This morning we kicked off FEI Toronto and Consumer Insights Canada with a keynote from eremy Gutsche, CEO & Chief Trend Hunter, TRENDHUNTER.COM, Author, Exploiting Chaos and forthcoming Better & Faster who shared his Six Secret Steps to Outsmart, Out-Innovate, and Out-Adapt your Competitors.
He presented 6 examples of companies that found something successful but didn't leverage it to the fullest and then the market got disrupted to their loss:
Blackberry
Smith Corona!
Blockbuster
Encyclopedia Britannica
Kodak
Microsoft
3 Traps:
Complacency
Repetitive
Protective
3 Hunter Instincts:
Insatiable
Curious
Willing to Destroy
Amancio Ortega - Zara, example of Hunter Instinct
To get human psychology, you need to study individuals, not corporations.
Once we reach success our inclination is to repeat the process to the point were we become trapped in the status quo, perfecting it to the point we become irrelevant.
Hunt for overlooked opportunity. Knock on doors, competitors are lazy.
How to spot trends and innovate: Look for ways to apply these principles:
Convergence
Circular
Acceleration
Reduction
Divergence
Redirect
Opposing the mainstream, fuels your success.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Formerly a senior copy editor at Thomson Reuters, a research editor at AOL, and a senior web publicist at Hachette Book Group, Valerie M. Russo is editor at large of The Front End of Innovation Blog, The Market Research Event Blog, The World Future Trends Tumblr, the Digital Impact Blog, and also blogs at Literanista.net. She is the innovation lead and senior social media strategist for the Marketing and Business Strategy Division of the Institute for International Research, an Informa LLC., and her poetry was published in Regrets Only on sale at the MOMA Gift Shop. Her background is in Anthropology and English Literature. You can reach her at vrusso@iirusa.com or @Literanista.
