Innovation Inspired From Unrelated Industries
Radical Innovation: Cross Industry innovation inspires breakthrough innovation
A common trap that teams fall into is to look at competitors for ideas. However, this doesn’t result in much success. A more effective strategy for breakthrough innovation would be to look for inspiration in other industries. In today’s post, let’s look into the topic of how to build more innovative products inspired by other industries.
What does cross-industry innovation look like?
Looking beyond your core industry could completely reshape how your industry might look like. Some such examples are below.
💡 Ford is credited for the assembly line and it has revolutionized manufacturing. We can’t imagine a world where anything can be manufactured any differently but this wasn’t always the case. Ford’s assembly line was inspired by a slaughterhouse where each person completed their job and passed a hanging carcass to the next person. Ford took this concept and developed the manufacturing line.
💡 A pediatric hospital struggling with poor handoffs was inspired by Ferrari’s Formula One racing team and designed a new process that significantly reduced medical errors thus improving the success rate of infant survivor rate.
💡 Fast food drive-throughs are the most common sight. They have redefined what “fast food” really means. They were inspired by race car pit stops. Similarly, McDonald’s concept of fast food was inspired by mass manufacturing processes.
💡 My kids no longer leave home without a Tide To Go pen that saves them from stains from spilled food on their clothes. Without them, I had to carry extra pairs of clothes or they would have to go through the day with the stain. But inspired by a simple writing pen, the Tide To Go pen is their best tool.
💡 Dyson’s vacuum cleaner was inspired by a sawmill that used a cone to push out waste by centrifugal waste.
💡 Wine packaging inspired by egg cartons. If molded pulp can protect eggs, they can definitely protect wine bottles during shipping and delivery.
What kinds of innovation is possible?
As you see innovation is not only about new products. Leveraging things that work well in other industries can inspire new
👉 Products or solutions
👉 Process improvements
👉 Business models
👉 Pricing Models
👉 Sales, Marketing, or advertising models
How to weave cross-industry inspiration into your processes?
To be able to innovate through inspiration from other industries continuously, it has to be embedded into your innovation or product development processes.
💥 Developing Product Sense: Product sense is the ability of people to develop products that solve customer problems and have an impact on them. One way to develop product sense is to observe how people interact with products. In this context of cross-industry learning, you can develop product sense even more by observing how something that seems to be working really well for that industry might be applicable to your customer problems. For ex., if you want to improve your customers’ habits in saving more money, you could observe how users of the product “Noom” are losing weight. Try the product and write down all the ways that its features could solve your customer problems. Taking time out periodically to develop this product sense will make this a natural habit for you.
💥 Focused Cross Industry Inspiration Sessions: If you run design sprints then make time during the sprint for such inspiration. Jake Knapp, in his book “Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days”, makes space for “Lightening demos”. These sessions are where everybody does a 3 min demo on a product that they love and why. The rest of the team captures any key ideas that might spark for them to solve the current problem they are focusing on.
💥 Continuous Idea Capture: In their book “Creative Confidence”, Tom and David Kelly recommend people carry an idea notebook where they are continuously capturing ideas. Similarly, teams should have an inspirational ideas book. Teams should have a Figma or collaboration board - physical or virtual where everybody is continuously capturing inspiration from other industries. If you really find something that is unique in the way it is working then capture a photo, write a note, and reflect on how it might spark any ideas for you. You can always go back to these to add to your solutions when needed.
TL;DR - Thinking out side of the box is great but you really need to get out of the industry box you are in and look at completely seemingly disconnected industries to spark breakthrough innovation.
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