaningful to the COMPANY is a given. If the organization cannot profitably develop, produce, and deliver the innovation, then there will be no energy to pursue it. And, if the innovation is not aligned with the leadership’s vision of where the company needs to go in the future, then the idea will not happen, no matter how potentially profitable it is in the short term.

      Meaningful to customer and company are classic requirements for innovations. However, they are not enough. Making meaningful change happen is hard work. In order to generate the energy needed for change, the idea must have a third level of meaningfulness.

      3. Meaningful to WORKERS is critical. For ideas to happen, they must be meaningful to those who are working on the project. Academic research on innovation success confirms that for meaningful change to happen it must be driven by intrinsic motivation.

      Quite simply, you can’t “bribe” people to change. They must want to make the change happen themselves. They must love an innovation to see it through from idea to reality.

      As Wilbur Wright, one of the Wright Brothers, wrote to his father: “It is my belief that flight is possible, and while I am taking up the investigation for pleasure rather than profit, I think there is slight possibility of achieving fame and fortune from it.”

      Meaningfulness Is More Than Skin Deep

      A classic mistake is to believe you can take the same old product or service and dress it up with a new “skin” and see dramatically different results. The reality is that, with the internet, your “smoke and mirrors” will be found out very quickly. A bad painting in a fancy frame is still a bad painting.

      A classic example of this is the horse carriage business in Cincinnati. In its day, Cincinnati was one of the world’s leaders in the manufacturing of horse-and-buggy carriages. One of the leading companies of the day was the Alliance Carriage Company. As the automobile developed, they rejected it. Instead of innovating their carriages by adding a motor, they turned their energy toward design and marketing—investing in massive variations of design and the mailing of a “successful salesman” brochure that enabled endless choices and a new direct-sale business model. In the end, they resorted to price as their point of difference. As the advertisement above indicates: “We actually give more for less money than any other Buggy or Harness factory in the world.”