Innovation : You’re Doing It Wrong : How To Put
Intuition And Ideas Before Tests And Analyses
There’s
a costly misconception hindering innovation. Marketing models hold that
strategic reasoning must always precede and inform emotional execution. Before
we decide to try an idea, we must first prove its worth by conscious knowledge
untainted by feeling. But neuroscience suggests this is not only wrong, it’s
backwards.
If
“knowledge is power” we must understand cognition or the “process of knowing.”
Cognitive science tells us that discoveries and decisions are made largely
unconsciously. And feelings not reasoning come first. Emotions precede and
inform rational understanding.
It’s
time to flip the script and listen first to our bodies and then our minds. As French
mathematician and inventor Blaise Pascal presciently observed, “The heart has
its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”
Neuroscientist
Antonio Damasio explained this
peculiarity through a revolutionary experiment known as the Iowa Gambling Task,
designed to understand real-world decisions. Subjects could freely choose from
four decks of playing cards in an attempt to win the most money and determine
the most profitable decks. There were two bad decks full of high risk cards,
and two profitable decks that yielded conservative but consistent pay-outs and
rarely punished players.
Subjects
were asked to report when they could explain why they favored one deck over another.
It required about 50 cards before a participant began to change their behavior
and favor a certain deck,
and about 80 cards before they became aware of why they did it. Rationality is
a relatively slow process. But in addition to asking them to explain their
decisions, they also measured their emotional responses by gauging how the
electrical properties of skin responded to anxiety and stress.
The
experimenters found that the body got “nervous” after drawing only about 10
cards from the losing decks. Even though the subjects were not consciously
aware, their bodies developed an accurate sense of fear and anxiety in response
to a bad deck well in advance of the rational mind. The subjects' feelings were
faster and more accurate, having figured it out way before the conscious mind
was tipped off.
Damasio
formulated the landmark somatic marker hypothesis. This model of decision
making shows how our decisions often depend upon access to what he calls
somatic markers, feelings that are tagged and stored in the body and our
unconscious minds. As Damasio states, “It is emotion that allows you to mark
things as good, bad, or indifferent literally in the flesh.”
This
task is a challenge and metaphor to improve innovation. We can’t prove the
profitability of an intuition or idea because it’s simply not open to conscious
explanation. And if we wait for rational proof, we won’t get there in time or
at all.
Progress
and profit lie at the speeding crossroads of creativity and risk management. So
quick and easy concept/copy tests have been developed to decide which projects,
products and ads get the green light. Respondents scrutinize and decide the
value of new ideas. Marketers then analyze the explicit evidence to make their
decisions.
The
topline reports skim the surface because we’re asking consumers and ourselves
to explain primarily intuitive purchase decisions. Intuition by definition is
“something that is known or understood without proof or evidence.” The primacy
of rational analysis is reflected in the abysmal failure rates of these tests.
Most ideas that pass, go on to fail in market--about 80% of the new products
launched in the US. Houston, we have a problem!
The
problem is not the creative process. It’s the market research testing process.
There’s never been a new idea proven without first trying it.
Steve
Jobs refused testing. James Dyson, and Dietrich Mateschitz did pre-test
but fortunately ignored the reports that told them their ideas wouldn't work.
And Apple, Dyson and Red Bull respectively, created revolutionary products and
dominated entirely new categories.
Emotions
assign value. Context creates meaning. These tests are not the real world.
Disruptive ideas rarely pass because they’re benchmarked against norms of
average old ideas, not revolutionary new ones. For example, the Red Bull test
failed to measure the emotional value of wild parties and exciting sports to
come, the future keys to the brand’s success.
We
should not reject rationality. But we need to know its limits and place in the
creative process. Because it’s crazy that a process designed to protect us from
risk can be shooting us in the foot. And it’s irrational to expect innovation
on one hand, only to kill it with the other.
Here
are some initial thoughts to help nudge us forward.
Intuitive
leaps are not always right. But testing online provides an invaluable chance to
gauge real behavior and apply logic after the fact, where it is most helpful.
If you are not piloting disruptive ideas, beta testing versions of your
offerings and A/B testing your messages, you are missing the most effective
ways to innovate. When you measure actions not words, you are measuring the
hidden emotions that drive responses.
Marketers
are becoming out of touch with the real-life, flesh-and-blood needs and
challenges of people. Most research is spent on testing and evaluating not
empathizing and imagining. We need greater creative insight into improving
human lives not just consumer sales. Behavioral science offers so much fertile
ground yet woefully few farmers.
Pretesting
ideas will likely persist, so we need to revise methods to reflect how
decisions and behavior change really happen. Fortunately, there is a process
that I have discovered rooted in neuroscience. These tests should be tools not
rules, aimed at inspiring creativity not forecasting sales.
The
industry standard for testing positioning concepts involves stripping them of
emotional executional elements often in the form of “white card” concepts. The
goal is to isolate the single functional benefit that best drives sales. This
doesn’t make sense, nor does it work. It emphasizes the rational reasons to
justify purchase, not the emotional motivation to buy in the first place. Art
can teach science and ads can inform strategy.
By
Douglas Van Praet
http://www.fastcocreate.com/3026599/industry-pov/innovation-youre-doing-it-wrong-how-to-put-intuition-and-ideas-before-tests-and?partner=newsletter
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