When Steve Jobs launched the Iphone… when Edison invented the lightbulb… in fact when Bezos thought of creating the world’s largest bookstore they were all creating magic.
Quite a few businesses forget the importance of creating magic in there customers life… They forget that the one question that they should repeatedly ask themselves is how easily replaceable they are for there customers. Successful corporations keep this as a constant endeavor in the activities that they are undertaking.
Mission, Vision and Values
Lareg organizations have lofty Goals, mission and Values.
On one hand we have organizations like 3M which has ingrained the philosophy of 30% of each division’s revenues must come from products introduced in the last four years.
On the other hand, corporations like Enron talked about becoming the world’s leading energy company through innovation.
These aspects highlight that Mission, Vision and Values are not enough for a corporation’s success.
In the case of Startups, instead of having a lengthy winding statement, building an organization with correct ethos is much more critical.
What should be a foundational ethos of a startup
When an organization works with an overarching vision, when it thinks in terms of making an impact it thinks along the lines of creating magic for its customers. If a manufacturer making rivets and bolts for a car manufacturer, thinks it can only have minimal impact for its customer, then the relationship with its customer is limited to these lines and the stickiness of this engagement will be fairly limited.
On the other hand, if a supplier can visualise a deeper partnership it will invest accordingly into this engagement. The example of Renault is taken quite often in this reference; where its suppliers were able to replace rivets with fasteners and as a result helped significantly reduce the cost of their Kwid car. We can easily extrapolate the relationship that these suppliers would now enjoy with Renault.
How can a corporation define a strategy that enables it to pursue this roadmap?
This is a tough question to answer; only a few corporations have been able to get this right. Some corporations which have been able to undertake this consistently are 3M, Google, Assa Abloy and Xerox.
Quite a few researches have been undertaken on 3M, Xerox and Google whereas the story of Assa abloy has not been so well documented. 3M with its strategy of 30% revenue of each division coming from products introduced in the last 4 years and Google giving its employees freedom to invest up to 20% of their own time on working on projects which are outside their core set of activities gives us an indication of the strategy that a corporation can adopt.
Let us take an example which is more current in nature. If Elon Musk wanted to enter the car market with the intention of making a better car he might have taken the Mclaren route making a couple of high-performance cars but he had a much bigger objective and a reason Tesla was founded and is disrupting the automobile industry.
Closing Thoughts
Creating magic is about what difference a product/service makes for its customers, it can be something as simple as an app that helps its users reduce weight. To something more lofty as how a government should bring drinking water to millions of people
The risks that corporations face if they are unable to undertake this are far too many to not plan for this.
