Companies that decide to compete on innovation-based businesses have 2 potential paths to choose from: with or without “emotion”.
Years ago, my wife and I traveled to the NorthEast of Brazil. There, we went on a tour on the sand dunes on a buggy.
Fifteen minutes into the tour, I was convinced that that was going to be the high point of our trip. The dunes were beautiful, the tour was fun and the driver knew exactly where to stop to get the best pictures.
Then he turned to us and casually asked: “so… with or without ‘emotion’”
He can speak in code because most tourists already know what it means: do you want to continue the rest of the tour like the first fifteen minutes (which were great) or do you want him to ride the dunes like a lunatic, flipping the buggy and sliding large dunes sideways? That is the “with emotion” option.
Companies that decide to compete on innovation-based businesses have 2 similar options:
“Without emotion”. That is, looking into your business and your clients and identifying how you can employ new technologies and new business systems to improve the value they get.
This is a great path! Today, there is so much innovation in financial services and it has become so easy to tap into external knowledge and offerings that, if you prioritize correctly, your organization can in a short period of time deliver more value, quicker and at a lower cost.
But then, there is the “with emotion” alternative.
And this path looks like this: find a big problem your clients have for which there is no solution and publicly announce to the world your commitment to solving it.
This path is a rollercoaster of emotions (pun intended).
For starters, you must be crazy to publicly announce that you will solve a big problem for which there is no solution. Obviously.
The first path has a lot of risks (execution risk, market risk, financial risk, operational risk, among others) but at least you know have a good idea of how you will make it work and turn it into a business.
The “with emotion” option does not.
However, most tourists chose the “with emotion” option.
The “with emotion” path allows you to tackle some of the most pernicious problems out there. It can create massive amounts of differentiated value. It creates new markets, where you can enjoy a non-competitive position for a while and a market leader/pioneer status afterward.
It inspires your organization. It turns you into a leader and a magnet to collaborators, candidates, and clients who care about that problem.
Yes: this option starts to pay dividends even before the solution exists.
And, did I mention: most tourists choose this option? I did.
