TRENDS THE DETECTORISTS How unicorn founders unearthed new markets


GoPro should surely have been invented by a tech giant, but it took Californian surfer Nick Woodman to spy a monster hole in the market in 2002. He wanted friends to see footage of his escapades, but no wrist camera existed. Fashioning one from a disposable camera, rubber bands and a surfboard leash, he came up with the seed of a unicorn business and a global trend for wearable cameras.


Uber was, legend has it, concocted on a wintry Paris night in 2008 when entrepreneurs Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick could not find a cab. An incident with an abusive taxi driver days later only increased their desire to link smartphones with GPS and drivers.


The origins of Airbnb in 2007 can be traced to the opportunism of hard-up San Francisco


flatmates Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky. Struggling to pay their rent, they noticed that a conference had left the city’s hotels fully booked. Along with pal Nate Blecharczyk, they rented out inflatable mattresses on their apartment floor. The next day, Air Bed & Breakfast was born.


05 / PLAY THE ‘WHAT IF?’ GAME Shell proved the power of thinking “what if?” It’s like a game of consequences. If A happens, what might that mean for B? If technology X is aff ecting one department, could another be next? And what happens if you combine it with technology Y? It’s a great game to play with your colleagues. I predicted the decline in alcohol consumption among millennials this way. Studies showed that they were getting more and more worried about their academic and professional performance and social media profile, while their parents were still partying. Their fear of the consequences of heavy drinking, allied with the traditional desire to rebel, made alcohol less attractive.


When Apple launched the iPad in 2010, Steve Jobs revealed that his company hadn’t done any research before making the product. The founder, renowned for prioritising his sixth sense for appealing innovations over data mining, said: “It isn’t the customers’ job to know what they want.”


Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba began when founder Jack Ma typed the word “beer” into a search engine while on a US work trip in 1995. When no Chinese results came up, he vowed to launch an internet business when he got home.


12 director.co.uk


06 / EXPECT EXPECTATIONS When an innovation arrives in a market, the key is to predict its wider impact. Customers’ expectations are on a steep curve – today’s best practice is increasingly tomorrow’s “not good enough”. When Amazon started off ering free one-day delivery, consumers quickly demanded this from everyone. If an emerging innovation enables greater convenience, transparency or fun, consider how quickly your customers will expect the same from you.


07 / GET HELP Don’t do this alone. You’ll gain more intel by bouncing ideas around with other people. Enlist your employees’ help and reward them for every insight they provide. Google has built employee ideation into its company culture. It surveys staff about new directions,


dreamt then that the situation could change. But Shell imagined the unthinkable – that the supply might decline – and so it stockpiled oil. This would see it safely through the 1970s energy crisis while its competitors struggled.


encourages direct emails to senior managers and hosts one-day company-wide meetings to solve single innovation challenges.


08 / IT’S AS EASY AS ABC


By that I mean “always be checking”. Bingeing on trends once a year is not enough. Keep up to date by subscribing to regular email newsletters from a range of disciplines and sectors. Most research, consultancy and media companies send these out regularly in exchange for a little personal data. Organise internal innovation and insight meetings, again rewarding great ideas, and ask external agencies or suppliers for their own regular trend updates.


You wait ages for free one-day delivery to arrive… Amazon’s bold service innovation raised consumers’ expectations, making them more demanding of the whole industry


09 / STAY HUNGRY FOR MORE One easy way to pick up on trends is simply to keep your senses alert at all times. Sitting in a waiting room? Scan a random magazine to see what consumers in other sectors are up to. Sitting next to someone from another industry at a dinner? Ask them what’s worrying or exciting them. You never know – it might be aff ecting you in a few months. I first heard about both food miles and music streaming from random conversations in hotel bars. The trend, like the truth, is always out there.


ALAMY, GETTY IMAGES, SHUTTERSTOCK


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