Why marketing people are unhappy?

The world is connected like never before. In fact, until you read this article, in 3 minutes: 30,000 new devices will be connected to the Internet.

HUUUUGE DATA, right? Yet, we are not able to harness that data to predict the future. Or drive business innovation for that matter.

All companies are struggling with the same problem, including Google, Facebook and Apple.

Why is that?

Well, all data — no matter how big — is about the past. So the question becomes: how do we get data about the future?

Envision, Empathize, Experiment.

We decided to put together a small team and try new way of problem solving on a workshop in Zagreb. The topic of the workshop would be beverage subscription model. We came up with a completely new revenue model for our business in Switzerland.

Over 2 days we got ourselves looked in a room — to understand the problems we faced and discuss potential solutions

We wanted time-out to focus and bounce ideas off each other. And believe me, when are marketing and product people ever short of ideas or opinions?!

We then built prototypes for 3 different services, which we launched on the 3rd day and — by the weekend we already had the results.

Not from focus groups or interviews, but from real consumers out there in the field. We now know how to create a beverage subscription business.

Let me tell you, this sort of fast, cheap innovation is already powering growth of software companies across the world — from Amazon to Alibaba.

Leaving company benefits aside, this way of thinking and this way of working is good for us as people, as human beings.

Our brains are wired in a way that we need immediate feedback about our decisions.

If we go back to prehistoric times, if you were running away from a tiger, it was pretty easy to work out if you had made a good decision or a bad one. You either got eaten or you didn’t!

Today, we’re making decisions with 6 to 36 months lead time.

That’s why we are in a constant state of self- doubt, questioning our decisions.

Unsure about what path to take.

The fact is: we all make poor decisions from time to time. But, as long as we test them out fast and cheap, we can zig-zag…course correcting each time. Keeping the tiger behind us.

And that is what we want! Go left…that didn’t work…I’ll go right… ok, that’s working better…

One more thing…

It’s only when an idea survives the tiger in the wild that you become truly confident in it.

So confident that you can persuade your colleges, bosses and partners.

Simply put, you discover ground truth that people can rally around and build upon.

In fact, you can even inspire a movement!

So next time when you have decision to make, imagine tiger is behind you!

You’ll think differently and act differently!

Related posts:

The pandemic made everyone transition into online learning with zero prior warning. Due to this, Institutes that never planned for online or remote learning faced many challenges. Government, Private…

This repository really focused on getting people contributing and following the guidelines of pull requests. I believe it was created specifically for the event and would help new contributors with…

How should the Democratic Socialists of America relate to a Bernie Sanders 2020 run? With the regular reports coming out of the marathon speeches and presentations Bernie has been giving these last…