One of those who co-authored books with Christensen, Scott Anthony, wrote an intriguing post about the blindspot of companies in dealing with disruptive innovation.
As we all know, disruptive innovation is ‘loving the low market’ such as netbooks or Wii or Wal-Mart or other things. We should remember that the definition of the ‘low market’ is of those who have knowledge of that market in the first place. Those who like the ‘low market’, such as the Wii, are those who are not knowledgable about “gaming” in the first place. What the “Game Industry” considers ‘good’, such as higher processor speeds, ended up being invisible to these consumers.
Here is Anthony’s post in full:
A meeting I had recently with some folks at Gillette highlighted an important issue facing the would-be innovator — the “curse of knowledge.”
Chip and Dan Heath described the curse of knowledge nicely in their 2007 book Made to Stick (highly recommended to all innovators). The basic problem: people who have deep knowledge about a topic sometimes assume other people have that same knowledge. That can lead to major missteps.
The brothers Heath bring this to life by describing a simple experiment run by a Stanford doctoral candidate in the early 1990s. The researcher gave subjects a list of popular songs like “Happy Birthday” and asked them to tap those songs out on a table. Another person had to guess the songs. The researcher asked the “tapper” to predict the percent of songs the “listener” would guess correctly.
The tappers — who could hear the song in their heads as they tapped — assumed that people would get 50 percent right. They actually got 2.5 percent right.
What does this mean for innovation? Managers who have spent their entire lives working in an industry often suffer from the curse of knowledge. They assume customers know more than they do. This curse can blind managers to opportunities and threats.
During my meeting at Gillette, one group member described how “of course” the last place you should shave is around your mouth. As I tend to shave my chin last, I asked him why.
“Well, that part of the face has the most nerve endings,” he explained. “So you need to give more time for your shave prep [lotion or gel] to work.”
As that was news to me, I wondered if I was alone in my naivety. So I launched a quick survey.
Twitter and Innosight friends and family produced about 100 responses in 24 hours. Turns out only about 30 percent of people claim to shave around the mouth last (the neck was the most popular choice).
Further, only about 25 percent of the people who shave around the mouth last said they did so in order to let their shave prep work or because the area is sensitive. Other answers (it was an open-ended question) ranged widely, with my favorite answer being, “Best for last?”
How do you break free from the curse of knowledge? Spending a lot of time with customers helps. The more you listen to what the customer says and doesn’t say, the more you can make sure that your intuition is attuned to the customer’s knowledge base. Recognizing the curse helps as well. Make a regular habit of asking questions such as, “Is this our view, or the view of our target customer?”
Finally, bring in outside voices who can ask the innocent questions that can expose the curse of knowledge.
The 2004 Boston Red Sox showed how curses can in fact be broken. Don’t let your own knowledge blind you to threats and opportunities.
In the “Game Industry”, the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ said that everyone understood High Definition graphics as well as processor speeds. Game developers clearly understood it. But the customers did not. And the customers don’t care anyway. The ‘Curse of Knowledge’ can be extended to many things from online gaming to game secrets and to, especially, this masquerade called “game culture” that waltzes around on the Internet with its top ten lists.
Since the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ is what blinds companies from undergoing innovation, where does innovation come from?
Does Innovation come from technology?
No.
Does Innovation come from a ‘genius’ like Miyamoto?
No.
Does Innovation come from a grand marketer?
No.
Innovation, true innovation of not the ‘bigger is better’ sustaining type is found only in the Blue Ocean.
To his post, an insightful comment makes the connection:
Scott,
Great article and it’s certainly something I’ve seen over the years across many different markets and companies.
One idea I’d like to float past you is how Blue Ocean Strategy as a framework can overcome these issues. At the heart of BOS is the idea that innovation lies outside the organisation and primarily with customers and non-customers. I particularly like BOS as it really forces an organisation to confront the barriers they put in front of the community thereby making it hard for innovation that occurs outside the walls of the company to be captured and acted on.
The Blue Ocean Strategy cuts through this blindspot of this ‘Curse of Knowledge’. Let us go through the process from a Nintendo perspective.
The “Game Industry”, stuck in the ‘Curse of Knowledge’, goes the high processor and high definition graphics route. The “Game Industry” does this not because they are stupid but because of an entirely rational response. Improving processor and graphics worked in previous generations, it should work again. Right?
But unlike others, Nintendo applied the ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’. It forced Nintendo to ask why people were not playing games, of what were the barriers. There are many that Nintendo identified and corrected. The more famous one is the controller. The traditional controller, with its thumbsticks and multiple buttons, was like tossing a hand grenade to these non-gamers. The controller was intimidating and was a wall between the game and these non-customers.
