Uncopyable Innovation: Stealing Genius by Steve Miller
I was a teenager when my father joined up with Bill Lear to create one of the most iconic and industry-changing products ever—the 8-track tape player. Lear had been with Motorola when he decided to start a new business jet company, aptly named Lear Jet. But Lear was also one of those guys who had more ideas than time.
In the late ’50s, early ’60s, Chrysler manufactured a car with a record player in it. It flipped down from underneath the dashboard and only played 45s. (For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, Google it, you young whippersnappers!)
It was a great idea to take your own music with you in the car, but clearly, the turntable was not a good way of doing it. Those of us old enough to remember can picture the needle bouncing all over the record while driving down Main Street.
Lear thought there must be a better way and went looking for someone to help develop this idea with. He found my dad, Ralph, working in Columbus, Indiana, and offered him a job. Dad was already known as something of an audio/video wunderkind, having developed and patented some pretty cool ideas.
Lear began another new company, this one called Lear Jet Stereo, and together they improved on another company’s idea—the Muntz 4-track—ultimately coming up with the 8-track so well known in consumer electronics lexicon.
Without going into all the gritty details, the 8-track tapes and players ended up being manufactured in Japan. Think about that for a moment. “Made in Japan” in the 1960s. For the most part, Japan wasn’t known for its high-quality products. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Japanese-made products back then were more known for their poor quality and workmanship than anything else. They made cheap stuff. And labor costs were very low.
The idea of manufacturing a complicated piece of electronics of high enough quality to be sold back to the world’s biggest consumer nation—the USA—must have been daunting to my dad and Lear, but they met an American consultant who was at the time consulting for some Japanese manufacturers, including Toyota. He was W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician, professor, author, lecturer and consultant. As Wikipedia describes it, “Deming made a significant contribution to Japan's later reputation for innovative high-quality products and its economic power. He is regarded as having had more impact upon Japanese manufacturing and business than any other individual not of Japanese heritage.”
At the time, I had the bad fortune to be dragged to some dinners with Dad, Lear, and Deming. In hindsight, it’s easy to see how valuable it might have been to be that fly on the wall while these three pretty smart guys discussed manufacturing. But like I said, I was young. Sitting through those times was like experiencing the torture of constant water drops on your forehead.
I learned much later that Deming taught his Japanese clients to build quality into the manufacturing process first. This was significant in that most companies built products first and then tested them via Quality Control after. Lear Jet Stereo didn’t have that luxury because they didn’t have deep pockets.
Fortunately, a few tidbits of information managed to stick in the back of my tiny little teenage boy brain. Two such tidbits were the concepts of maintaining a vigorous program of education and constant self-improvement. Deming often stressed that both were accelerated by what we know as benchmarking. Most of us know the definition of benchmarking as: To observe correct behavior and then emulate within our own context. In other words, study best practices and then adapt to our needs. Most of us practice this type of benchmarking in one way or another. But the way we do this is incorrect for the most part. This happens quite unintentionally, though. Our heuristics actually get in the way. Here’s how I define heuristics: Individuals assess probabilities based on their familiarity with a certain task, idea, or environment. Humans attempt to frame a decision based on prior situations confronted and successfully negotiated. Individuals start at one place in a decision matrix and adjust from that initial point. In other words, we don’t see things as they really are. We see things as we are.
It actually goes further than that, though. We not only see the world through our own filters, but we actually experience it that way, as well. We read the same magazines and trade publications as most of the people we spend time with. We attend the same conferences and trade shows as everybody else in our industry. We bookmark the same webpages. And we hang out in the same online discussion groups on LinkedIn. So, when we start “observing correct behavior,” who do we benchmark? Why, we study other people and companies within our world, that’s who! We take ideas from the same speakers and consultants as everybody else does. We walk the same trade show floors as everyone else does—looking for “new” ideas we can incorporate next year. “Hey, they’ve got a magician and a really crowded booth. That’s what WE’LL do next year!” And what happens? After a while, everyone is stealing from each other. We all start to look alike, and we all start to act alike. We are all copyable.
Deming understood this and, after a couple of martinis, used to rail on about how stupid this was.
Yes, it’s important to know what the competition is doing. We must pay attention and make sure we aren’t getting left behind. But when the Radisson hotel group started promoting their rooms with the Tempur-Pedic Sleep Number Bed, they weren’t innovating. They were copying the Westin Hotel Heavenly Bed. Did they think they were adding some awesome new benefit customers couldn’t get anywhere else? Possibly, but that’s the danger of heuristics. The fact is Radisson’s efforts are really no better than a hotel who touts a better coffee maker.
Like I said, Deming understood this. And many years later it finally sunk into the back of my tiny little adult boy brain. If you truly want to innovate—if you want to be so different you’re Uncopyable—you must benchmark outside your world.
I’d been talking with Jim Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom department stores at the time. We’d met on the golf course, and he began asking me questions about marketing. Frankly, I was a little taken aback by this and said, “Jim, I can’t give you any marketing advice. I don’t know anything about retail.” To which he responded, “That’s exactly why I’m asking you. The retail consultants will tell me the same thing they would tell my competition. You might tell me something none of us had thought of before. You tell me what you know, and we’ll figure out how to use it.”
