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There's no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge

In this book's initial test of your potential to become a successful business innovator, we asked three questions aimed at measuring some essential knowledge for you to become creative, innovative and successful.

Firstly, you need to be knowledgeable about people's behaviour, their motivations and drives, because all business begins and ends with people and how they are likely to respond to what is being offered to them. In the encounter with the consumer, whether you are selling a car or a bag of sweets, it's obvious to most people that you need to understand what people want to enable you to use the right arguments – to offer them cars (or bags of sweets or whatever) that they can't resist.

The same applies to business-to-business and in relation to other players or stakeholders. For example, whether you are selling components for cars or ingredients to make sweets, you are much more likely to succeed if you: (1) understand your customer's business, that is, how your customer in turn will be able to put together as appealing an offer as possible to the consumer; and (2) can demonstrate how your components or ingredients will help your customer to create a highly appealing offer that consumers will not be able to resist.

Nor should we forget that your customer is every bit as much a human being as the consumer, and that your customer also has motivations and drives to which you must appeal. Knowledge of human behaviour, drives and motivations is absolutely fundamental in all business. You need it for each and every puzzle, so that you can stimulate the bisociations that will help you to succeed. For this reason, this part of the book focuses on pieces of the puzzle that can be useful in the context of all business innovation, no matter what the actual focus of your business. But before we start coming to grips with these, let's first take a closer look at the other essential areas of knowledge investigated in this book's initial test of creativity.

The second question in the test measured your knowledge of economics and business. Previously in the book, we've seen examples of the fact that it is very seldom the best product that wins. Success is instead based on other factors, among which a sound knowledge of economics and business is essential to be a winner. These days, it's difficult to create a superior product and to maintain a market position based solely on the superiority of your product's characteristics. In the first instance, global competition virtually guarantees that there will almost always be some other company somewhere that can make a similar product with even better characteristics. Secondly, as a rule many alternative technologies can produce more or less the same result in the eyes of the consumer – alternative technologies that you cannot protect yourself against through patents. Thirdly, people are generally not interested in or knowledgeable about the nitty-gritty details of different products, and in any case they will find it difficult to judge which product has the most superior characteristics.

By getting their products to market fast and reaching many consumers, companies can create what are termed network externalities, which means that your business creates dependencies inside other businesses. Microsoft, for example, has been highly successful in creating network externalities. Since so many people and businesses use Microsoft's products, it has become very difficult for companies operating in any computer-based business not to use Microsoft's products. Similarly, we can say that Coca-Cola has created network externalities. Because so many people prefer Coca-Cola and associate the entire category of soft drinks with this corporation's product, it is virtually impossible for supermarkets, grocery stores, kiosks, etc., not to stock Coca-Cola. They would risk losing appeal in relation to their customers and thus risk losing their business.

Getting your product to market quickly also gives people a chance to get used to the product. People's preferences and behaviours are, in fact, quite difficult to alter once established! In the early chapters of this book, we looked at the kinds of obstacles you can be faced with as a new player in an established market as a result of first-mover advantages, the scale advantage and double jeopardy. In the opposite direction, these forces work to the benefit of the agents who are the fastest to penetrate the market with their products.

It's also part of the scale advantage that a big player in the market will be in a better negotiating position in relation to other companies (with respect to components, distribution and licensing, for example), and that this player will be able to make their production more efficient. Understanding the scale advantage also implies, however, that companies need to work with other players in the market. It's difficult (if not impossible) for a company to establish itself and flourish in the market alone. That is why it's important to utilize the power of other companies through mutual exchange in the form of joint venture projects and networks, for example. The creators of a successful business not only need to be able to sell their product to customers, they must also include in their calculations the need to conceptualize and promote their business to other companies with whom they are working. So it's a very good investment in becoming a successful business innovator to fill your box with new pieces of the puzzle that deal with economics and business. This way, you can ensure that your creative result will be feasible, too.

The third question in the test referred to knowledge about demographic trends. To be a successful business innovator, you need to have your ear to the ground, ready to discover new opportunities before others do. To achieve a true creative result, you must make your product meaningful to people. You can seek and find this meaningfulness in people's everyday lives. As a rule, we create meaning based on our day-to-day experiences and environment. When our daily lives change, opportunities arise for new creative results (new products, concepts), since these changes mean that people will be subject to new experiences and environments to which they need to relate. Demographic trends are not concerned with abstract issues such as globalization, but with very concrete phenomena such as car tolls, the latest and hottest soap opera on TV or the shortage of student housing. By consistently monitoring the changes affecting people's everyday lives, you will be creating your own hotbed for bisociations. And the more concrete your observations, the more meaningful your creative result has the potential to be.

There is no ‘useless’ knowledge

We concluded earlier that there is no such thing as ‘useless’ knowledge. Everything you learn can be of benefit to you – not just what you learn about people, business and demographic trends. All the pieces of your puzzle have the potential to create powerful bisociations in the right combination. The challenge is in fact to find the right combination. And this is precisely what these three central areas of knowledge can help you to do. (1) Knowledge about demographic trends relates to people's everyday lives, into which your product must fit or that your product can develop. (2) Knowledge about economics and business relates to the implementation of your creative result and the potential for making your product successful and profitable. (3) Knowledge about people and their behaviour, drives and motivations helps you to interpret the combinations you get from shaking the box and predict people's reactions to them.

The aim of this part of the book is not to give you all the pieces of the puzzle you need to be a successful business innovator. If it was that easy, everyone would be a star business innovator! To be successful, you need to challenge yourself and your business continuously, to think creatively and innovatively and learn more all the time. In this part of the book, we take a closer look at four aspects of human behaviour that can help you along the way: conceptual fluency, brand gravity, associative networks and context effects. What they have in common is that they affect human behaviour in general, particularly our reactions to products, and even more particularly, their marketing. These four aspects are easy to understand and apply in your creative work, making it easier to choose new pieces of the puzzle to put in your box, so that when you shake it, you'll get more and better combinations to interpret.