It's not all about the customer

Breakthroughs aren't created through conventional frameworks and repetition. I've done my best to forget university textbooks and change up the way I do stuff. But the reality is that in some way, we're all stifled by conventional thought.

Something that's immediately pointed out in Beyond Disruption is the importance of consciously disrupting convention. If we don't, we inevitably find ourselves "trapped, unthinkingly within the existing framework of conventional thought." So true.

Convention #1: Everything starts with the consumer   

The customer is always right. The customer should be at the heart of business strategy. The customer is the hero. Everything starts with the customer. This is the kind of thing marketers say all the time. It's so fundamental to conventional wisdom that I've never really questioned it - and never identified it as being strategically limiting. But it is.

"The disruptive notion here is simply that the idea is the hero, not the customer." 

Killer ideas rarely come from letting the customer call all the shots. Most people don't really know what they want. And suggestions are usually lame and based on stuff that's already familiar to them. Of course, lets respect our customers and value their input. But don't confuse consumer input with marketing output.

Great companies generate original ideas that they truly believe in - positioning themselves as heros in the customer's eyes, not the other way around. Listening is good, but becoming a leadership brand means doing things that customers would never even think to ask for. You can't delight someone by just giving them exactly what they expect.

I've just started working with a client who's floundering in customer feedback - trying to be exactly what their customers ask for. They're basically their customers' bitch. And there's no respect in that kind of relationship.

Apple is a great example of a leadership company with the ability to generate surprising and original ideas that transform markets. More recently, Old Spice is also a pretty good example. Customers just can't come up with that kind of gold.

So the whole point of this: Be customer-informed but idea-led. It's not all about the customer - really, it's all about great ideas.