The Power of Curiosity

World over as rule baed processes get automated /done more efficiently by bots, new skills are coming to fore that make impact. The one skill that all of us had as kids is sorely missing now a days as people get older and get into rote roles or fixed silos - Curiosity

The sheer interest/enthusiasm to know why something is happening, what if something different is tried out, think outside box for traditional problems, the will to try something new and see what happens! Why is this critical?

As futurists like Mark Stevenson travel world over to see the innovations that are making world changing impact, its the fundamental trait of curiosity and not being bogged by traditional routines imposed by time/ commercial organisations that is coming to fore as the winning skill. Be it simulating bacteria through crowdsourcing to cut the new drug discovery costs to a fraction in India, voters deciding how government spends its revenues and so on, the common trait of these innovators is curiosity.

Curiosity and resulting Innovation may perhaps never get done by a BOT or an algorithm. How prevalent is this skill in and around you?

Idea worth pursuing?

How do you know which idea is worth pursuing as a business/ initiative/ project? Which idea will make money and which one will just become a wasted effort? Here are some anchors to help you decide:

Any accountant /MBA text book will tell you see what is the Return on investment ( ROI) ?   Wrong.  You might know by now that no great world changing ideas/businesses have come out of a spreadsheet. In fact the other way around. Once creatives are taken over by spreadsheet folks in a firm, innovation dies a quick death, products become mediocre and generally there is business atrophy.

Why does this happen?

When you start with money making in mind, you tend to lose out/deprioritize many things such as 

-      Am I solving a critical problem significantly better than others are doing today?

-      Is the customer experience top notch in what I am building? Am I taking out all the friction that exists today?

-      Have I switched off all conventional rules of this business ? Am I really disrupting/re-imagining the business model to make things better for the customer along the entire journey?

-      Am I aware that I might not have all the answers today? Do I understand that my ability to pivot down the road is more important than I get it right on paper right now?

-      Do I have the best possible team that thinks similarly? 

-      Do I have conviction/passion around this idea that it might change the world ?

It is difficult in today’s world to have an idea that none had before. iPhone wasn’t the first smart phone nor ipod was the first portable music player. Google wasn’t the first search engine and neither was facebook the first social platform. Look up any idea like hotel booking and you will find 1000s of apps that do similar things.

It is more important to be following the above approach than looking for a ‘First in the world’ idea. 

How do you then validate your idea? Should you ask your friends/loved ones or ask some accountants? Should you check online? Do they ‘see’ what you see ? Do they share your passion/conviction on changing the world?

Ultimately let your conviction/passion be the guide to that ‘world changing idea!’ . Do not worry about money. You will realize that its one of the consequences and not the core driver.

Gamified Life

As proportion of digital natives in the population increase , every aspect of life is getting crowdsourced, gamified and peer measured. Ideas get better with contributions from everyone, technology is built jointly and feedback is built into the DNA of enhancing the product automatically. 

Products and services are bought through reviews, ratings on sellers determine the sales volume, participation in product development is incentivised and encouraged. These have profound implications for businesses as they create new products/services. Customers need to come in early in the product life cycle, continuously evaluate/suggest /enhance the product as it develops and then help sell it in the market place through first set of usage reviews. Amazon switches features on and off everyday purely based on customer feedback and business outcome metrics it collects. Human judgement and subjectivity is supported/dominated by customer actions and related metrics. 

No wonder startups focus on user adoption first as the users then literally ' build/enhance' the product from thereon. While this today applies to a small portion of products/services available in the market place today, this would pretty much be the norm in the near future. 

While the above would be de rigueur in B2C, what would be interesting to know is how does this apply in a B2B context? The number of customers/size of ecosystem is smaller and less public. I would presume that the digital natives in B2B will still look to a gamified environment that S/he is so familiar with in many facets of his/her life!