That was the epiphany. I finally saw the mistake most businesses make. Deming’s rants all of a sudden made perfect sense. Even Albert Einstein saw the need to look for answers and new ideas from outside our heuristics: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
History is rife with examples of accidental external benchmarking, i.e., discoveries:
Velcro
The hook-and-loop fastener was conceived in 1941 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral who lived in Commugny, Switzerland. The idea came to him one day after returning from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. He took a close look at the burrs (seeds) of burdock that kept sticking to his clothes and his dog’s fur. He examined them under a microscope and noted their hundreds of “hooks” that caught on anything with a loop, such as clothing, animal fur, or hair. He saw the possibility of binding two materials reversibly in a simple fashion if he could figure out how to duplicate the hooks and loops. (Wikipedia)
Anesthesia
Crawford Long, William Morton, Charles Jackson, and Horace Wells all come to mind when talking about anesthesia. These men realized that in some cases, ether and nitrous oxide (laughing gas) inhibited pain in people under their influence. In the 1800s, inhaling either of these compounds was somewhat popular for both recreation and entertainment. By witnessing and even partaking in these events, often called “laughing parties” and “ether frolics,” anesthesia’s founding fathers learned more about how these experiences affected people’s perceptions of pain.
One example in particular demonstrates the accidental discovery of these compounds used to prevent pain in the medical field. In 1844, Horace Wells attended an exhibit and witnessed a participant injure his leg while under the influence of laughing gas. The man, whose leg was bleeding, told Wells that he didn’t feel any pain. After his accidental discovery, Wells used the compound as an anesthetic while he removed his tooth. From there, anesthesia’s use during medical procedures and surgeries took off. Wells, Morton, and Jackson began to collaborate and use anesthesia in dental practices, while Crawford Long used ether for minor surgeries.
Other examples include the microwave oven, the ice cream cone, Teflon, Post-It Notes, the Slinky, the drive-through window at McDonalds, and Play-Doh. All are examples of serendipitous discovery.
And, although not as common, there are also examples of intentional benchmarking outside the common walls. My favorite example is Southwest Airlines. The airline industry is probably one of the most egregious examples of an industry that’s stuck in its own heuristics. American Airlines starts a frequent flyer program. Everybody follows suit. United Airlines starts charging for baggage. Everybody follows suit. Delta Airlines creates a hub and spoke system. In an industry of copycats, it’s amazing companies like Southwest, JetBlue, and Virgin have been able to resist the hypnotic pull of follow-the-follower.
Back when Southwest Air wasn’t the airline industry’s profit leader, Herb Kelleher, CEO, came to the realization that SWA didn’t make money when an airplane was at a gate. It only made money in the air. Kelleher decided SWA would cut the turnaround time drastically, but how to learn?
The answer was to observe and learn from NASCAR pit crews. Top teams can change all four tires, fill up the gas tank, check the oil, clean the windshield, and vacuum the floor mats in under 12 seconds. (Okay, I made up the floor mat part.) Southwest Air learned how to get everybody—pilots, ground crew, gate agents, and flight attendants—involved in getting a plane offloaded, reloaded, and in the air faster than any other airline. I’ve personally timed multiple flights myself and have never seen a turnaround take more than 20 minutes. On the flip side, I’ve never seen American, Delta, or United ever turn a plane in less than 40. Southwest benchmarked outside their industry when they studied NASCAR pit crews. Instead of copying competitors and then doing “more of the same, but better,” they looked for the genius answer.
Who is the best in the world, no matter what industry, and how do they solve this?
That’s why I call it Stealing Genius. Pablo Picasso famously said, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” Steve Jobs quoted Picasso in a short video clip I often cite, and he goes further by explaining how Apple has used the concept. If you want to be Uncopyable, this is the mindset you need.
In the world of comedy, it’s said there are no new jokes. Brilliant humorists are able to uniquely twist an old story…camouflaging it to the point we don’t even recognize it…until we are set up for the “we didn’t see that coming” punch line.
Every time I teach a group how to Steal Genius, they’re almost caught off guard by its power and effectiveness. A few years ago, I took 28 exhibitors from the huge annual automotive aftermarket trade show, AAPEX, through a Stealing Genius laboratory. We met in Las Vegas and the objective was for them to learn better methods for attracting quality buyers into their booth and turn them into customers. I sent them out to study three local “trade shows”—the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, the Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian, and the Shoppes at The Palazzo. I asked them to observe how the “exhibitors” (the retailers) grabbed shoppers’ attention, how they helped the shoppers qualify themselves, how they displayed products, what type of graphics and messaging was used, and how the “exhibit staffers” (the salespeople) helped them.
Many of the participants said they’d never seen the similarity between a shopping mall and a trade show, but once their eyes were opened, it was clear. And it became a great learning exercise. Delphi Automotive was so motivated they completely scrapped their existing exhibit plan and booth, developing a new strategy based on some stolen genius. They had their best trade show ever, according to Roger Powell, Director of Marcomm.
That’s the beauty of Stealing Genius. Once you see the myriad of possibilities outside your own world, you’ll find many new ideas. And once you learn how to do it, it becomes a skill you’ll use to observe your experiences—and your world—to come up with ideas you never would have thought of.
So, the next time you are looking for a new idea for your organization—maybe a new marketing promotion, a new product idea, a new customer service, or maybe a branding proposition—don’t look at your competition. Don’t even look within your own industry. Look outside. Look at people, organizations, and industries completely unrelated to yours. What are they doing in those areas you want to get better at? How do they solve similar problems?
Then ask yourself, “What can I steal?”
To learn more about the strategies and tools to make your company Uncopyable, check out the updated and expanded edition of Uncopyable: How to Create an Unfair Advantage Over Your Competition. Steve Miller is an author, professional/virtual speaker and business advisor. Since founding The Adventure LLC in 1984, Miller’s consulting clients have ranged from solo entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 mega corporations, including Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. For your FREE copy of 108 Secrets to Grow Your Uncopyable Business (ebook), go to 108Secrets.com.