Chapter Seven
Phase I: Define
Trends tend to send businesspeople into a tizzy. The ones who land in my office often seem in a state of panic as they articulate their urgent need to get in on the latest trend—now. We need a social media strategy. We need a Hispanic strategy. We need a green strategy. Or my personal favorite: We need an innovation strategy (hence the creation of this book.) But before I can guide them to a best answer, we have to slow down, step back, and figure out what I call a Best Question.
In the Introduction to this book, I said that to think like a futurist you must develop your ability to step outside the particulars of your situation and ask, “How does this work?” Which, again, is to say that before you can get practical, you have to get philosophical. Best Questions are your tools for getting philosophical.
The Best Questions of all: “Who are you?” and “Where are you going?”
Perhaps because of its philosophical nature, a Best Question can sound impossibly vague. But arriving at it is an incredibly specific process, and requires precise definition: you must define your terms at such a basic level that you might feel like a four-year-old tugging on the sleeve of your adult self, asking, “How come? Waddaya mean? But why?”
So, if you tell me you want a social media strategy, I will ask you: “What is social media? Why do you believe it is important to you? What is your point of view on it? What's it to you, anyway?”
When considering how you might respond to a trend, opportunity, or idea, however, the most important question you will ask is, “To what end?”
The point is this: to find a solution, you have to begin with a well-defined problem and well-defined goals.
This process is one of asking Best Questions.
Best Questions
To arrive at the best solution, one that meets both your objectives and your circumstances, you have to begin with what I call your Best Questions. The term Best Questions is intended to counter the heavy emphasis on best practices, the go-to starting point for most projects in business. The distinction is this: best practices refer to standard models and procedures that serve as a template for the type of work you want to do. It's a “Why reinvent the wheel?” approach to problem solving that helps you get up to speed with proven methods early on. It is a smart, efficient way to roll out a project, once the best solution is clear.
Sometimes, however, reinventing the wheel is the job. You have a hunch that by testing the assumptions that went into the conventional wheel-making procedure, you might discover a better wheel. Or, maybe, you'll discover that you don't need a wheel at all. That's what James Dyson, the inventor of the award-winning Dyson Vacuum, discovered when he set out to design a vacuum that didn't lose suction and that could easily maneuver through an obstacle course of furniture. For both objectives, Dyson departed from standard vacuum design, searching instead for an entirely new way to solve the problems of the conventional suction-losing, dirty, heavy vacuum. For suction, Dyson introduced high-velocity cyclone technology to create a cleaner, more powerful sucking action. For navigability, Dyson found that the pivot of a ball, not the coordinated tracking required by the regular two- or four-wheel design, allowed movement in a 360 radius, not just at right angles. In short, by setting aside the assumption that the wheel was the best way to move a vacuum around, Dyson discovered a much better solution.
The point is this: you simply can't get to New by doing what's already known. This means that when you want to get to new ideas and new solutions, best practices work against you. Their place is in implementation. Instead, to get to New, you have to go on a quest, a search for new understanding that sparks insights and delivers unexpected answers. This is what the activities of strategy and innovation are all about, and they all begin with a well-defined Best Question.
A Best Question is one that goes to the heart of the challenge and purposely invites learning. The four characteristics of a Best Question are as follows:
Most innovation challenges begin with a sense of “Something's going on here.” It can be a general feeling of threat coming from an area in your world, perhaps a loss of market share, an internal management issue, a competitor that's gaining ground, rising costs, or an underlying shift in markets, trends, customers, technology, or business model that you feel needs attention.
“Something's going on here” also relates to potential opportunities. Maybe it starts with a news item, an interview, or a personal experience you found especially engaging. It could be a “What if . . .” scenario, like the idea that a $100 laptop could change the lives of the world's poorest children, which inspired the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project (conceived at the MIT Media Lab before spawning an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to the production, funding, and dissemination of the OLPC), or the notion that college students would use a Web-based service to share and comment on one another's photos and profiles, as occurred to Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, while a sophomore at Harvard University.
A trend might be what nudges you, such as the trend for convenience and portability that makes you wonder, “How can we make [breakfast, project management, shopping, meetings, health care . . . ] more convenient and portable?” Or, perhaps, it's a breakthrough in science or technology that might make what was previously impossible, possible, such as restoring movement to people who've suffered a spinal cord injury. That dream is relentlessly pursued by neuroscientists, some of whom are now asking, “What if the signals from the brain that are severed in a spinal cord injury and result in paralysis could be re-created with a radio?” This is the question pushing the budding field of neuroprosthetics, where scientists are combining breakthroughs in robotics, artificial intelligence, and brain science to create prostheses that can be controlled by human thought. Innovations in the field have proven the potential for a new class of thought-controlled prosthetic limbs, exoskeletons, and devices to restore movement and communication to people who have lost the capacity to walk or talk. And all because someone decided to seek an answer to a Best Question.
Creativity is often mythologized as a gift that some people have and others don't. The truth is, just like the ability to hit a baseball or carry a tune, creativity is a skill that requires practice. The ZoD is a methodology that describes how to do it.
Who are You? Where are You Going?
Again, the best Best Questions are “Who are you?” and “Where are you going?” The ZoD process works for each.
The objective of the ZoD for “Who are you?” is to claim what makes you unique. There is a way of being, seeing, and doing that is as singular to you as your DNA. No matter the activity, you are the one who is organized, funny, philosophical, warm, nutty, creative, curious, nurturing, reckless, raucous, and more, in some unexpected, delightful combination. When you're aware of the particular set of gifts that are intrinsic to who you are, then you can start to define your best self, what the French so enticingly call our Je ne sais quoi.
