Early signals (aka ‘weak signals’ or ‘future signals’ in futures research - raw informational material that acts as advanced indicator of a trend or system) can be difficult to detect, particularly in a world in which we are so overwhelmed by information! But these signals can be vital warnings or indicators – both of threats and opportunities. Most of us are pretty lazy about this, we wait for information to come to us. It’s only when we are really curious, really driven by a specific question or problem do we focus our attention on the early signals, eager to get some sense of what the future might hold. We then do our competitor intelligence, market research, and technology forecasting, and focus groups. But still, it can be difficult to look beyond the usual places in which we ask the usual people the usual questions - chances are, the competitors are probably looking in all the same places.

How do we find new insights, new points of inspiration? One approach is to listen much harder to the customers, and a number of user-centred methodologies have been developed for doing so – ranging from story-telling to spending a day in the life of a customer. Another approach is to listen much harder to our competitors, particularly those that not normally considered competitors. By this I mean two things (1) activity that is in a different market as traditionally defined, and (2) activity that isn’t blipping on your radar yet because it’s small, niche, non-threatening. I’ll try to explain both of these in more detail:

(1) Look sideways. For a time General Electric’s maxim used to be that each of their businesses needed to be number one or two in its respective ‘industry’. The result was that each business gave its respective market a very narrow definition, in which it was leading with a dominant market share. Naturally this meant they only ever had to innovate incrementally to maintain an edge, tending not to look creatively at new markets and opportunities beyond their current focus. So instead, the story goes, the company asked its businesses to reframe their markets in a way that gave them only 10% of marketshare, and suddenly 90% of their focus was outside their existing business focus, at different organisations, with different customers, models, regions, channels, and approaches. Suddenly they might have been comparing themselves with Cadbury’s or Pepsi, and the learning curve was very steep again. Who would you look at if you defined your market in a way that only gave you 10% of the market share?

(2) Look down. Organisations are set up to support their existing business models. Because implementing a simpler, less expensive, more accessible product or service could sabotage their current offering, it is almost impossible for incumbents to disrupt themselves, Clayton Christensen has written much about identifying and creating disruptive businesses, which are likely to come from outside the ranks of established players (2002). These new entrants are ignored, disparaged, and sometimes even encouraged by existing players for whom the business model is unprofitable or otherwise unattractive and who therefore avoid or retreat from that market segment – focusing instead on their more profitable high-end customers. For example, last year I met the CEO of KickStart which produces manual pumps for Kenyan farmers. These pumps are highly labour-intensive and low capacity, but they provide a ‘good enough’ solution for the farmers at a fraction of the price of conventional motorized pumps. It quickly became a highly competitive solution, outselling all other pumps, and (together with other low-cost equipment) generating $66million in new profits and wages for the farmers. What are the ‘harmless’ new initiatives in your market?

There is much more to learn about this from the likes of George Day, and Paul Schoemaker, co-authors of “Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that can Make or Break Your Company” (2006). The point, for me, is that a laser-like focus on existing competitors converges organisations on the same choice of value propositions and offerings. When everyone starts to look and compete alike, we don’t see much breakthough innovation. The challenge is to see what’s possible sooner, by focusing on the players that are doing things differently.