I was asked recently if I could help with a small business’s innovation strategy, I replied "yes you should focus on things that your consumers want but aren’t currently getting"

For innovation to be genuinely game-changing it needs not only to bring new and different products or services but also requires a change in consumer behaviour, without the latter, it’s too easy to be stuck in an incremental NPD cycle that is easy to copy and isn’t delivering against genuine consumer needs.

My favourite example is male grooming – shaving to be specific. For years the main players in the market kept innovating with more blades, extra strips, battery power etc. None of these substantially changed how consumers behave and indeed from the consumer’s perspective, despite the level of “innovation”, the consumer perception of razor performance was unchanged. The reason was consumers didn’t change their blades frequently enough, which meant they weren’t sharp and didn’t perform as expected.  The key reasons for not changing the blades were cost and convenience – blades had become very expensive and not a regular enough purchase to be easily remembered.

Enter Dollar Shave Club, which, through its subscription service met both these needs and forced a complete change in consumer purchasing and usage behaviour and ultimately a multi-billion dollar take over from the world’s largest shaving brand.

This is not the only example, most if not all the genuinely impactful innovation in recent years comes when the outcome for the consumer is so compelling, that they are willing to adopt a new behaviour, coupled with a significantly enhanced product the results can be staggering. Think iPhone, Uber, Airbnb, Ancestry.

Of course, it’s usually easier from the brand’s perspective to keep changing the product, you have almost total control over that, changing people’s behaviour is harder, but people will change their behaviour, sometimes radically, if the outcome genuinely solves their needs and this can often lead to far greater loyalty and advocacy

And that’s the point here. Innovation isn’t primarily about how great you can make your product or service, how robust your creative process is, it’s about looking at the world from the perspective of the consumer and focusing on what they really want – it’s unlikely the answer will be a 6^th blade on their razor.