The thing is, unless you are a gold-medal Olympian or a world-class opera singer, you can't really be distinguished by what you do. There are many others who can do the same thing as you just as well or better. For every remarkable architect, dog trainer, chef, writer, tax preparer, journalist, doctor, or graphic designer, there's a long list of competitors who can offer the same skill or service. What no one else can provide, however, is the particular way that you do what you do—the point of view, philosophy, and style that only you possess. This is equally true for an organization, whether food manufacturer, discount retailer, computer chip maker, book seller, charity, or school.
The objective of the ZoD for “Where are you going?” is to envision, given who you are, what you're going to create. In other words, articulating the vision is really a proposition: If you were to achieve the ultimate fulfillment of your purpose, what would it look like? The strategy for achieving that vision has to be shaped by environmental conditions (a fact forgotten, as everyone now knows, by the CEOs driving Detroit's car-manufacturing machines for the past several decades), so the four forces must be factored into the final determination of where you're going and how you're going to get there.
Chapters Eight and Nine look at the next two phases in the Zone of Discovery, Discover and Distill. Then, in Chapters Ten and Eleven, we will follow two of my corporate clients through their ZoD to see the entire process; one focuses on the “Who are you?” question, the other on a “Where are you going?” challenge.
However, before we move on, we'll pause to look at a brilliant example of a company that is very clear about who it is and where it's going: Virgin. Virgin began as a mail-order record seller in London in 1970. Within a few years, it opened a record shop and a recording studio that produced rock-and-roll bands, including the Sex Pistols and Rolling Stones. Starting with little more than a spirit of fun and a drive to create, the businesses grew quickly and, collectively known as Virgin Music, became one of the top record companies in the world. Now, more than forty years later, the same chutzpah that made Virgin Music an international success has grown Virgin to comprise a portfolio of over two hundred companies, doing business in more than thirty countries around the world. At every turn, and in every decision along the way, Virgin has been very clear about who it is and where it's going as a company. The essence of it, for Virgin, is a desire always to push into virgin territory, not only for profit but because it's just plain fun to invent the future. Let's take a closer look.
Who is Virgin?
If you were to Google Virgin (using a capital V), you would find a conglomerate—founded by Richard Branson, also Virgin's chairman, CEO, and president—made up of music, wireless, airline, and hospitality companies. But make no mistake: Virgin is in no way defined by what it does as a music, wireless, airline, or hospitality company. Rather, Virgin is defined by its irreverent attitude; its attraction to bold, risky ventures and behaviors; and its distinctive sense of humor and creativity. Even though music, cellular telephony, airlines, and hospitality are among the most difficult, volatile, low-margin industries that exist, Virgin has managed to be successful in all of them. How? Sure, there's been smart analysis to evaluate whether, when, and how to enter new markets, but Virgin's competitive edge has always been in the slightly naughty, tongue-in-chic imprimatur it has stamped on each of its ventures. Customers rely on Virgin to bring its sauciness to the party, while delivering products and services in ways they'd never even dreamed of before.
Virgin dreams, and Virgin does. In a sense, that's its purpose: to continually journey into virgin territories. When, in 2003, its airline, Virgin Atlantic, introduced its “Upper Class” service (a clever nod to the British class system), it piled on amenities that would make you want to buy a ticket even if you had no place to go! For example, in London, the journey begins with a limousine ride to the airport, where, after you arrive, the chauffeur checks in for you, hands you the boarding pass, and directs you to a priority elevator that goes directly to a private security station, a process Virgin describes as a ten-minute “Limo to Lounge” check-in. The Virgin Atlantic Upper Class passenger hangs out in Virgin's Heathrow Clubhouse, where the free pretzels and soda that are customary in first-class airline lounges are replaced with a nightclub, spa, pool, brasserie, library, and rooftop garden. The Virgin experience continues on the plane with chairs that turn into beds, a cocktail bar, and in-flight massage, followed by a personal limo service when you land. Consumers get all this at fares comparable to those of Virgin's competitors. Clearly, Virgin knows what makes it unique.
Where is Virgin Going?
Again, “Where are you going?” wants to know, given who you are, how you will fulfill your ultimate purpose in the future. The ultimate virgin territory for Virgin is outer space; true to the bold, explorer spirit for which it is known, the company is steadily building the capabilities to make it so, perfecting spaceships and fuel, partnering with industrial suppliers, and hiring the best scientists and astronauts to work on this monumental challenge. Virgin declared that it will be the first to build a hotel on the moon. To move this goal from the realm of loony fantasy to realistic business plan, Virgin has invested in a number of businesses that can help build the scaffolding upon which its new business, Virgin Galactic, can succeed. Beginning with an investment in the technology that would make space tourism possible, Branson founded the Spacecraft Company, a group that produced the X PRIZE–winning SpaceShipOne. Its successor, the SpaceShipTwo, is currently booking passengers for flights into space—at $200,000 apiece. The first commercial flights are expected to take off in 2013.
With a nod to the four forces, the Virgin vision of the hospitality industry extending into space is further supported by a commitment to clean fuel technologies and scientific research that benefits terrestrial transportation, computing, and biomedicine. Virgin has established a $25 million prize for anyone who can demonstrate a commercially viable design that can remove greenhouse gases. Further, the Virgin Green Fund, a private equity fund, invests in a wide array of clean fuel technologies, and Virgin Unite, a nonprofit foundation, focuses on entrepreneurial solutions to the social challenges of global conflict, climate, and disease. The vision of a hotel on the moon might be seen by some as a crass “Watch me!” tactic, but a futurist would argue that it is an audacious goal that, in a triumph of imagination, may solve some of the problems our world currently faces.