Nintendo launched its R&D and examined why these non-customers were not intimidated by many button devices like the Cell-Phone or the TV Remote, but they were intimidated by the game controller. Nintendo’s solution was the Wii-Remote that resembles the TV remote. While having less buttons, it could attach things but it was motion based.
It was the first true 3d controller. And with this new 3d controller, the 3d Revolution was truly complete. People were easily playing tennis in three dimensions of both the game and with the controller. The three dimensional controller broke down the wall to 3d gaming for many.
The varied responses to the motion controller by Microsoft and Sony reveal the philosophic differences between the heads of these companies and Nintendo. Sony, operating under the ‘Curse of Knowledge’, made the Sony Wand. If you understand the knowledge of motion controls, you will know that the Sony Wand is “better” because it has better “technology”. Customers, however, will not be underneath the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ and will have a very different reaction to it. Sony has shown itself to be retarded in the ways of disruption (being disrupted by both Apple and Nintendo). Sony has also shown itself to be ignorant of the Blue Ocean Strategy. So Sony’s response is a very typical industry response. Naturally, the Sony Wand is hailed by the “Game Industry” as the ultimately superior option because those inside the “Game Industry” are also underneath the ‘Curse of Knowledge’.
Microsoft’s Natal is a very different story. What would a product look like if the company knew disruption but not the Blue Ocean Strategy? It would be something like the Natal. The Natal is a disruptive ‘counter-attack’ to the motion controller. This means that Microsoft will adopt Nintendo’s mission statement (i.e. of expanding the game population) and deliver a ‘better’ instrument to ‘expand the game population’. This is why Microsoft emphasizes ‘no controller’. This is a classic disruptive co-option counterattack. Natal was designed with a disruptive mindset but not a Blue Ocean one.
After the motion controller was made, Nintendo peered into the Blue Ocean to find the next innovation (this is studying the barriers that prevents non-gamers from playing). Using your entire body as the controller was the next Nintendo innovation, and it was the Balance Board. Motion Plus, designed to keep Nintendo’s competitors in their boxes, was made in the mindset of disruption more than Blue Ocean.
Nintendo is applying the Blue Ocean Strategy to motion controls as they, correctly, assumed motion controls would be turning into a ‘Red Ocean’. What are the barriers to people who cannot play motion control games? Perhaps they do not like to stand up and play. Perhaps they want their gaming to be sedentary. Whatever the barriers, it was their study of non-customers to the Wii that created the Vitality Sensor.
The point is to illustrate that Nintendo’s source of innovation is a very different source than what Microsoft and Sony believe it is. Sony thinks technology is the source of all innovation. Microsoft has never done anything outside the Red Ocean and can’t think outside it. In other words, Microsoft would understand Nintendo making Motion Plus, but they wouldn’t understand Nintendo making the Balance Board or Vitality Sensor. They might even say something like, “But there are no markets for these things!” and that would be precisely the point.
Many products come out with ‘innovations’. As from ‘sustaining innovations’ which are better features for the current customers, all innovations come from helping non-customers enjoy the product. Think about it. In computers, moving to a GUI and a mouse opened up computers to many people who couldn’t figure out DOS or text user interface. With the NES, the two handed smaller controller you held made it easier for the non-gamers of gaming, children, to play.
Innovation doesn’t come from technology or from ‘genius’ visionary. Innovation doesn’t even come from the “industry” itself. In fact, innovation comes from OUTSIDE the “industry” and comes from those who have no knowledge at all about the “industry” or the product.
Nobles once sailed across the globe to the New World to discover the Fountain of Youth. In business terms, this Fountain of Youth exists but it is the Blue Ocean. The Blue Ocean, an endless Fountain of Innovation, is the Mother of Disruptions.
If modern focus polling existed centuries ago, instead of making the automobile, companies would have made ‘faster horses’. Instead of ‘Internet news’, we would have had ‘faster newspapers’. And instead of the Wii, we would have had a third high definition machine with greater processing (which would have been as ignored as the Gamecube).
And instead of a Motion Control war by the console companies, Nintendo is going to ‘surrender’ and appeal to customers that motion controls failed to get.
Hardcore game players, game developers, and game journalits, all under the ‘Curse of Knowledge’, will be cursing another parade of ‘casuals’ marching into gaming. But what they need to understand is that this ‘Curse of Knowledge’ they condemn the ‘casuals’ for is their true source of strength and the great weakness that blinds the “Game Industry”.
The Blue Ocean Strategy, the ‘Source of Innovation’, is the Fountain of Youth for business. Frail, gray, and old was Nintendo last generation. Now, their products have the impact of when Nintendo was young.
“But isn’t Nintendo a company that is centuries old?” you ask. “Didn’t Nintendo make video-games before consoles, toys before video-games, and cards before toys?”
That is the point. Nintendo’s history shows that it has discovered a type of way to continually refresh the company, the business version of the ‘fountain of youth’.
