While the COVID-19 pandemic has been especially hard on entrepreneurs, startups, and small businesses, it has also provided an opportunity to re-evaluate how we connect with our customers through our product offerings. For some brave souls, experimenting with new tactics has led to great success. This is one of those stories:
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Pioneered by startups and tech companies seeking innovation by reshaping systemic processes and industry landscapes, the goal of creating disruptive change has trickled down through nearly every aspect of today’s business environment. In fact, the term is so ever-present that its value risks becoming diluted.
However, recent remarks from the Association of National Advertisers Masters of Marketing conference might prompt us to see disruption in a new light. Speaking to a crowd of attendees, Procter & Gamble chief brand officer Mark Pritchard praised what he calls “constructive disruption” in marketing practices. What does that look like in practice? Pritchard’s answer provides a road map for the ways in which brands can best reach consumers in the future.
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Some of the greatest discoveries in human history have happened by accident. Whether the result is penicillin or Play-Doh, the microwave or the Slinky, many curious minds have stumbled across products that have impacted (and sometimes even saved) our lives.
One of the challenges of innovation and leadership, as we recently discussed on our blog, is recognizing “what’s next” when we see it. Too often, our pursuit of a specific result keeps us from recognizing something brilliant that happens along the path. Let’s take a look at a recent accidental innovation that probably won’t change the world, but might change how we value the process of discovery.
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The new product development process can be fascinating, joyful, and inspiring – or sometimes leave you feeling like you’re stuck in the weeds. When it’s just not working, when do you decide to pull the plug? At Eidson & Partners, we’ve helped any number of clients make the decision to kill a project and stop the bleeding. In fact, we think knowing when to move on is one of the most underrated skills in product development.
But how do you know when it’s time to kill a new product? A recent article from McKinsey’s Bias Busters takes on that question and got us thinking about our own approach to those tough decisions.
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There’s something special happening in Kansas City’s Berkley Riverfront Park. Bar K Dog Bar, which opened last August, is revitalizing the area by serving a unique intersection of consumer interests. The primary attraction is a “state of the art” dog park overseen by dog-care professionals, which draws dog owners from across the metropolitan area. But what separates Bar K from other dog parks is the inclusion of a restaurant, bar, and coffee shop where customers can relax and connect while their pups play nearby.
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On any given weekend in the spring and summer, the aisles at Family Tree Nursery in Shawnee, Kansas are packed with customers seeking beautiful plants, pots, and other home and garden products. This family-owned nursery, with three locations in the Kansas City area, has been providing top-tier customer service and vibrant, healthy plants since 1964.
As with any nursery, the spring, summer, and fall are busy and full of life. But what about the winter? How does a seasonal business attract customers during the “off” season?
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Our series Lessons from Startup Culture focuses on the ways in which startups have changed the business landscape through the necessity of innovation and outside-the-box thinking. While many larger companies face different challenges, there is still a lot to be learned by examining how small businesses navigate product design, branding, and marketing on a limited (often nearly non-existent) budget.
In this installment, we’ll explore the marketing strategies that pioneering startups have developed in response to emerging social media landscapes and out of a need to build name recognition and introduce new products to their target markets.
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In our recent blog, Lessons from Startup Culture: Learning from a Minimum Viable Product, we examined how “the creation of an MVP itself isn’t the revelation – it’s the ability to learn and adjust based on the customer response that results.” One of startup culture’s strengths has always been the ability to take a big idea and pursue it, iterate it, or change it completely in the search for an end product that resonates with consumers.
In this way, successful startups have redefined failure as a pivot point instead of an end point. For larger, more “traditional” businesses seeking agility, there’s a valuable lesson to be learned.
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In our first installment of Lessons from Startup Culture, we examined the importance of building a solution, not a product. What’s the difference? Many smart people have exciting ideas for new products but fail to consider whether there is a market need for that idea. In fact, 42% of startups fail because of a lack of market need for their flagship product, CB Insights reports.
A solution, on the other hand, is created based on need: entrepreneurs identify a problem that real people have and build a solution that those people will pay to implement. Here is where one of the most brilliant facets of startup culture comes into play. With limited funding and a short runway to validate their ideas, many companies begin their journey by creating a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
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Startup culture is here to stay. Entrepreneurs and innovators have remade the business world in their own image over the past few decades as technological change rapidly advanced and “traditional” businesses struggled to keep up. Even once they’ve made it big, the companies these visionary CEOs started continue to live by the scrappy startup ethos that is baked into their DNA.
What separates startup culture from the traditional business practices it is challenging? What lessons can those of us in more traditional working environments learn from the success of startup culture? I’ll be looking at those questions and more as we explore lessons from startup culture.
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