Customers would have wanted a faster horse! - Henry Ford

#Convenience is the biggest attribute of future. Saving #time is the noblest thing to do for consumers. #Brands who marry #technology with #creativity to solve consumer problems with these 2 built in purposes (Convenience & lightening fast) will be the biggest brands of the future.

If you see history with recent successes, its there. Whether it is #Apple bringing Ipods and Iphones with huge convenience offerings or #Facebook with faster way to connect with people or #Google with its fastest search or #Amazon with its fastest delivery, broadest selection & value (Convenience). Its whats that happened. Creating convenience thru technology with creativity in exploring the unknown. 

Why ecommerce players are obsessive about number of clicks? Because they take consumer convenience as obsession to work at breakneck speed to make it happen. From multiple it became 'one click purchase' which in itself was a milestone. But just for a while. Today, consumers we are moving from many clicks to one click to zero clicks. Thats where #AI takes over! And thats what devices/apps like #Alexa or #GoogleHome or #Siri or #GoogleAssistant are doing. Taking convenience to the #ZEROCLICK saving time for the consumers to get what they want at lightening speed!

Why Tech companies are burning midnight oil to create smart appliances via Internet of Things (IOT) that will obey voice commands? Sounds bizarre. Taking customer convenience to an extreme. But that is the future. 3D printing was like a fairy's magic in childhood stories. But thats a reality. Why? To make consumer able to dream and create things basis his imagination. And #Imagination is human being's greatest asset for progress.

And did consumer ask for AI enabled products? Or smart bands? Or Smart cars? Did they dream about it? Did any consumer researches told that they have this need? I doubt it. Its the companies with obsession for consumer, that think about it, put in effort and take risks & create such #innovations. And rule #future.

As Henry Ford puts it fantastically well - “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Category Creation - Path to phenomenal success

#Category #creation has recently caught my attention. And i am surprised how the companies which can be counted in world's top 20 have created new categories more often than not -

Be it #technology which is an easy brewing ground for innovation, #Apple from Macs to ipods to ipads to iphones, have done that many times. #Google, #Facebook, #Uber, #Airbnb are such techno examples where they created new categories. Taken away human imagination to a new level and changed the behaviour of consumer with better solutions/benefits than they could have thought.

Be it #retail, #Amazon has again replaced distances with thier one click shopping and fastest deliveries. And new categories like #Alexa, #Echo, #Kindle etc, things we never thought should exist!

How? Common aspects are - 1.Working on a new paradigm of #consumer-#benefit and problem solving. 2. Making it #fast enough connect with #ecosystem that competition cant ape quickly.

Read on this #HBR article talking about coffee example of #Starbucks and #Keurig where despite coffee consumption going down, sales on coffee consumption grew exponentially...by creating new category for coffee consumption! Read it here - https://hbr.org/2011/09/why-category-creation-is-the-u

#marketing #innovation #disruption